the vast sound of tuning out

Trent Reznor never ceases to amaze me.

First this:

File this one under lost opportunities.

I’m very proud of the show we’ve put together for this tour and have been working hard the last few months to find a way to capture it. I had an amazing situation lined up that would have allowed me to film the show in 3D with James Cameron’s team for a theatrical release as well as DVD / BluRay, etc. We had an extra date added to the tour that we were going to give away all the tickets for and have a filming party / thank you show.

I made two critical mistakes. One was to approach a certain record company that owns some of the song rights about producing / funding. The second was to allow said company to fuck around as usual for months before saying um… no. We then achieved the impossible by finding alternate production / funding but the timetable is too rushed to get it filmed comfortably with the remaining time left on the tour. This tour and a lot of the personnel involved finish at the end of this leg, so we can’t push filming into Jan / Feb.

Deep breath…
This was an amazing tour and production – certainly the best thing I’ve ever been involved with and likely the final tour for NIN on this scale.

Then follow me here…

1. Convenient lax video taping rules for fans at remaining tour shows
2. Fans decide to make their own DVD keepsake of show
3. Trent announces mysterious Christmas present.

Then this:

Your gift…

The internet is full of surprises these days.
I was contacted by a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives who SOMEHOW managed to film a substantial amount (over 400 GB!) of raw, unedited HD footage from three separate complete shows of our Lights in the Sky tour. Security must have been lacking at these shows because the quality of the footage is excellent.

If any of you could find a LINK to that footage I’ll bet some enterprising fans could assemble something pretty cool.

Oh yeah, you didn’t hear this from me.

So to summarise:

1. Official DVD is shelved.
2. Fans attempt to make their own with recorded footage.
3. NIN give away all their specially filmed footage (and soundboard audio mind you) to the public. Obviously picked up by the guys putting together the fan DVD.

Call me crazy, but this doesn’t happen very often. Glad I’m getting to see them in March in whatever format that ends up being.