How we made Now and Then - The Last Beatles Song short film

First of all, the most important thing for me was that it felt fresh and contemporary, so we started out by recording new audio interviews with the surviving members of the band, Sean Ono Lennon and Peter Jackson. It was important to record only audio because that's my favourite way of getting intimate and conversational interview content. 

I took these interviews into the edit and made a kind of podcast cut of the story, which became our foundation for the timeline. Then I started looking at The Beatles’ incredible archive of films and archived interviews from the past. I started to think how this material could be reinterpreted to tell a story and to create a structural device that allowed us to move backwards and forwards in time. 

Then we started to weave the imagery and interviews together with music, and that is where it came alive. Of course, a real gift was having stems of the music track and access to the original ‘Now and Then’ demo because I was able to show John emerging out of the scratchy cassette tape and have his voice appear fully formed and solo’d in the mix. 

Interviews are always a big part of my process, and are where I start because more often than not the answers that you get to questions lead you somewhere you didn't expect and change the course of the project, so I like to do those early. It's always useful to start with audio because it's also the most malleable and it's possible to go back for pick up interviews. Archive footage or access (with a camera) to the people you're talking to actually doing what they're talking about is much harder to acquire. You need to come up with lots of creative solutions to make the imagery work for the story. 

Taking on any Beatles story is quite a pressurised situation because they are so beloved all over the world and I wanted to make something that the fans like. Having said that you also want to make something that introduces a new audience to the music, in this case it was important we made something that appeals to younger people. So getting that balance right was a challenge.

I don't think Beatles aficionados mind if the storytelling is designed to include people that don't necessarily know everything there is to know about the Beatles, so it was important to explain the context adequately for someone discovering this story for the first time. 

I think AI is going to impact every corner of society. There’s a lot of press on its use in the creative industries, which is natural because its impact is easy to see, but I actually don't think there's much to be concerned about because it's just a tool. Some people will try and use it as a shortcut to creating speedily produced 'art' but there is no substitute for the nuances of human creativity and I really don't think audiences want 'bot' concerts anyway. 

We needed to go back and forth in time in the film, so I knew I wanted a date scroll very early on and it was in the original script that I wrote. I think my favourite use of The Beatles archive was the yellow submarine – in itself a time traveling device – as part of the date scroll. It fits so perfectly.

The look of The Beatles animation is amazingly contemporary given that it was made in the '60s, so I enjoyed using that as a graphical component. There is also a very specific brand identity to The Beatles that meant new graphic components are quite hard to include, so a few early ideas to make new imagery fell by the wayside very quickly.

Some VFX work is very obvious – like the creation of a CGI alien in a blockbuster film – but there’s a whole other side of VFX that was in play on this project that was completely invisible in the finished film. The material we used to tell the story was sourced from many different countries – all of which film and store material at different frame rates and aspect ratios. 

The emotional climax of the film is definitely the moment where we get to hear John's isolated vocal for the first time. It's quite an emotional moment to hear him emerge from that scratchy demo.

It was an amazing experience. As you might imagine The Beatles just weren’t even on my list of people I wanted to work with because I thought that the chance had passed. To have been involved with such a one-of-a-kind bunch of creatives was very special and I hope I get to do it again soon.

I'm very thankful to have a good relationship with Universal Music and I've worked with some high profile musicians in the past like The Rolling Stones and Quincy Jones so that’s how I made the shortlist I guess. Then I pitched a script to Apple Corps, which is the business entity behind the Beatles, they liked it, and we went from there.

Obviously getting to meet and work with Paul McCartney was a trip! But because the whole way through production I felt a lot of pressure to get the film right, I think the part that I enjoyed the most was seeing the film connect with broadcasters and streamers the way it did. Their enthusiasm settled my nerves when it came to guessing how an audience was going to take it. It actually went live with 26 broadcasters and five streamers around the world, which was amazing to see.