BH: NiN & relationship to the Industrial Genre

Nine Inch Nails have never explicitly stated that they are members of the industrial genre.
For example Pretty Hate Machine (1989) was much more of a synth pop album with elements of Industrial mixed in- although he admits to 'Down in it" being heavily inspired by Skinny Puppy- Dig It. Skinny Puppy being a Canadian Industrial group noted for their abstract and shocking music. Pretty Hate Machine being closer to Cabaret Voltaire's style of Industrial, much more computer generated beats and loops, using samples but not straying too much into Rock.
The Industrial influences of Ministry come across far more in the next release 'Broken', which was an overall much heavier album which clearly draws on from ministry's heavier vision of the industrial genre, with songs such as 'Happiness In Slavery' and 'Wish'. The next Release, 1994's, The Downward Spiral draws into the industrial genre heavily, the computer generated music fused with the instruments it's far more of a 'typical' Industrial record dealing with the traditional Industrial themes of the break down of society and what that'd cause0 a theme strong throughout every song on the album. This is where many say that Nine Inch Nails really came into the genre and it inspired much of the Industrial music available now.
The Fragile was in many ways much more of an album that's in many ways quieter than prior releases, also much longer and in almost a contrast with the Downward spiral, its a much more personal based album.
With_teeth is a much more mainstream Rock album, its very punchy in line with a more modern approach to industrial music and the industrial design. It's interesting to note that around this time Skinny Puppy launched back into action.  
Year Zero is where the real politics of NiN comes out, highly critical of the Bush administration of America (as many musicians where). It details a near future society where the American government was too powerful and merged with the church- it accompanied a ARG (alternate reality game).

BH- Location, Location

To put it simply Bradford is the perfect location for the music video- not only as a former industrial town itself (not in that sense!) but as a town with a clash of different and opposing idea's- the old Victorian style which clashes with the more modern aspects of the town in a whole host of different locations. Then there's the Bolton Wood quarry, where the final 'section' of the music video takes place. And various sections are filmed very close to it.

So here is a shot of the quarry from an angle similar to our closing shots of the main narrative, obviously very high up with a near panoramic view of Bradford, ideal for a closing location, with this it's a case of how we fit everything we want into the frame rather than what we don't want in the frame.

 The location once again from a different angle, as you can see it lends itself to the look desolation and isolation, it looks quite far from locations nearby and generally a wide open space, now for obvious health and safety issues we can't film IN the quarry- which makes the ending problematic somewhat, as the final shots of the main narrative is a shot of the protagonist lying on the floor on the quarry, but luckily we can substitute here as the shot will be a close up/ extreme close up it makes it extremely easy to find an ideal location. 

BH: Updates!

So with the snow thwarting yet another film shoot, this has meant that we now have to film all the footage we need on Sunday 12th February 2012.  This means that we have a need to move fast to edit the footage, which means that we hope to have a new rough cut before 18th Feb so that we can do any urgent re-shoots in the following few days.
We're making strides with the mag ad however which gives  us more time to spend on the digipak- which also hangs on using images from the performance aspect of the video.

BH- Casting continued

So the feedback we recived for our sample footage clearly indicated that there was an issue with using a young looking protagonist- it didn't fit in with the genre was one of the main issues raised. Obviously we're trying to cater to two different audiences with our video.

A) Re-brand the NiN band to better fit with a modern audience (youth 15-24)

B) Appealing to the older NiN audience- the established fan-base

who have been listening to NiN since the late 80's.

So to do this we thought that our casting had to be reviewed carefully- how we could get our casting to better reflect the video theme.

Checking through we've decided to cast my Uncle in the role....

He's older and thus would appear better in the video- but not so old as to alienate the younger audiences.

He suits the role too with Black hair and stubble- thus making him near perfect for the video.

BH: Updates

So with the snow thwarting yet another film shoot, this has meant that we now have to film all the footage we need on Sunday 12th February 2012. This means that we have a need to move fast to edit the footage, which means that we hope to have a new rough cut before 18th Feb so that we can do any urgent re-shoots in the following few days.

We're making strides with the mag ad however which gives us more time to spend on the digipak- which also hangs on using images from the performance aspect of the video.

KM:Feedback from Mag AD 2nd Draft

Here are some of the main feedback points I received from the 2nd draft of the Magazine Advert:

• The social network  (Facebook and twitter) icons need to be downsized
• Add itunes info
• Make all the images better blended together ( no block images) 
• Add tour dates
• Kerrang and Q logos
• Change some of the text sizes
• Include "Best of Nine Inch Nails"

HK: Things I Plan to Include in our Digipak

• NIN Logo on the front cover
• Add 'The Best of' 
• Correlation between back and front images
• Create a booklet for the inner
• Scannable Bar Code 
• Edited photos for the inner panels
• Copyright Information
• Logo's 
• Track List

HK BH: Feedback - MagAd and Sample Footage 2

Mag Ad:

• The Mag Ad feedback received was that it was overall very good. However elements such as the font used seemed unusual and not as varied as it could be.
• Replace the URL's with just icons- they're generally familiar with everyone.
• Good enigma / lack of exposition- it looks obscure and in keeping with the Nine Inch Nails 'tone'.
• The beware CCTV looks good and fits.
• Framing of the candle seems to be good- fits with theme of the genre
• Some of the blending between images (the solid lines between them)

Sample Footage(two):

So now we've got a second rough cut done,  with some of our new footage including our new character and locations we wanted to gain some feedback on this so we showed it to everyone in class and also posted the clip on an official Nine Inch Nails forum. We were lucky enough to get feedback from a forum administrator who fit into our secondary audience a 25 - 34 year old existing Nine Inch Nails fan. This was great to get feedback by someone who really new the genre and especially Nine Inch Nails.

• The special effects worked
• pace was good
• good variation of shots
• Some shots are on screen too long & are too jarring/ don't mesh well with the editing style.
• Maybe even more enigma!
• More could be done with the fire extinguisher (loop to beat?)
• Shots of just the protagonists eyes would still maintain the enigma, or extreme close-ups.
• Frames slipping would add to the damaged video effect. 

BH: Editing Process Sample 2

example of editing

The editing process on the video is one that's been through one, the sample footage measuring approx. 34 seconds. 

The editing was more  fast paced than before which meant that we had to cut 10 mins of solid footage into around 34 seconds. The pace was very fast which meant that we had some issues with the amount of footage recorded but obviously with more footage we can afford to do some longer takes. The screen of final cut (left) is a neat example of how we created the video footage effect, combined with total desaturation. Also notice the frame around the footage which we dragged out to tighten the framing on some shots where the framing would detract form the image. Overall to get the 34 seconds- the editing must have taken around 7 hours overall to generate the desired effect. Of course to create the sample footage we exaggerated the special effects somewhat so that the more FX side of the video is on display, in the final video we expect the effects to come in somewhat more gradually rather 

KM: Magazine Advert Draft 2

Here is our 2nd magazine advert draft: (click here for full size image)

I made a couple of changes after receiving  feedback from the rest of the media group; I first swapped the full URLs of the social networking sites with icons, as this looks better and most people are familiar with these icons. I 'onion skinned' the icons on Adobe flash, and changed the colours before adding them to the ad.  I then used the 'layer mask' and 'gradient tool' on Photoshop to try to better blend the pictures together, in particular the "Beware of the CCTV" image, as we received feedback that the edges of this image were too defined. A problem I came across when doing this was the fact that when trying to blend the middle of the image to the background, the CCTV sign became harder to make out, so I focused on the sides of the image, so that you can still read the sign, but the edges aren't as noticeable. I also tried changing the fonts, but after trying various different ideas, I changed them back to my original fonts of; 'charlemagne standard' for the writing at the top of the ad, and 'myriad pro' for the social networking 

KM - Magazine Advert Draft

Here is our first draft of the magazine advert, after discussing it through as a group, I will then make any changes that we feel are needed. (Click the image for full size)

KM - Creating The Magazine Advert (Background)

The first thing I did when starting on the magazine advert was to get a good background of blended images to put the information about the digipak etc. over the top of. For the images I used screenshots from our original sample footage, here are links to the 5 images I used:


Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5

The first 2 images before blending

I used the image of the Graffiti cat and the image of the CCTV sign as the base for the background after first changing the background colour to black.


After inserting the first 2 images into Photo shop I added a 'layer mask' to the image of the cat and then used the gradient tool to blend the 2 images together (after overlapping the images where I wanted them on the advert). I also used the gradient tool to blacken the edges of the advert, so that the writing that I was planning to put at the bottom (URLs) would stand out sufficiently.


After I had the first 2 images looking how I wanted I then added the next two (the puddle and the corridor) in parallel above them and again used the layer mask and gradient tool to blend them on top of the other images. I then did the same with the candle image, placing it in between but slightly above the top two images of the puddle and the corridor. 

Finished background

Blending the first 2 images

HK: Digipak Inner Draft 1

I have started work on creating the inner panels for the Digipak.
The software I used was Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0

• I found a photo of a keyboard online and inserted this image into Photoshop
• Then I did the same with an image of CCTV Camera's
• I then experiemented with blending modes and opacity to create a layered photo effect which looked like this ( below ) 

•  After this i found an image of trent reznor the lead man of NIN and used Pin Light blending mode to create a nice layered effect.

Viral Advert