Re: Beatles Invade New Zealand! — feature screenplay proposal

Dear Apple Corps, Wētā and WingNut

I am writing to submit a feature screenplay proposal titled Beatles Invade New Zealand!, a scripted film set during The Beatles’ 1964 visit to New Zealand. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xPwZRQ1zlPzXSCScTyTClvF2HXJLU4GG/view?usp=sharing

This project has been written not as a conventional “biopic”, but as a reconstruction film: cinema that restores an historical event with a method closer to archival practice than dramatic invention. It is designed to feel as though it could exist inside the same continuum of restoration, rediscovery and documentary craft already associated with Beatles cultural stewardship.

1) The story: Beatlemania as a 1960s containment event

What makes the 1964 New Zealand tour uniquely cinematic is that it reveals Beatlemania as something larger than fandom. The script treats Beatlemania as it would have been understood in 1964—not through modern irony, but through the terms of the day:

• as “teenage hysteria” (a phrase used so frequently it became a cultural diagnosis),
  

• as a moral panic about the loosening of youth discipline,
  

• as a public order challenge requiring police cordons and emergency planning,
  

• as a sudden and disorienting proof that mass media had created a new kind of collective behaviour: a crowd reacting not to the real person in front of them, but to the idea of the person transmitted by radio, television and print.
  

In other words, Beatlemania in this treatment is not merely noise; it is a social event that makes the establishment nervous because it cannot be controlled by the old tools: authority, decorum, distance, deference.

The film begins by establishing that the Beatles’ audiences behave differently depending on where they are—then lands in New Zealand where the phenomenon becomes, effectively, a controlled emergency.

The Beatles are ushered into Wellington and confined to the St George Hotel, unable to walk freely, unable to sightsee, trapped between screaming crowds, police logistics, and boredom.

The story is therefore both:

• a tour film with performances, and

• a social satire of the early 1960s nervous system: a nation meeting modern pop culture as if it were a contagious event.
  

2) 1960s commentary, without modern sneer

The narrative is laced with the language and assumptions of the era:

• officials and broadcasters trying to speak calmly about something they privately regard as irrational,
  

• older generations framing the crowds as proof of social decline,
  

• the implicit anxiety that teenagers are no longer disciplined by church, state, or parent—only by mass culture.
  

Importantly, this is done without turning 1964 New Zealanders into cartoons.

The film treats the era’s rhetoric as sincere: Beatlemania genuinely felt like an alarming new force, especially in a small country where the crowd-to-infrastructure ratio creates immediate risk.

This framing naturally strengthens the film’s themes already embedded in the script: surveillance, public order optics, and confinement.

3) Why this avoids the impersonation problem: composite performance, not actor portrayal

The central creative and technical objective is credibility.

The audience does not require perfect imitation; it requires the absence of failure cues.

Conventional actor-led Beatles films fail because:

• the gait is wrong,

• the hands are wrong,

• the posture is wrong,

• the timing is wrong,

• the “feel” of the band moving together is wrong.
  

This proposal therefore centres a composite performance methodology.

Rather than casting four lead actors and demanding mimicry, the production can use multiple specialist performers per Beatle:

• musicians for instrument handling,

• gait and posture doubles for movement match,

• silhouette doubles for proportion match,

• facial-performance doubles selected for expression mapping compatibility,

• and speech-performance doubles where needed.
  

The final Beatles become layered reconstructions—built from the best physical fragments of real human performance, assembled with care.

This is not animation. It is reconstruction—an approach that aligns with Beatles cultural stewardship.

4) Voice methodology: ML mapping to restored Beatles audio

The most fragile part of “Beatles portrayal” is voice.

Actor impressions, especially accents, create immediate audience rejection and risk reducing the Beatles to parody.

This project proposes a different standard:

Use ML voice mapping to transfer captured dialogue performances onto reconstructed Beatles voice targets, using Park Road/Jackson audio restoration as the reference standard.

This allows performers to focus on:

• emotional intention,

• timing,

• breath,

• interaction,

• and physical truth—
  

…without attempting vocal impersonation.

It also protects the Beatles’ dignity and credibility by removing the single most common “uncanny” failure cue in Beatles dramatizations: wrong voice.

5) Location authenticity: the film must be shot in real places

Unlike fully synthetic approaches, this proposal requires real filming in real New Zealand locations.

New Zealand retains enough period-compatible architecture and streetscapes to recreate 1964 Wellington/Christchurch/Auckland with dressing and traffic control, not artificial fabrication.

This matters because the composite performance approach becomes most convincing when the reconstructed Beatles exist inside real light, real space, and real crowd physics.

6) Music authenticity: proof-of-concept reconstructions

The screenplay includes:

• songwriting-in-confinement,

• jam sequences,

• full gig scenes where the screams distort the music.
  

I have recorded a number of plausible demo reconstructions by overdubbing all the parts myself, to demonstrate that musical believability can be achieved without theatrical imitation. https://amandariddell.bandcamp.com/album/amanda-happens-to-the-beatles

7) Protecting goodwill: why this approach is worth doing

The Beatles’ catalogue is valuable not only in economic terms, but because it remains a rare cultural artefact protected by long-standing public trust.

A major scripted Beatles project that fails risks compressing that goodwill.

This proposal is designed to protect goodwill by:

• avoiding caricature,

• avoiding actor impressions,

• avoiding “biopic invention”,

• and grounding the project in historical texture and reconstruction discipline.
  

8) Next step

I am seeking:

1. confirmation that this concept is of interest, and

2. the opportunity to submit the screenplay and supplementary materials (including demos) for evaluation.
   

Thank you for your consideration.

Kind regards, Amanda Riddell Writer – Beatles Invade New Zealand! 9) Addendum: Labour Standards / The Hobbit Law

I am also obliged to place the following on record.

I have refused to sign any agreement (or to provide any rights, materials, or cooperation beyond standard script submission) unless Mr Jackson is prepared to actively support repeal of the so-called “Hobbit law” and the unionisation/collective bargaining rights of film workers.

The rationale is straightforward: a number of my peers—friends now in their late 30s and early 40s—have worked on Jackson-associated productions under precarious contracting arrangements that do not support long-term social or financial stability. The project’s public narrative should not be separated from the labour conditions under which screen culture is produced.

This point is not raised rhetorically. It is a firm ethical condition.

Appendix: Performance Reconstruction Workflow (Music → Virtual Performance Data)

In addition to conventional rehearsal and recording workflows, the project can leverage a performance-reconstruction pipeline based on techniques already proven in archival restoration and interactive music systems. Demo recordings can be separated into individual instrument components using modern source separation methods (similar in principle to the isolation approaches used in recent Beatles restoration work). From these separated parts, the musical performances—particularly guitar and bass—can be converted into structured performance data (notes, timing, duration and basic articulations). This data can then be mapped onto a full virtual fretboard model (string, fret, and chord-shape level), comparable to the internal “accurate” representations historically used in music-game authoring before simplification for controller play. The result is not merely a sound-alike reconstruction, but a system capable of driving both high-quality instrument synthesis and physically correct on-screen hand/fret behaviour — substantially reducing the common credibility failures seen in musician portrayals on film.