Beatlemania is about to strike again.
The Beatles' Apple Corps has authorized a production company, OVOW, to scour the globe for material captured by amateurs and professionals during the group’s concert tours in the 1960s for a major film project called “The Beatles Live!”, TheWrap has learned.
The effort will kick off on Thursday morning with a promotional video (see below).
OVOW — an acronym for One Voice One World, a reference to the Beatles’ final live performance in the “Our World” satellite broadcast on June 25, 1967 — says it has commissioned worldwide research teams and developed social-media tools to work with fans and concertgoers in all 116 cities where the Beatles performed to get material for the film.
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The goal: combining footage, images, music, interviews and stories chronicling the Fab Four’s 250 concerts from October 1963 through final concert in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on Aug. 28, 1966.
(Story continues below video.)
Aiding in the search will be archivists, collectors, Beatles fan clubs, writers, academics and film restoration-experts. A website, The Beatles Live! Project, has been set up where fans can get news about the project, map the group’s tours and provide digital media, through the end of the year.
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“We are interested in looking at your digitized copies of The Beatles concert-era materials, including photos, stories, and film and sound recordings,” the website says. “We know that there are hidden gems out there. We are looking forward to working with you to find them.”
Media can be directly uploaded on the site.
“Were you there?” the company asks in its press release. “Were your parents there? Your grandparents? Now, fans from all over the world can become a true part of Beatles history by contributing their original footage, photos or audio recordings of The Beatles in concert.”
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OVOW Productions is a production company organized by archive, music and production executives, the release says. “With offices in Canada, the USA and the U.K., the company deploys emerging information and crowdsourcing technologies to collaborate with global archives and the public.”