Video Element

The genesis of the video element of the live show goes back to the beginning of COG. The found-footage based visuals were designed to fill up the stage with action while I played solo. I have always followed some guidelines for the visuals that made them more interesting, I believe, than other efforts I have seen. First, I made a effort to never show immediately recognizable faces in videos. If I do show actors they are obscure actors. I believe this would distract from the vibe. I show next to no nudity (only incidental) in the videos and absolutely no sex acts. I find pornography in band visuals to be overdone and in bad taste. I also avoid horror films like the plague. That is because this is WAY over done and is now for all practical purposes a cliché. Instead I liked to pick out images of things that are more provincial like a tree waving in the breeze, an avalanche smashing through a window, or candle flickering. By layering images with the opacity reduced it creates a cool vibe.

Originally I downloaded movies, documentaries, news shows, and other materials in a DIVX format. I then converted these movies into a MPEG2 format and used Sony Vegas to edit them. How I did this was by painstakingly searching through the footage for short clips of 3 to 10 seconds in length. I would then export those clips into a folder and name the clip with a description of what was in the footage: i.e. Shopper on escalator, or eyes. I would then assemble the clips while the song was in the timeline and just stream of consciousness the results. There could be as many as 300 clips in a 5 minute video.

After I went 100% Macintosh I began using Adobe Premiere. There was a learning curve since by this time I was very good with Vegas. Since then I have been able to eliminate the exporting of individual clips and just draw my segments out of the main footage. I never use any 3rd party plugins other than the stock color adjustments, blur, opacity, speed, and size adjustment. I love Premier, and although I only own the slower CS4 version, it is a great program. When inspired I can complete a video in a weekend. Actually, now that I have done a few videos in Premiere I find it actually faster than Vegas.

My favorite source material for the videos is BBC documentaries, especially the science-based videos. These always have killer images. I also love 1960/70/80 stock film, Masonic stuff (although this has got me in trouble before), surrealistic silent films, and generally anything strange.

If there is any criticism that I can lay upon my work in this arena it is that they are often too busy. The images evolve so quickly that it can distract from the music. However, the videos never get old because you can always find something new in them. It’s a tossup. The videos are unique and I have never seen anyone do it quite like we do. I enjoy creating them, even though it is laborious and time consuming work.

The work continues....

Work continues on the new live set. Jet and I spent Saturday afternoon soldering the last of the MIDI connectors that are mounted to the outside of the rack. This will allow easy access to from the rack to the synths on stage. The next step is the fun part. We are rebuilding the current 20+ songs using real hardware synthesizers and drum modules. As it stands, only the lead synth part in “Among the Separate” cannot be reproduced with hardware. It will be the only software produced sound in the set. The current synth setup looks like this:

Jet’s synths:
1) Novation Supernova II - 48 voice.
2) Roland Juno 106 - vintage analog circa 1984
3) EMU Proteus 2000 rack module – Composer & XL-7 ROMs
4) Roland JV880 rack module – Vintage ROM
5) Roland R8m drum module – Power Drums ROM

Jet is bouncing around ideas for his third playing board on stage. We could be using his Korg X3, even though the board sounds pretty vanilla. We may add an Oberheim Matrix 1000 rack module eventually, but this setup is very powerful as it stands. Using the MOTU 8 channel MIDI interface we will be able to control any of the rack mounted synths from Jet’s keyboards. This will also allow patch changes and automation of any of our MIDI capable gear (including vocal processing).

On Saturday we tested the new Juno 106 through our PA and were transfixed at the sound. The bass is truly inspiring. The lights dimmed as the speakers struggled to get enough juice to reproduce the raw sound of 100% analog bass.