Showcase: Your World On Fire
Following the mysterious release of Lights in the Sky footage, and the granting of an open camera policy for Nine Inch Nails' 2009 tour, an increasing number of fans attended shows with recording equipment. The impetus to document these events was heightened by the growing belief that this tour (named "Wave Goodbye") could be the band's last. This in turn spurred a series of video and audio projects.
First out is NIN|JA KC - a DVD of the Kansas City show on May 27th 2009, of which the NIN portion, Your World on Fire is now available for download and stream
Read on for more about this project by its creators.
The Concept
These projects usually start with a simple idea, a desire to capture a precious or important moment. The spearhead of NIN|JA KC was Brent Whaling, known via the nin.com forum as Ascenscion. He explains:
After the nin forum opened up for the KC NIN|JA show we were all getting excited about what might be the last Nine Inch Nails show in Kansas City. When the open camera policy was announced it occurred to me that other people would also want to capture it. I don't have the skills or resources necessary to edit the footage and package it but I was sure that others in the community did. They just needed to get connected. So it all started with this post
Again, I have absolutely no skill or artistic ability so I wanted to leave all that up to people that did. After a few more posts DeeJayGamer (Justin) and Cheeseproceedure and I began talking outside of the forums and figured out the first of many details. I would organize the contributor's and solicit as much footage (video and audio), collect all the footage, and then distribute the footage to all editors who would work their magic. It was all very fluid and as a result the project has changed considerably in the year that it has existed.
I am very glad to have been a part of it and hope the community enjoys what Justin and Blake (the guys with the skills) have put together. They have both worked very hard.
Production
Discussing the editing process, Blake Gentry (known online as blambo) said:
The NIN KC project had been going on for quite some time before I jumped on board. Due to hardware and storage limitation they were looking for a new editor and at that same time I had just contacted thisoneisonus about doing color correction for the Vegas project. Shreena was aware of their need for a new editor and pointed me in their direction.
The footage was of course all different formats and mainly from one side of the stage. All of the audio had already been mastered but over the course of two weeks I converted all footage into the same format and started work in Final Cut Pro.
The project itself covers the May 27, 2009 show at Starlight Theatre in Kansas City. In the near future we'll also be releasing DVDs for the other bands who played that show: Street Sweeper Social Club and Jane's Addiction. Beyond that other team members are hard at work on extra material that encompasses the Nine Inch Nails universe beyond just the Kansas City show.
More than just a DVD
Co-producer Justin Hurkman (DJGamer – who edited Down In It for Another Version of the Truth: Bonus) further explained that this “extra material” would present itself in the form of an ARG, similar to that Nine Inch Nails used to promote/enhance the album Year Zero:
I'd originally planned on having the ARG tied to the AVOTT screening (with the access code hidden on flyers/buttons/whatever we end up handing out) but since the release is coming ahead of schedule I came up with the idea of the teaser trailer-it's still possible that the mini-ARG will be expanded into the screening event, however...I've always had a bit of an interest in developing video games, so the idea of generating a Year Zero-styled alternate reality game to tie-in with the release was very appealing to me. I had to strike a careful balance between making it challenging but not impossible to get through.
Justin used several elements to emulate the Year Zero style in the trailer, including:
Google Earth's "street view" feature (using FRAPs) [and] Poser 8. It's just a two-dimensional square with the arrows from the Wave Goodbye logo applied to it as a texture with a transparency map....The sound effects all come from The Free Sound Project (http://www.freesound.org)...The "glitchy" part of the video consists of thirty-three frames with eleven different glitch patterns [each] captured and imported into Photoshop. The glitch effects were taken from various Year Zero ARG pages and use a "difference" layer blending effect. The sound effects were cut in Adobe Soundbooth CS4 [and] the final video was edited in Adobe Premiere CS4
The NIN|JA KC ARG contains over 50MB of extra goodies, and although the first release is now public, the hunt continues.
