The following is an interview with Paul H. Landers, guitarist for German metal/industrial band Rammstein. The group recently released their 6th album, “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da,” with the track “Pussy” as the lead off single/video. Though it doesn’t break much new ground musically, “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da” is from start to finish a very strong album. It does have a few interesting/suprising touches, like the synth pop edge to “Haifisch” and the humorous English-languge lyrics of “Pussy.” An initial limited edition version of “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da” adds 5 additional tracks.
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New interview with Rammstein posted
November 29, 2009 by adminCategory: Site newsComments Off
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Delerium “Dust In Gravity” – NOT a return to the old-school sound
by admin
While a posting on the official Delerium website said the upcoming album will be a return to the old-school Delerium sound (“think ‘Stone Tower’ with vocals”), the new single, “Dust In Gravity, ” is far from that. Featuring Kreesha Turner on vocals,the song is VERY commercial sounding, very much in the vein of recent efforts by Delerium and member Rhys Fulber’s “Conjune One” side project. For those unfamiliar with the band, Delerium was initially one of many side projects from Front Line Assembly members Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber. Early efforts, released on Dossier, were very dark, atmospheric soundtrack-style recordings. 1990′s “Syrophenikan” is my personal favorite from that era. Moving to Nettwerk in 1994, the Delerium project gradually shifted to a more vocal-driven, commercial sound. Guest vocalists have included Leigh Nash (Sixpence None the Richer), Julee Cruise, Matthew Sweet and Sarah McLachlan. It’s a far cry from the heavy industrial/electronic sound of Front Line Assembly, and long time fans will find little resemblance between current Delerium music and the early work of Leeb and Fulber. Still, “Dust In Gravity” is slick and catchy, and should not disappoint fans of recent Delerium/Conjune One fans. It will be interesting to see if any of the upcoming album IS reminiscent of Stone Tower (which was one of the darker ambient releases) and if so, how it might meld elements of old and new Delerium.The “Dust In Gravity” single is available through online music stores such as itunes and emusic. If you’re not currently a member of emusic, you get a free 25 download trial and help support Chaos Control in the process! (downloads are yours to keep even if you cancel). To preview the song, check out the audio player below.
Category: Music ReviewsComments Off
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Rammstein
November 7, 2009 by adminThe following is an interview with Paul H. Landers, guitarist for German metal/industrial band Rammstein. The group recently released their 6th album, “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da,” with the track “Pussy” as the lead off single/video. Though it doesn’t break much new ground musically, “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da” is from start to finish a very strong album. It does have a few interesting/suprising touches, like the synth pop edge to “Haifisch” and the humorous English-languge lyrics of “Pussy.” An initial limited edition version of “Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da” adds 5 additional tracks.
Though most Rammstein lyrics are in German, occasionally other languages are used. What determines what languages will be used in a song?
Paul: “Till travels, and all the band members travel a lot so every now and then they will pick up a phrase or certain ideas in a different language and those will find themselves into songs.”
When you’re performing outside of Germany, does the fact that not everyone in the audience understands the lyrics have any impact on you?
Paul: “The audience interaction thing has never really been one of the core strengths and we’re not the type of band who says ‘Hello Moscow, how are you?’ or whatever. Instead, our way of communicating has been to light some fires, set off some rockets, and in a way that has the same effect. So that is our preferred modus operandi.”
Was ‘Pussy’ the obvious choice for the first single off of Liebe Ist Fuer Alle Da?
Paul: “Choosing which song to use as the lead-off single is always difficult and often musicians don’t have enough distance at that point to make an objective choice. So in this case, we asked the record label for their opinion, knowing that they know at least the German market and the way things worked there. That’s where the idea came from, and the band thought ‘Ok, this is sort of a funny way to start off the record.’”
Where did the bonus tracks included on the limited edition come from?
Paul: “We had a lot of songs to choose from, and basically the ones that didn’t make it, we thought it would be a shame just to let these out as b-sides. So we thought it would be a cool idea to have a whole set of bonus tracks. A lot of these sounds you could say are classic Rammstein but don’t necessarily bring anything new to the table. They are in the classic, older style of Rammstein.”
Would you say that you’re influenced much by audience reaction, and what people are saying about Rammstein?
Paul: “We have tried to think in advance of what will people like, or what would be a good idea. But that’s never worked. We’ve found our best success with crazy and insane ideas, or at least ideas that may seem outlandish at first impression. Those have turned out to be the best ideas. We just trust our own taste, that is the best way. Not to worry about if something is a clever idea or a really stupid one. We don’t do it that way. It’s also the most comfortable and relaxed way of working, because there’s no attempt to be clever. You just be the way you are.”
You’ve managed to keep a consistent lineup over the years – what can you attribute this to?
Paul: “An analogy would be a big old Mercedes that keeps on running over the years. That’s the way we’ve treated the band. We’ve never tried to drive too fast, just keep everything smooth. No attempts to speed down the highway out of control. Check the oil. Take a break in the winter. Avoid accidents and care for things. That’s the way we see the band.”
Sometimes there will be certain forces from within the band saying ‘let’s do things faster, faster, stop taking it easy’. But on the other hand, there will be other forces in the band saying ‘no, come on, let’s just take a break here and go on vacation for a while’. So those two sort of work together.”
Your sound combines electronics with standard rock instrumentation; what is the motivation behind balancing the two?
Paul: “Well back when the band started, we were definitely fascinated by sequencers and electronic beats. Everyone really had a great time messing around with that sort of stuff. In the early days, we would often fire off the sequencers and then spend an hour just jamming with the sequencers. It used to be something that was really exciting, but after a while it became boring because it seemed like there were no real new ideas to discover with electronics. We gradually returned more to the natural band sound, each guy and his instrument. Now, you could say there’s a bit of a pendulum going back and forth between a natural band sound and electronics. We try to get the best out of both words.”
What can we expect from the upcoming tour?
Paul: “Well it depends I guess where you get to see the show. In Europe, where we get to play the full show, there will be 7-8 songs from the new album, a bunch of songs that everyone in the band just likes playing and some that people just want to hear. But in North and South America, due to technical reasons we might have to thin out the show a bit.”
What about in terms of the visuals? Rammstein has always been known for putting on intensely theatrical performances.
Paul: “Back during the summer, we were talking about whether we thought it was possible to actually put on another of these Rammstein shows again. And the consensus at that time was that none of us were certain whether it was actually possible to do it again. But the huge stage that they’ve got set up at the rehearsal space is expensive and crazy and looks better than anything we’ve done before. It’s got huge lights and everything. It’s like a fairy tale. Everyone is just doing what they’ve always been doing, but all of a sudden the momentum gathers and this huge show is there. There’s a certain amount of trepidation that we have before doing a show, but it’s just the way that it works.”
What impact would you say the growth of the internet has had on Rammstein?
Paul: “In a positive sense, Rammstein bows to the fact they they are part of the older generation of bands who still gets together in expensive studios and puts all the work into getting CDs manufactured, and that is something we’re proud of. But over the years, we’ve found that we have no need for MTV or other TV media outlets for the videos, for example. So that has given us the freedom to make the videos that we want to do, and exaggerate and go over the top and not have to worry about censorship from TV. The last videos prove this. So that is definitely something that is thanks to the internet.”
Category: Feature Interviews, Homepage FeaturedTags: heavy, industrial | Comments Off
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Catherine Duc
by adminOn her debut album, “Visions and Dreams,” Australian musician Catherine Duc blended together elements of Celtic music with various electronic styles to create a highly cinematic worldbeat sound. Her music truly transcends music genres; for instance, it’s bound to appeal to New Age fans, but at the same time fans of more experimental electronic styles who wouldn’t be caught dead listening the New Age should give it a chance as well. Duc, who has received numerous awards for her music, is currently at work on a followup to the 2005 release. In an email interview, she told about her creative process, thoughts on the need to categorize music, and more.
With this type of music, it’s not always obvious what is being played on traditional instruments and what is coming from electronic instruments and samplers. Can you describe the instrumentation used on your recordings?
On the ‘Visions and Dreams’ album, about half of the sounds are electronically generated from my synthesizer or software modules (such as electronic rhythms and ambient textures). Most of the remaining sounds are real instruments (such as ethnic instruments) that have been sampled at various pitches, styles and velocities that I’ve used my keyboard to play back melodies on. I performed the ambient vocals myself.
On the new album I’m working on at the moment, there’s more of a focus on live instruments such as violin, low whistle, tin whistle, guitar, mandolin and uilleann pipes to name just a few.
How would you say the music on “Visions and Dreams” evolved from when you first started working on the album to what we hear on the finished cd?
I worked on one song at a time and sometimes, I composed as I recorded. So there were no different draft versions as such, but an evolving piece that I kept adding melodies, harmonies and arrangements to.
Could your describe your creative process?
I usually come up with an idea for a song when I don’t intend to compose. I’ll be at my keyboard trying out new sounds and if I get an idea for a melody, I’ll stop to record the fragment. I’ll then try out different arrangements in my mind while I’m away from my studio such as when I’m on the train or taking a walk. I find that this approach creates lots of musical ideas.
I’ll then go back to my studio. I’ll start by choosing instruments and sounds and then replicate what I’ve heard in my mind. Sometimes I go off on a different tangent too if a good idea comes to me. I basically try not to force creativity – I suppose my composing style is the musical equivalent of the ‘slow food movement’.
Your website has information on licensing your music. What types of things has it be licensed for? As an artist, where would you ideally like to have your music used?
My music has been used in projects from feature-length documentaries to corporate presentations and multi-media portfolios. My dream goal would be to write music for an epic fantasy movie in the style of Lord of The Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia.
On your website, you break down albums tracks by ‘genre’ (Ambient/World, Celtic Electronica) etc. I’m curious as to your general thoughts on putting music into genres. Do you find yourself thinking about them as you compose? Do you feel that your songs comfortably fit into particular genres, or this type of labeling just something necessary in terms of reaching out to potential new listeners and/or music licensors? Do you see any negative aspects of categorizing music?
I don’t categorize my songs until I’m ready to release the music and need to do it for my distributor and licensing sites. I don’t really think about the genre when I compose. I label the songs on my website for listeners – they may prefer Celtic music to ambient music, so I try to give them some indication about what they can expect to hear before they spend time downloading.
I think a negative aspects of categorizing music would be when an artist was categorized in a single higher level music category when their music crossed over different genres.
Have you ever considered doing songs where vocals are more in the forefront?
Yes, on the album I’m currently working on, there are a couple of songs with lyrics in the forefront as well as other songs with ambient vocalizes.
Do you perform live? What are the challenges you see in presenting this type of music in a live setting?
I don’t perform live very often as it’s difficult to replicate most of my songs in a live environment unless I had many musicians on ethnic instruments and synthesizers. If I perform live, it’s myself on keyboard with a guitarist and a violinist.
What have you been working on since the release of “Visions and Dreams”? When can we look forward to more music being available?
I’m working on my next album and have just started on the 6th song. I don’t have a release date on the album yet because I’m taking a different approach with this album. With Visions and Dreams, I had a deadline for each song, but I’m letting the new album develop organically. When it’s ready, it will be released
What music have you been listening to lately?
Celtic Woman and the Twilight score have been on heavy rotation on my playlist lately. Totally contrasting moods that are both very inspiring to me.
Category: Feature Interviews, Homepage FeaturedTags: classical, world music | Comments Off
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VNV Nation
by adminAt times aggressive but always catchy, the music of Hamburg-based electronic band VNV Nation combines elements or industrial, synthpop and EBM (electronic body music). VNV Nation has recently put out two new releases. The first was the boxset “Reformation 1″, which member Ronan Harris says was aimed squarely at their existing fanbase. It features two CDs of live and unreleased tracks, as well as a DVD of performance footage. After that came a new studio album, “Of Faith, Power and Glory”, which will be supported by North American and European tours starting this summer. The following is the first half of a phone interview with Ronan that was conducted in late May. Check back soon for the second part, where Ronan gets more into his views on the current state of the music industry and digital distribution.
What can fans expect from the new album?
Well, Im a terrible judge of my own work. Ill give you an example. There are 2 songs that have become probably our most popular – Beloved and Illusion. And both are songs that I was up until the very last minute against putting on an album, thinking them not the sort of things that people would expect or like from VNV. Maybe they were too commercial or there was something about them that I didnt like, although I love the songs themselves – I must stress that. Everybody else around me said youre mad and to put them on the album and shut up. So I did.
So in that sense, Im not very good at judging my own stuff. As far as the album in concerned, Id say that in some ways its the most schizophrenic album weve done so far, in the sense that its pleasantly schizophrenic. Im going on the comments of one reviewer who had a chance to come in to the studio and listen to all the tracks before they went off to mastering, He said that the range on this album … it flows and everything fits together, but the range on this album is like taking Judgement and multiplying it times ten. Its firmly going off from that point. He said everything flows but the range is incredible.
The other comment that Ive heard is that melodically, this is a very dynamic album. It goes from highs to lows …. Im finding it very difficult to even describe this objectively without sounding like Im patting myself on the back! [laughs]. There is a fine line, a blending and blurring of styles. There is a good deal of electro on this album. Obviously everything we do is electronic, there is not a single acoustic instrument or electrified acoustic instrument on our albums with the exception of the voice. So in terms of styles, if people who are familiar with Judgement found it to be their thing, this tends to go a very big step beyond that. Its a very anthemic album, its a very positive album. Its not a dark album although it has very dark moments. Its also an album of reckoning. It is ostensibly describing the title, which is Of Faith, Power, and Glory. Its a title that some people thought was very bombastic. But these are three characteristics of humans that can either bring them to their greatest heights or destroy them, but that in succession can allow people to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve.
In terms of what people associate with VNV, which is a very hard thing to say anyway, the electronic elements are definitely there. We have obviously gone off and embraced other styles in the last couple of years, and this sort of mish mash of styles has definitely factored heavily into this album. Its a very contemporary album, and yet at the same time stays somewhere between the hard electro on one end of the spectrum and the sort of light and melodic on the other. I would say thats the element that people find very positive, but its not a wonderful, the sun in shining, were all happy kind of album. Its more of a sort of reflection of what it takes or requires to reach one\’s own potential.
How did the process of making it compare to previous releases?
It was very similar to Judgement. What changes, of course, is obviously software and what have you. We have two studios working in parallel. So Id write the songs using the computer and using all the available plug-ins and bits and pieces. When we got off the Judgement tour, we built our studio in a new location in Hamburg, so I got a chance to revamp the computer from the ground up and restructure everything. It was a hybrid of digital and analog technology, and thats both for sound generation and processing. Im a big fan of \’60s and \’70s recording techniques as well, and to emulate those using a computer is a lot of fun.
As far as the set-up, ostensibly the brain of the operation is a sort of overloaded Mac computer which runs Apples Logic Pro. I do all my writing on that. To be honest, its just the palette that Ive always used for writing songs because I was using it in the studios where I went to record, back to 1997, Id say. I just got used to it, because I got accustomed to using it in the studio. I continued using it and bought it for myself. Ive been happy with it. To be honest, I dont want anything to get in my way when I get a melody in my head. When I write songs, and this is the thing that people find it hard to grasp, Ill be walking down the street, Ill be reading a book, I could be brushing my teeth, whatever. And a song will play in my head, and its quite literally like you hear a song on the radio and you remember it and you cant get it out of your head. Its playing over and over. I hear the full song. And its when Im not thinking about making music that these things happen. They tend to kind of possess me, they play over and over until I get them out. Illusion was one such a case. There were a number of songs on that album where I had the melodies running through my head for a long time. If Im not at the studio Ill run Garageband and try to write in quick melodies on the actual computer keyboard. I have a form of shorthand that I use to write out how the beat should feel, what the structure of the rhythm should be, what the melody should be.
Overall, for me, its not about the individual elements, its the feel and vibe of the song. And Im never happy with the final thing and I never feel I can take to the conclusion unless it starts to feel the way I wanted it to feel. The lyrics are a part of that, the music are a part of that, and in the end it comes together to give me a feeling. They are not individual elements, as with people who need to hear a voice and everything else is just backing, providing the style and characteristic of the song. For me its the sum total of everything. So how things are sung, what words are used, the rhythm of those words. These are all elements that appear in my head. So I try to document these things as best I can, and I ended up with a directory of 120 files of ideas and bits pieces and melodies. I pull this all down into a strict structure and in the end had to pick 12 or 13 songs to concentrate on for this album because they typify the sound that Im going for. Then it comes to fleshing it all out and giving it the edge that I want.
Of those initial 120 files, how many would you say represented fairly complete songs?
I would say almost all. Im writing verses and choruses and everything. The instrumentation of the song is what it really comes down to for me when it comes to production. Ill try different sounds with it. Most of the time, I have a very specific idea in my head of what I want it to sound like and I know which sounds I will need to make that happen. I can spend days working on a sound, just to get it to have that characteristic that I really really want. Its an odd process, as most of the song is still in my head. Its like youre a writer and you have a sentence in your head, and its not actually going to be finished until your pen has touched paper. So its very much like that process for me. A lot of people think that a finished song is already written out and recorded and just needs annotations and corrections. A finished song for me is that Ive got all of the main structure and elements, and I know how the song is going to flow and how it should flow and Ive experimented with that. But all of that has already happened in my head.
Do you ever go back to ideas not used on previous albums?
There are loads of these little weird song files that lie around with just a sound playing a sequence or some weird progression or some drum track or whatever else. And I basically beg, borrow, and steal and rip these things apart. Ive always done this, even since the early days. I would have half finished ideas of a sequence or a melody and then I would rip it off for another song because I needed something. Id go through of think oh, thats exactly what I need for that song Im completing. So I have idea files of basslines, drum tracks, melodies, anything like that. Even sound effects. I go through them all, and then I start to hear and refamiliarize myself with them going into the production of an album, I make notes. Ok, this idea file has the following…. – I describe it in whatever way I can. So if Im working on a track and need, say, a very very strong bassline thats in a certain key or style, I have a list of things to go through and try. Ive done things where Ive written a song and the verse wasnt anything spectacular and Ive cut and pasted two songs together to see if it take a song to its logical conclusion. Because, for me, sometimes the point of the track …. say for a song like Dark Angel, the point of the track is what happens not until about a minute before the end. There are a lot of songs that Ive written that are like that. Everything happening in the song is only building up until the end, where the actual point is being made. So in many ways, when I write a song, I have a main idea or a main key element, and everything else is being built around it to highlight that point.
As you write, are you thinking about how the songs will be performed live?
Up until the album, Id say that I always thought about the live element, i.e. what is someone going to play? The more crucial thing on the album was okay, whos going to give Mark Jackson the count in for this one? Because the drums start on the first beat. Those are the kind of considerations. The other consideration is how do you start a song purely with vocals, where the song starts with only vocals and slowly builds up behind it? Id get the key wrong. I do think about these things, because our live show is a very important part of what we do. The records are this is us in the studio, live is this is us demonstrating our music. Its not just that were playing it live; it is, I suppose, it is us acting it out.
What were the reasons behind putting out the Reformation boxset?
The overall intention was to put out a fan release. We wanted to release Reformation a number of years ago as a way to avoid the need for singles, because I believe the release of singles is a pointless task. In the \’50s obviously it was the only way to do things, but in the \’70s and \’80s the whole idea of the single was an advertisement for the album, or an additional version from the album to be played on radio. The strategies and formulas were worked out to make that happen. I dont really think that is the case in the music genre we belong to. So Reformation was meant to be a follow up to the album Matter and Form and it was to include a number of live tracks, some unreleased tracks, and alternate versions from that album. It would be a way to pack a bunch of things together that we had available. It never happened. The story behind that is the live tracks were recorded at a venue where we didnt find out until long after that the venue wanted a great deal of money for us to use those tracks. This is something that doesnt happen in Europe. It kind of shocked us, and I think that the people at the venue looked at the status of the VNV Nation and got the feeling that this is a really big band and wanted vasts amount of money for it. We fought and fought and tried to reach a compromise, as we had a bunch of great tracks. But then I started working on Judgement and thought okay, I cant release this in connection with Judgement, it would make no sense, it would be too late to release this.
So what happened was Judgement came out, we went on tour for the best part of 9 months. We came back here and had lost our studio, because the complex wed been in closed. So when we got back off the tour we found a location and started building a new studio, working on the new album in a slow pace, letting it come as it wanted to. In about mid 2008, I met up with a bunch of people to discuss plans for what we were about to do – start our own label [for America]. It was an idea wed been thinking about for a number of years, because the opportunities available to us had been growing and growing in terms of what distribution companies offer to artists directly. Artists who are somewhat successful. I wouldnt call ourselves ridiculously successful in any shape, manner or form. We do okay. But our audience had broadened massively. The range of people and their musical backgrounds is getting more and more stellar. We had planned that when we inaugurated this venture, setting up out own label, that we would release the Reformation boxed set for that.
There were number of intentions for it. One, it should have really good packaging, because I want this to be a collector\’s item, something special that signifies that were starting off something spectacular here, we hope. Second thing is that we had a lot of content we could use. We had a live CD from a number of different concerts, none of which required a vast amount of money to use the sound from the club. And then we had remixes lying around for a number of years, we had alternate versions, bits and pieces. There were a ton of things we wanted to include. Basically, what I wanted to do was just to put out a release specifically aimed at our fans. And most importantly was that as far as price was concerned, it should be as low as possible. Because we run our own label, that affords us some luxuries. We can decide the price, we can still do so and make some kind of profit, which we invest back into what we do. It would be in no way exploiting our fans. This is a gift, priced as low as we can make it with all the concerned parties taking their cut along the chain. In the end, the box itself is a high quality item. We wanted that, and researched suppliers, sourcing suppliers in Europe actually. It basically comes in a box that youd want sitting upon your shelf, because the company that did it is a specialist in bound boxes and were using this for cover art. They do all kinds of crazy stuff, but what we wanted something that was a really nice compact pack.
The idea of the DVD was that there is a public access channel here in Hamburg that has a TV show for our musical genre. They had edited a number of live songs over the years, and we had a few that we were having edited ourselves from concerts we recorded. Originally, it would have just been a double CD, but I said \’no, lets put in everything but the kitchen sink\’. So we threw in the DVD as well.
Category: Feature InterviewsTags: EBM, industrial | Comments Off
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This Spartan Life
by adminChris Burke was originally interviewed by Chaos Control way back in 1994, when he and his brother Dan comprised the band Glorified Magnified. Chris is still doing music, notably chiptune under the name Glomag, but he’s also doing a very unique ‘machinima’ series called ‘This Spartan Life.’ It’s a talk show where interviews are conducted within networked Halo games and shot by virtual cameramen. Guests on the show have included filmmaker/video artist Peggy Ahwesh, ‘The Raiders Guys’ (who as kids did a shot-for-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) and former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. In the following interview, Chris told us about the show and the process behind it.
What initially gave you the idea for “This Spartan Life”? Had you seen other examples of machinima at the time?
I had seen some of The ILL Clan’s work around 2000-2001 and had gone to The New York Video Festival’s “Game Engine” night in 2002 where I saw a lot more machinima. I was intrigued but wasn’t really thinking about making my own machinima because I was busy with audio and music work. Several years later, in 2004, there was a short lull in work and my engineer, John Keith and I started playing a lot of Halo at my studio. After seeing Xbox Live working and being in some multi-player games, I got an idea to do a sort of live machinima in the online game. I wanted to do something that made interesting use of the way the Xbox Live system connects players from remote parts of the globe. John helped me develop the idea for the show, starting with sort of mock TV show and then focusing on the interview idea.
Was Halo always the obvious choice of games to use? If not, where there any alternatives that you were considering?
I liked Halo 2 because the maps were so deep. You can really explore and I felt that my guests would find it inspiring. We didn’t really consider alternatives at the time because it takes a bit of time to develop a technique for shooting in any given game. We knew Halo 2, so we went with that.
What made you decide to go with the talk show format?
It was really the way that Xbox Live allowed us to do more than play a shooter game. It allowed us to extend the game, exploring what is sometimes called “emergent game play.” This was very exciting for me because I hadn’t read any of the scholarship on this sort of thing and it all felt brand new to me. It wasn’t new really, but the next gen games like Halo 2 with their higher immersive capabilities, certainly allowed for more emergent game play. The Talk Show idea was a way of claiming this game space for myself and doing something unintended by the game designers. Later I found that many game designers really love to see their creations extended in this way.
What would you say the biggest challenges were in actually producing a show?
Shooting live on Xbox Live with other gamers in the space with us. Even if they knew we were taping and wanted to behave themselves, they often couldn’t. Ultimately someone would drop a grenade or shoot the guest or host and we’d have to respawn and find each other again. It was was funny and also quite frustrating at the same time. We managed to work around the mishaps eventually.
Could you briefly describe the process behind ‘filming’ in a video game world?
It is a bit different in the different games. For us, in Halo 2 it involved a simple glitch or bit of game play that had a consequence that was not intended by the designers. We found that you could get your avatar to drop the gun that is always in front of your view while playing the game. Once you do that, you see an open screen with no gun and you can treat it as a virtual camera. We had two people, Terry Golob and Michele Darling, operating these virtual cameras. We then took the video and audio outputs of each of their consoles and connected them to a miniDV camera which was in turn connected to my laptop where the video and audio were captured and edited.
Has moving from Halo 2 to 3 brought about any particular improvements relating to how you create the show?
In Halo 3 this is all unnecessary. Bungie, the game designers, instituted something called “Theater Mode,” in which one can save all the game data (not actually video, but the information on what happened when, etc.) This enabled the player to re-run the game any number of times and move a virtual camera (again, built in by Bungie) anywhere they wanted, in essence becoming a virtual director. This meant that we could take time and really hone our camera work considerably.
What would you say are the limitations of the format, and what techniques do you use to overcome them?
The biggest limitations in machinima that is meant to mimic real life and people, are those that break that illusion. If you are trying to create a dramatic scene and your avatar’s lips cannot move while s/he speaks, it poses a problem. Halo has the advantage that the human characters are wearing helmets that obscure their faces, thus making this issue moot. However, no visible face means very little ability to emote. In order to avoid this pitfall, I prefer producing comedy machinima. The most creative solution is always the one that makes use of a limitation, turning it into a positive feature.
Have you done, or do you have any interest in doing, other types of machinima (outside of the world of This Spartan Life and/or Halo)?
We have developed a few other ideas for machinima and are working on one right now. Sometimes these ideas are killed by the legal issues that come with an appropriative art form like this were we are using the assets of a games publisher who may or may not want us to use them. We have been lucky with Bungie to have picked a game and developer that sees machinima as a positive thing in the community built around their games. Some other game companies are not as forward thinking and we have to respect their wishes.
What are you thoughts on the way machinima has evolved over the past few years? Where do you see it going?
There are a lot more people making machinima now and the quality of the films has gone up considerably. Machinima remains an art form with a relatively low bar to entry in terms of skills required and also cost. This makes it a vibrant area of work for young directors. It is also part of what I see as a healthy evolution in animation, CG, etc.- a move toward being more of a performer’s art and away from being an editor’s art. Traditionally animation was a matter of scripting and editing, with each movement painstakingly built frame by frame. In Machinima, movement is created in real time by a performer who is part puppeteer and part actor.
Do you have any interest in perhaps working with custom-designed real-time 3D virtual worlds, or do you prefer creatively re-purposing (and working within the confines of) an existing one?
I would love to work with a team to create a virtual world and stories within it. It is considerably more time consuming and expensive of course, but I am moving in that direction. Having said that, I do love appropriative art in that it forces me to be more creative and clever with the ways in which I work around the limitations, turning them into attributes. And there is much to be said for subversion of the product of mass culture. Video games are certainly that and should be examined just as much as we examine literature, film, television and all media.
In terms of other machinima out there, do you have any particular favorites?
I really like “Apartment Huntin’” by the ILL Clan. My Trip To Liberty City, by Jim Munroe is a favorite and probably the first machinima I saw that played up the comedic differences between a game universe and the real world. Red Vs. Blue is classic and Rooster Teeth are masters. I think Annie Ok is very talented and I look forward to every new thing she does. Short Fuse Films are relatively new but have made a more good films than most. Their “Ignis Solas” is excellent. Friedrich Kirschner is responsible for making machinima a fine art probably more than anyone. I am leaving out a lot of really cool films.
I encourage you to check out : http://festival.machinima.org/
for lots of great viewing.What’s in the immediate future for “This Spartan Life”? And what other projects are you working on right now?
I am traveling to Brussels next week for a screening of TSL at Media Ruimte. We are working on more summer screenings and live appearances as well as selecting the guests for upcoming episodes. The other machinima project I am currently developing is in very early stages still and I can’t talk about it yet. We hope to be unveiling something later this year.
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