In 2007, I created a special version of my Nine Inch Nails: Only music video, specifically for the DivX Film Festival. Using a tool called DivX Author, I was able to create a version of the film that had a menu system similar to what you’d find on a DVD. This video is the “background” that plays underneath the main menu of that special edition.

When I designed these menus, I wanted to make use of some of the more memorable shots from the film, but also wanted to try to emulate a style that I thought would fit what I’ve seen of the way NIN produces their videos and DVDs. As such, you’ll see themes of stillness, distortion, subliminal moments you really have to listen for, and so on. This particular menu background is my favorite of the three I made. There’s something about it that turned out particularly eerie. I’m not sure if that’s because of the soundscape I created, the appearance of a ghost-like figure about halfway through, Trent’s intense whisper at about the 75% mark (and the odd distortion that follows it), or what. Something about the relative stillness seems to amplify those tiny moments of movement and sound. Similar “easter egg” moments were put into the other two menus as well.

Oh, by the way, the film ended up winning Second Prize as well as Best of Genre (Music) in the festival, up against films made with other animation techniques and even live action. That fest as a whole was a very nice showing for machinima.

If you’d like to get your hands on the Special Edition and see the whole package, you can get the file here:
http://z-studios.com/dl.php?of=16

You must play this with the free DivX Player in order to get the menu system working properly:
http://www.divx.com/divx/

EDIT- Also, you can watch all three of the menu backgrounds here at Vimeo:

1. Menu 1
2. Menu 2
3. Menu 3

A blast from the past, this opening clip is the only portion of my first film - made precisely 10 years ago - that I’m even a little bit pleased with.

The game is Quake 2. Video was captured to VHS camcorder in 1998 from a Canopus Pure3d video card. 3d titles with a program made by Ulead called “Cool3d” - I don’t know if it’s even still around. Music is a mix of Downward Spiral era Nine Inch Nails. Camerawork is all live, all manual - it was all I knew how to do back then.

The entire movie, called “The Fragparty Movie” and running around 30 minutes, was just a bunch of first-person deathmatch demo clips edited together with various hard rocking songs underneath. The demos were recorded at an over-the-net party a group of friends and I used to have pretty regularly in 98-99; the party consisted of meeting on a Quake 2 server, and blasting each other to bits. Many times we’d be on Roger Wilco or Battlefield Communicator - the VoIP vehicles of the time. And around once a year, there was a “GeekFest”, where someone would invite everyone else to town and have a local LAN party. I went to one in 1999, it was my first trip to Toronto, and while it was frigid it was also a great time.

The “OGF”, as this group of friends came to be known, were some of the original members of Planetquake’s Quake 2 mailing list; we migrated to our own private list when several dozen of us longed for a better moderated environment. A good many of us are still on that mailing list today, and every once and awhile a game will come along and someone will say, “Let’s get together!” and the Online Gaming Friends reunite once again.

The Fragparty Movie was something I created as a tribute to this great group of gaming friends. I got special permission from id Software to distribute 100 copies of the movie on CD, which I did to everyone in OGF who wanted one. I even gave away one copy for free, I ran a little “easter egg hunt” when I released Father Frags Best in January of 1999: be the first to name all the famous people depicted in the pictures on the wall of that movie, and I’d send you a free copy of The Fragparty Movie on CD. Someone emailed me the correct answers (there were 10-12 if I remember right) in less than 24 hours. Ha!

More Final Fantasy + Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails goodness, a continued look at some of the “happy accidents” of timing between unrelated music and film clips.

See Also: Final Fantasy Meets Nine Inch Nails

And also released today: the overcast #033

Enjoy!

I did not direct this animation (obviously). These are CGI cut scenes from Final Fantasy VIII, set to a soundtrack of Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails. It was part of an experiment I did back in 2001 while studying film scoring techniques.

The whole thing runs about 45 minutes; weighing in at 2GB (DivX), it’s not download or video-share friendly. But this is a six minutes or so clip of my favorite section of the experiment.

Throughout the larger piece, there were some really amazing (and accidental) moments of musical serendipity as far as timing goes, a la Dark Side of the Rainbow. Those “lucky” alignments are strikingly common, even when throwing together random pieces of music and video. What I ended up taking away from the experiment was a reminder to sometimes not be so structured and deliberate in my approach to score, to leave room for these wonderful moments of accidental timing.

With the buzz about Ghosts I-IV still going strong, Trent Reznor has dropped another bomb. Nine Inch Nails have just released another album - this one a full length with vocals titled The Slip - under Creative Commons license.

What’s different this time is that the entire album is available for free, even the ultra quality versions. There will be a physical release around July, we’re told, but unlike Ghosts you don’t have to buy something to get the CD-quality audio. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t something special in store for those who buy the physical media, much as they did for Ghosts.

The CC license - and its implications - are spelled out much more directly this time:

the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

©2008 NIN

One thing he didn’t list, which is allowable under the license, is: use it as your soundtrack for your (noncommercial) film. How often has an established major artist made that offer to the public? And not just for a song or two, but for close to three hours of music in the past two months!!!

About a week or two ago, they’d released the first single, Discipline, directly to radio stations just hours after it had been mastered. That’s a turnaround time which has proven to be totally impossible under the old music model.

I should also mention that just prior to the release of Ghosts, they launched their own remix site dedicated explicitly to user remixes of their songs. (Since With Teeth in 2005, Nine Inch Nails have been releasing the multi-track files for their songs and encouraging listeners to remix them, a phenomenon which precipitated the creation of my Only remix and music video.) And shortly after Ghosts, they launched a YouTube festival of sorts, encouraging people to create videos for their music from that double album.

Oh, and don’t forget the whole ARG phenomenon surrounding the album Year Zero.

The whole thing is almost unbelievable. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a massive surge of productivity by a single musical artist in my lifetime, certainly not one where that artist is so hands-on with the details, nor one which is so cross-media in nature. And, for a fan like me, it’s all good good good.

Get The Slip for free at: http://theslip.nin.com/

It all started with some minimalist blogs from the front man. The first, titled “?”, said only: “We have been very busy doing secret things. We’ll start to tell you about them soon.” Then “2 weeks“… “soon“… “tick tock, tick tock“… “2 hours.” Fans agonized and theorized… what was coming? Another ARG experience? Another collaboration? Another announcement?

What came was Ghosts volumes I through IV… a double-disc collection of Nine Inch Nails instrumental tracks of a variety of textures and tones. No advertising. No MTV hype. No record label. Direct to the public. And released under a Creative Commons license.

Whoa.

You can get 9 of the tracks for free, and then there are various tiers of commercial product you can purchase, each upping the merchandising factor from its predecessor. All the purchases include an immediate download of a high quality digital version of all of the songs.

It took me two hours to complete my purchase last night; their servers were getting annihilated by the traffic, which far exceeded even Trent’s high expectations.

When Radiohead did their In Rainbows release, T.R. had commented that it was a great concept, but could be executed so much better. Now we know what he had in mind.

It’s utterly brilliant. And the music is a delight, the more ethereal bits reminiscent of the Quake soundtrack from so many years ago, but with more sonic depth. Definite headphones / eyes closed material.

Congratulations, Nine Inch Nails. I hope this venture is as big a success as it is appearing to be.