Beatles Shea Stadium footage in HD from John Lennon Documentary?

Hello there! First thread on this forum, so getting a little antsy about it. Here we go:

John Lennon's 1988 documentary film incorporated a lot of different film elements from a variety of sources, from his Beatles period to his later solo years. One of those elements that has come to my attention is the incorporation of live Shea Stadium footage, specifically of Help!

Apparently, the documentary was rebroadcast in HD on the television channel Palladia (a precursor to "MTV Live"), a station that solely focused on 1080i material, or so Wikipedia says. Somebody was able to grab some of the footage of the Shea Stadium portion and release it via a torrent, although it is on YouTube here:

In comparing this footage to both Anthology and the TMOQ Gazette bootleg release (both of which sourced from Ron Furmanek's stellar 1991 remaster), and to Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years' segment, it is interesting to note some of the similarities and differences.

Companion Image Post to: "Beatles Shea Stadium footage in HD from John Lennon Documentary?"

For the images linked:

Three Screen Comparisons
- Imagine Documentary - Right
- Anthology 5 - bottom left
- TMOQ Bootleg - top left

Side-by-Side Comparisons
- Extreme close up of John is: Anthology - Left | Imagine Doc. - Right
- Extreme close up of John 2 [two microphones, yellow + grey/black]: TMOQ B. - Left | Imagine Doc. - Right

Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years Reference Images
[ Full 16:9 image of John scratching his nose comes from a particularly red bit of Eight Days a Week Doc. ]
[ Full 16:9 image of John scratching his head a more neutrally-colored camera shot ver. of EDAW]


I pulled Eight Days up here for comparison because I noticed that both it and Imagine's clips share a little bit of red tint? On Imagine's clips it's a little more pronounced--compared to Anthology's relatively "neutral" looking skin tones (albeit Anth. is slightly yellowed).

Comparing these two "reddish" version to Apple Corp's other "1" 2015 Blu-ray reveals a marked difference between the clips -- skin tones in "1" look more akin to neutral/flat Anthology's rather than to red EDAW's.

Looking at the footage side by side leads me to believe that EDAW and Imagine might be using different prints as compared to "1"? Because looking at "1" and a cell phone capture of the Apple-restored version of Shea Stadium leads me to think that Apple has its own reel -- possibly the 1991 Furmanek restore -- and there's a different reel that other productions use? But if that's true, and if EDAW used a different source . . . EDAW is an Apple production -- why wouldn't they just use the Furmanek reel?

Here's what I think is a more plausible case: EDAW probably added some of its own color in post to add vibrancy to the image. Then the segment could pop out a little more and add a little "life" back into it.

I'm not sure of either of these, right now they're just silly theories.

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I know that you guys definitely know a heck of a lot more about this than I do, and so I'd love to hear your takes on this. 'Till then, I have to wait for the Steve Hoffman moderators to approve this post. Thank you Steve H. moderators, by the way

 

That's fascinating footage. The Beatles sound pretty good considering they couldn't hear themselves.

 

Welcome to the forum.
And! Your first thread is Beatles-related. You'll fit right in.

 

It's really a shame that it is "enhanced" with the studio version dubbed over the crowd.

 

Now THATS Funny!!

 

Looking at those clips/captures it seems like the “right” color is somewhere in between Anthology and Imagine. EDAW might be the best at this point.

 

Well, ****, no wonder it sounded so good.

 

I hope Shea Stadium gets a proper release eventually. And we have a forum member (Vidiot) who could help make that happen. But it probably has to stay within the Apple/Abbey Road team if it happens at all.

 

Well, the Eight Days a Week documentary was color-corrected by my old pal Andy Lichstein over at Chainsaw Post in Hollywood in 2016, and that was all done in 2K. What usually happens for "clip shows" like this is the producers furnished either previously-corrected sequences or they provide completely raw (straight scans) material that has to be color-matched into the rest of the show. Projects like this are tough because they go all over the place in terms of picture quality. My understanding is they made a ton of changes all the way up to the release date, so the actual contents of the show were constantly in a state of flux and were tough to work on.

Imagine was done a long time ago, but I don't know when it was remastered for HD. It's always possible that Apple Corps would pull the original negatives and rescan everything for HD and not work off an IP. I'm surprised they still haven't redone the 1994 10-hour Anthology show in HD for Blu-ray. I like to believe all the pieces are available in the vault and wouldn't take that much work to do.

 

I have a VHS copy of Imagine with all the videotaped shows (Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas) in their original videotape form of smoothness and fluidness. Was it like that in theaters, too? @Vidiot?

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Since this original post, I've found a wealth of new content and have created a video with all of the new sources:

Shea Stadium - 4K Restoration Uncovered! "Ticket to Ride", "I Feel Fine", "I'm Down", and more!

Thank you!

 

Probably in preparation for its DVD release which was 2005.

 

yeah i was going with it till i noticed i was hearing an acoustic guitar lol, just use the live one

 

Subbing in the studio version is one thing but drowning it in digital reverb's another. (Of course that's an issue across the movie, not just in the clip.)

 

Just Act Naturally

 

I'm not so sure about that, because the DVD and HD versions are slightly different. One way is the color correction, and the other is in speed (the DVD is faster, therefore songs are higher pitched, etc.)

Left is the DVD, right is the HD release:

 

The thing that always bothered me about the Beatles Shea Stadium performance is that they arrived and departed in a Rambler station wagon!

C'mon, there wasn't a Cadillac or Lincoln available for the Boys??