Twickenham Film Studios, St. Margaret's, Twickenham
Increasingly reluctant to do the rounds of television shows every time they issued a new single, the Beatles decided to self-produce and video-tape their own promotional clips and distribute them to TV stations, thereby heralding the dawn of pop's promo-video age.
With the same old demands to perform arriving every few months from British and foreign television companies, it's perhaps odd that they hadn't thought of this before, and it took the Granada taping of The Music of Lennon & McCartney to awaken the Beatles to the possibilities. Now they could be seen not only on Top Of The Pops and Thank Your Lucky Stars with the minimum of fuss and effort, but also appear on TV shows in America, in Australia, in Japan, in fact anywhere, and make a tidy profit too.
This shooting was financed by NEMS Enterprises, appointing Joe McGrath as director and InterTel (VTR Services), reputedly the first independent video facilities company in Europe, to provide the production crew. Nicholas Ferguson, from Ready, Steady, Go! designed the sets, there were four cameramen - Harry Storey, Terry Heath and two others (who, because they were moonlighting from the BBC, wish to remain nameless), there was a lighting man, a sound-man and a 'runner' (David Mallet, later a prominent director). Also, on the set, representing NEMS, were Tony Bramwell and Vyvienne Moynihan (the latter formerly employed at Associated-Rediffusion).
A Hard Day's Night and Help! had been filmed all over the Twickenham complex, on each of the three stages, but these promos were taped only on Stage Three, set-construction having been completed in the two previous days. The Beatles arrived during the late afternoon and worked through until the early hours of the 24th - and, as productive here as they were in the recording studio, ten clips were shot in this time, nine of which have been seen on TV.
Source: The Complete Beatles Chronicle - Mark Lewisohn
