for your ears only

“Pro file: Nailing a New Look” pt 1

Q&A with Trent Reznor and Rob Sheridan about All That Could Have Been

By Mathew Honen for Macworld on February 1st, 2002

“Trent Reznor ushered in a new era of digital audio production with the 1989 release of Pretty Hate Machine, an album that helped launch an entirely new genre of music. Reznor's band, Nine Inch Nails, continued to break new sonic ground and push the limits of what can be done with music on a computer throughout the 1990s. And he's still breaking ground, with the December 2001 release of the Nine Inch Nails tour film And All That Could Have Been and its accompanying CD. Reznor and Nine Inch Nails Webmaster Rob Sheridan shot the entire film on mini-DV, edited the video in Final Cut Pro, mixed all of the audio in Digidesign Pro Tools, and assembled the DVD rough cut in DVD Studio Pro.”

And All That Could Have Been, Still and Live

Q: Why did you decide to shoot And All That Could Have Been on mini-DV?

Reznor: Cost-wise, it made sense. We bought a few XL1 cameras, and we could film every night of the tour from eight different positions. It seemed like it was something we could manage and make it what we wanted it to be. From our perspective, we weren't video editors. The cool thing about this process was finding out that, yeah, you can do this. The ease of use of the hardware and software made it possible to get the tedious crap out of the way and just get down to what we wanted to do.

Q: What did you use to edit the footage?

Sheridan: When the tour was over, the whole thing was edited in Final Cut from beginning to end. We had something like 200 mini-DV tapes. We lined up all that footage and all the different takes of one song in Final Cut. So we would have professionally recorded audio synced up to 30 different instances of a song--like five angles from Chicago, and three from San Diego. You can then flip between them and start cutting. It takes a long time to set up, but once you have, it's a great way to cut.

Q: The audio was assembled on a Mac too, correct?

Reznor: Normally when you film or record a tour, on our level, you get maybe two nights to record. Invariably those are the nights that aren't very good. We took some of the budget we were saving from having massive multicamera shoots, put some into the audio, and recorded four or five different nights to digital multitrack. Got back to the studio afterwards, picked the best version of the songs, loaded everything into Pro Tools on a Mac, and mixed in surround, then remixed everything again in stereo.

Q: What was the experience of using DVD Studio Pro like?

Reznor: It had literally just come out, and it was timely because we had figured out digital-video editing, and we wanted to [figure out] what we could do the medium of DVD. What are the limitations? We had a very rudimentary knowledge of what you can do. DVD Studio Pro, we used with the intention of mocking up something. We knew we were taking it to an authoring place, and we could beta test it at home. This was a way for us to get a feel for things in very easy-to-deal-with terms. It puts a lot of power in something that doesn't have a thick manual.

Genitorturers’ Gen Vincent for Blue Blood in 2004 ☠︎part 3☠︎

Genitorturers’ Gen Vincent for Blue Blood in 2004 [outtake]

Produced by Genitorturers

Mixed by Bill Kennedy

I’ll tell ‘em what I like, what I want, and what I don’t But every time I do, I stand corrected Things that I’ve been told I can’t believe what I hear about the world I realize I’m overprotected

There must be another way ‘Cause I believe in taking chances But who am I to say what a girl is to do? God, I need some answers