As mentioned in my post about the storyboards this is one of my favourite films, and possibly my favourite ever animated film. It is essentially a series of music videos, each with a distinct animation style, connected by a loose story preaching peace and love. Heinz Edelmann who was artistic director on the film says that the decision to make the film like this was made as a way of keeping the audiences' attention for 90 minutes, as up until then every animation studio who had attempted to produce a feature length film had gone bust in the process, the only exception being Disney.
Throughout most of the film the animation is fairly limited. There are a lot of static shots with only a small amount of movement on the one character who is currently talking, but the musical sections contain much more interesting snippets of animation. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is rotoscoped, Eleanor Rigby is a collage of loops, cutouts and old film footage, and Only A Northern Song uses one of the first instances of visualised audio waveforms outside of a recording studio. In fact, off the top of my head the film makes use of almost every form of animation available in the pre-digital age.
To top it all off it has a cracking soundtrack using songs from Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour, plus three previously unreleased tracks and snippets of many other Beatles hits, and a cinematic score composed by George Martin.
5 bloody stars!!!
Some of the different styles of animation:
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| Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds |
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| Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds |
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| Eleanor Rigby |
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| Eleanor Rigby |
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| Only A Northern Song |
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| Only A Northern Song |
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