I am in the process of upgrading the "remastered edition" of the laserdisc of this documentary to put it onto a couple of DVD-Rs, but the process has caused me to wonder again as to how something of such poor visual quality ever got released in 1984. And I'm not talking about just the archival footage from the 1960s. The contemporary film of the interviews conducted specifically for this project are uniformly awful: zero detail, blown-out pastels, a green tint to all skin tones, jitter, numerous scratches, actual holes in film frames, etc., etc. And yet Wikipedia tells me this thing was released in theaters for a limited run due to its success in the home video market, and I can't imagine what this would look like on the big screen. The flaws seem to be baked into all of the original source elements that were compiled for the documentary. In other words, a long, continues scratch or tear in an interview segment with George Martin doesn't appear in the very next frame once it switches to a different interview or archival footage, so it's not like the laserdisc was simply sourced from a battered print of the documentary. Anyone out there recall seeing this in theaters, and if so, did it look this bad then?
I always thought it was part of its charm. BTW I just realized Ive met and chatted with one of the talking heads in TCB. Lenny Kaye
Well, I just don't understand how that 1980s-shot film could have deteriorated so badly in the space of just six months or so. Maybe it's not deterioration. Maybe it was shot on bad film stock and then was processed and transferred poorly... The whole thing is so bad looking that as I replace the really bad archival footage (the Washington concert, the Tokyo '66 show, Hey Jude, Penny Lane, etc.) I have to degrade my upgraded footage a bit (adding in digital scratches and dust) just so it visually "fits" with the rest of the film.
As a guess, this was designed to be a home video release. I don't think it was ever screened in a theater. I don't know that for sure, but as a long time first gen fan, that's how I remember it.
I'm sure there are proper elements for a BD release. Never made it to DVD...so, no remastering really.
I only saw it on Home video (VHS or Laserdisc rental)...in the mid 80's perhaps it was shown in some theatre chains, but I never saw first hand advertising in newspapers for it!
I remember the 1975 book 'An Illustrated Record' doing the job for me (circa 1980-81) on Beatles info so I never went looking for anything else for a long time. The poor physical quality of original interviews done for this doc sure does seem strange!
There’s an interview with the director and he references the theatrical release in 1984, which followed the home video release. I’ve just never seen any documentary, on any subject, in which all the film elements — archival and contemporary — looked so shabby.
I have the Anthology VHS set and give that a play on the tape machine usually every other year (about this time)... donations always welcome.
yes, sadly I have the VHS set as well and the DVD box set...but, I don't play the VHS box...it's just there taking up space...
I've found a few laser discs that seem to just be dubs off of the commercial VHS release...and bad transfers as well. The worst offender (so far) is the XTC "Look Look/Best Hits" laser disc.
I saw it at the now-defunct Brookgate Theater in Brook Park, OH in 1984. A week after it aired on Cinemax...also in 1984 (I recorded the audio portion on cassette utilizing one of those "stereo" cable-FM simulcasts that were par-for-the course at the time). You can see (sort of) screenshots of the archived Cleveland Plain Dealer entries here (one has to pay to see the full reprint). February 3rd and February 10th, 1984, respectively. Search Results | The Plain Dealer Archives
Compleat Beatles didn't look that great back in 1982, when it was first made. Back then, it was a lot easier to license clips from Apple Corps and use them in a documentary (especially one that was non-controversial and uncritical). I owned the laserdisc for decades, and it was kind of s***ty quality, I think a bunch of 16mm prints they telecined to 1" tape. My memory is within a few years of it being released, Apple Corps approached the filmmakers, paid them off, and took the whole thing off the market so they could "re-own" the whole show. I think pretty much everything in it was redone in the Anthology project, and often done a lot better. The famous @Ron Furmanek was one of the people who worked on the show, and I'm sure he knows all the inside stories. I worked for the producers, Delilah Films, when they did Hail Hail Rock & Roll a few years later, and that was state of the art for 1987 in terms of picture quality (all done from the 16mm camera negatives). I can recall some outrageous outtakes where Chuck Berry was very snippy, mean, and temperamental, and not that many of them showed up in the finished film. Camera scratches (black) and neg scratches (white) from film can happen anytime in the process, and it's one of those things you couldn't fix very easily back then. Now, we can fix almost anything. I can't comment on the color, but I don't remember the laserdisc looking that awful. It's always possible the people making the DVD-R bootlegs did a crappy job transferring it over. We put up with a lot of ugly pictures during the Bad Analog 1980s. I bet that Apple wound up with all the camera negative shot for this project, and I bet there was a ton, given that 25 or 30 major celebrities were interviewed for Compleat Beatles. The whole interviews could yield some amazing insights, given that they were shot 40 years ago... far closer to the original Beatles' events than 2022.
The frame captures pictured in the original post above are from the remastered edition laserdisc (also pictured), and are not from a homebrew DVD. There were major celebrities interviewed for “The Compleat Beatles”? I see interviews of Gerry Marsden, Tony Sheridan, and Lenny Kaye in there … but that’s about it for celebrity firepower. (I know the ABC TV special that aired around the time of the “1” album’s release was built around major celebrities, but obviously that’s a different program altogether.)
