All My Loving in living colour

We have talked about the subject of colourising before, both of photos and film. You’ll recall that Ron Howard’s film “Eight Days A Week” had some old concert clips colourised, and of course, “All You Need Is Love” from the 1967 “Our World” worldwide satelite transmission was colourised for The Beatles Anthology in the mid-nineties. The producers of the show meant to spring that particular colourisation as a surprise for the former fabs and were somewhat disappointed when George Harrison showed no reaction when they screened it for him. He hadn’t noticed that it was colourised, because in his mind, he remembered it in colour. Pre-dating this even, the Rutles parody of the Beatles had their version of “All You Need Is Love” – “Love Life” in colour originally, in their 1978 mockumentary, “All You Need Is Cash”.

In this day and age, with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, video amateurs are experimenting with colourisation. One example which impressed us, is this upload by YouTuber “Kitsu Beatles”, who had enlisted some help from fellow YouTuber Alex Alonso.

From TV’s black and white days, April 18, 1964. The appearance was actually taped over four months previously on December 2nd, 1963 at Studio C, Elstree Studio Center in Borehamwood. The Beatles rehearsed in the morning and were taped live in the afternoon. Later that very night they even played a 7-song-set, charity concert, in the ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel, Mayfair, London.

The Morecambe and Wise show with the Beatles has proved to be popular among colourisers lately, and the whole show, also featuring “This Boy”, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, and with their hosts a version of “Moonlight Bay” was colourised and upscaled more than a year ago by “Colourising the past”: Watch it on Vimeo.