Beatles Buffed, Polished in a Vibrant ‘Yellow’

Those nasty Blue Meanies are back and bluer than ever in the new digitally renovated version of the Beatles’ classic 1968 animated musical “Yellow Submarine,” which MGM is releasing this week on video ($20) and DVD ($30).

This innovative psychedelic trip finds the Liverpool lads vowing to save the day from the evil Blue Meanies, who have invaded Pepperland and declared war on all that is good, especially music. Among the hit songs featured in the soundtrack are “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “All You Need Is Love,” “All Together Now” and “Eleanor Rigby.” The restored edition also features the song “Hey Bulldog,” which was released only in England.

The DVD features the wide-screen edition of the movie, a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the film, a music-only track and an audio commentary track provided by John Coates, one of the film’s producers.

If it hadn’t been for a little girl, “Yellow Submarine” might never have had this spruce-up.

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In 1995, Bruce Markoe, vice president of post-production at MGM, decided to introduce his then 5-year-old daughter to the film. After some difficulty, he found a video copy. “I showed it to her and it actually became one of her favorite movies,” he recalls. But he thought the film didn’t look very good and its sound was even less impressive.

“Visually, the movie is very imaginative and creative, and the sound was not there,” Markoe says. “I thought we could do a bit of enhancement to the sound as well as the picture.”

He discovered that the film had been pulled from all venues in 1987 because of a dispute over ownership between the Beatles’ company, Apple, and United Artists. “So you really had a whole generation of young people who had never seen the film,” says Markoe.

He pitched the idea of restoring the film to John Calley, then head of United Artists, and began work in 1997, after the ownership issue had been resolved.

“The original negative was badly damaged,” Markoe explains. “It had a lot of scratches and was dirty.” So he and his staff had to digitally restore every frame of the first two reels.

An inter-positive element was found of the last three reels that was almost in pristine condition. Still, Markoe says, the color was a little faded. They worked with DeLuxe Laboratories to bring it back.

Now “Yellow Submarine” looks more vibrant than it did in its initial release.

“We had the premiere in Liverpool two weeks ago, and all the original animators and people who worked on the film were there, and they all told me that it looked better than it ever did,” Markoe says.

After working on the print, Markoe set out to remix the Beatles’ music. “I wanted to remix all the songs in six-track digital sound, which is how people hear it in movie theaters and DVD,” he says.

He first called Abbey Road recording studios in London, where officials laughed at him. “They were shocked,” he says. “They said, ‘You can’t remix the Beatles songs. Nobody does that.’ ”

So Markoe went to the head of Apple and pitched him the idea. “If we used the stereo album mixes as they existed and spread them to a six-track sound, I thought they would really compromise the way the Beatles sound to today’s audiences, who are used to hearing true six-track stereo sound.”

Markoe was able to get the green light from Apple and flew to London and went back to the original session masters at Abbey Road, where it took five weeks to remix the songs.

The sound effects and dialogue work were done at POP Studios in Santa Monica. “Ted Hall did all the sound effects work,” Markoe says. “All he had to work with was one mono sound effects track. What he did was digitally separate each of the sound effects in the movie. I wanted him to be really aggressive because visually the movie is really wild.”

Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Markoe says, loved the result. “They were blown away by it. The key was we had to remain true to the integrity of the original song but at the same time make it sound better. We pulled it off.”