The dates that matter
The Beatles’ television film was shot between September and early November 1967 and shown on 26 December 1967. Exact day-by-day records of the shoot are patchy, and some accounts disagree about order, so the diary below gives firm dates only where they are widely agreed and otherwise speaks of weeks or stages. The overall shape is clear: a coach tour in the West Country, a long period of studio-style filming in Kent, a short separate shoot in France, and then weeks of editing in London.
Before the cameras
The project took shape in the days after Brian Epstein’s death on 27 August 1967. Paul McCartney had been carrying an idea for a mystery-tour film, and within a few weeks the group had a rough plan, a crew hired at short notice and a booked coach. The Beatles also continued recording during this period. The studio sessions for I Am the Walrus began in early September, so the group was effectively working on the film and the songs at once.
11 September: the coach sets out
The shoot began on Monday 11 September 1967, when the coach left central London carrying the four Beatles, the cast, a film crew and a mixed crowd of extras. Press photographers and fans gathered, and the departure had the air of a real holiday trip. Several accounts say the party was large and the coach awkward on narrow roads, which made even simple travel slow.
The first leg headed into Devon. Over the following days the group filmed on the road, picking up scenes where the mood or the scenery suited, rather than following a shot list. The sketch McCartney had drawn, a circle divided into segments, served as the only plan.
Devon and Cornwall
The tour moved through Devon and into Cornwall, with the party based around Newquay on the north Cornish coast for part of the stay. Scenes involving the coach, the passengers and the tour’s guides were filmed along the route, and the weather, which was mixed, affected what could be shot. The Beatles were joined by actors who played the passengers and staff, and their improvised dialogue is a large part of what appears on screen.
Records of precisely which scene was shot on which day are incomplete, so it is safest to say that the West Country stretch occupied roughly the second half of September. Local people turned out in some places, and a few ended up in the background of shots.
West Malling in Kent
Once the road shoot ended, production moved to West Malling, a former RAF airfield in Kent. A large hangar and open spaces were available there, and the crew used them to stage scenes that could not be filmed on location. The visits to the airfield stretched across several weeks in the autumn, with the group filming dream sequences and music numbers, among them the sequences for I Am the Walrus, Your Mother Should Know and the Bonzo Dog Band’s strip club routine.
This was the most orderly part of the shoot, as the production could control the lighting and the crowd. It also produced much of the colour and imagery that viewers remember, though the original Boxing Day broadcast turned all of it to black and white.
France
McCartney made a separate trip with a small crew to film The Fool on the Hill in the hills near Nice. That sequence was shot in the autumn, after the main work in Kent had begun, and it is a contrast to the crowded set pieces: a single figure on a hillside, filmed in open daylight. Exact dates for this trip vary between sources, so it is best treated as an autumn shoot.
The Soho edit
After shooting ended, the footage went to a cutting room in Soho in central London. The film had been shot on 16mm, and reports often say there was far more material than could be used, with commonly quoted estimates of many hours. The Beatles worked closely with editor Roy Benson, with McCartney especially involved, and the cut took weeks rather than days. The pace mattered, because the BBC had a Christmas slot and the group wanted the film ready alongside the December record release.
Broadcast and what followed
The finished film went out on BBC1 on 26 December 1967. By then the songs had already appeared: the American LP on 27 November and the British double EP on 8 December. The speed of the whole project, from a coach leaving London on 11 September to a national broadcast just over three months later, is itself notable. It left little room for the second thoughts that a more conventional production would have allowed, and that is visible in the film. For the quality of the improvised method and the reception afterward, other parts of the story go further than a diary can.