'The Sgt Pepper Album Cover Shoot Dissected'

30th March 1967

In July 2007 I decided it would be a good idea to gather all the known Sgt Pepper cover out-takes. I like to play around with animation and editing and I thought it would be cool to try and get the images in the right order and scale and then fade from one to the next in a short 'slideshow'. I thought that as the background was the same in all of them it should be fairly straightforward to assemble something that looked reasonably seamless.

Some initial experiments proved quite fruitful and I 'got into it'. Recreating the empty set ended up taking me months on and off, copying tiny details from one source, colour-balancing and scaling them and dropping them into my montage. Hours of painstaking experimenting into the small hours would sometimes yield just the smallest amount of progress.

The alternate bass drum skin (which was on the 'back' of the same drum) was only professionally photographed once, in the very first shot of the day. The drum was then rotated to display the more famous head and the second shot, with The Beatles in a very similar pose, was the one used on the finished cover. Once these initial two planned, posed shots were done then the rest of the shots were taken, seemingly with improvised poses in the main, and with a couple of changes to the props on the set which helped greatly in establishing the probable chronology of the photos, which is detailed below.

The most noticable change after shots #1 and #2 is the position of the doll sat on the chair wearing a 'Rolling Stones' sweater (this doll is often referred to as the 'Shirley Temple Doll', but it isn't - the image of Shirley Temple is peeping out from the left of 'Diana Dors'). After the two main shots were done the camera was moved in closer and this prop was moved from a 'far right' position' to in front of the DD waxwork, presumably to keep it in shot.

At the same time, the hookah pipe was draped over the waxwork of Ringo, and John places the horn he is holding on the top of the bass drum. It's on the right in Shot #3 and then moves to the left for shots #4 to #7. Paul is still holding the cor anglais from the first two shots. George and Ringo have removed their hats. In shots #3 to #5 the euphonium on the floor in front of the waxwork 'Ringo' is upright then in shots #6 and #7 it has been tilted to it's right, perhaps to prevent it from being stepped on and damaged. There is a shot of George stooping to his right and apparently pointing at the instrument. He is possibly about to move it (shot #5). All the subsequest shots have the euphonium tilted to it's right.

In shot #10 they have a little change around. Maybe George and John were getting bored of crouching. Paul hands the trombone to John (who leans on it for shot #11), as Ringo heads around the back of the bass drum.

More props are required so Paul gets up to bring them on to the set (shot #13). It's all smiles again (shot #14) as George is handed a tuba, Ringo the horn only from a sousophone, and Paul equips himself with a tuba like George's.
Shot #15 is very similar to shot #14, the main difference being that Paul has been handed the 'sci-fi' trophy that was in the flowerbed, in front of letter 'L'. Shot #16 is in turn very similar to shot #15, Ringo having now lifted the sousaphone horn to chest height.