Another Version of the Truth
Encyclopedia
Another Version of the Truth is an independently released live concert video documenting Nine Inch Nails
' 2008 Lights in the Sky Tour made available throughout late 2009/early 2010 on Blu-ray, DVD, and various other online formats. Another Version of the Truth is also the title of an instrumental track on Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album Year Zero
. The video is a 3-disc set bringing together numerous editors, designers, and web programmers to create a professional digital film, followed by a physical release created "by fans for fans".
The project is supposed to be "strictly not for profit" and shared for free.
live video releases.
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor
had originally intended to film the entirety of three shows of the Lights in the Sky Tour in 3-D, using James Cameron
's 3-D team, for release on what would have been the act's last live album. Due to Interscope Records
pulling out at the last minute, the project could not be completed., and thus This One Is On Us decided to create its own single DVD release of the band's final performance in Las Vegas on December 13, 2009. However, footage of over 400 GB
worth of video from the band's following shows in Victoria
(December 5), Portland
(December 7), and Sacramento
(December 12) was nevertheless shot by "a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives" and unofficially distributed via BitTorrent on January 7th, 2009 as a Christmas/New Year gift from Reznor to fans for them to do as they wished. In an immediate response to Reznor's announcement of his abandoned project, This One Is On Us quickly downloaded the data and had begun to assemble the footage into a full-length concert film, to twin with the previously made Vegas disc. After a round of voting, Another Version of the Truth was chosen to be the project title. continuing the tradition of naming Nine Inch Nails concert videos after a certain song for its associated album (And All That Could Have Been
, and Beside You in Time
).
While this particular project was well underway for a year, the group also worked on several other releases in the meantime, including The Downward Spiral: Live, a very popular release documenting of the first out of two ever live performances of The Downward Spiral
in its entirety, played on August 23rd 2009, at Webster Hall
in New York City
. This specific project earned the group the attention of the band members themselves, who all tweeted about the release, impressed by its quality. The band's art director Rob Sheridan
also posted about it on the official Nine Inch Nails website on October 23rd, 2010.
and iPod (MP4).
This particular show is notable for being the final Nine Inch Nails performance with keyboardist Alessandro Cortini
and drummer Josh Freese
.
with 5.1 surround sound
, multi-language subtitles, and artistically-driven ethics. The video was released to the public as a free digital download in variety of formats including Blu-ray, DVD
, MOV, and iPod (MP4).
(Approximate running time for bonus material is 3 hours. Due to the variety of sources for this disc, video quality ranges from high to low resolution depending on the feature.)
The initial 3-disc physical set included a 16-page booklet (including credits and project documentation), and a themed bookmark and postcard. Initial demand for the 3-disc configuration far exceeded supply and the original run of 5,000 sets quickly sold out by October. In response, an affordable, single disc version (housed in a six-panel digipak), solely focusing on the band released, fan edited show (The Gift) in both DVD and Blu-ray formats is readily available.
, Rolling Stone
, Techdirt
and Pitchfork TV
, and holds the support of both the band and its fan community with theatrical screenings being held all over the world. Sheridan noted that "this is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever," whilst Reznor simply tweeted "Nine Inch Nails fans kick ass. Blown away."
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
' 2008 Lights in the Sky Tour made available throughout late 2009/early 2010 on Blu-ray, DVD, and various other online formats. Another Version of the Truth is also the title of an instrumental track on Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album Year Zero
Year Zero (album)
Year Zero is the fifth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on April 17, 2007, by Interscope Records. Frontman Trent Reznor wrote the album's music and lyrics while touring in support of the group's previous release, With Teeth...
. The video is a 3-disc set bringing together numerous editors, designers, and web programmers to create a professional digital film, followed by a physical release created "by fans for fans".
The project is supposed to be "strictly not for profit" and shared for free.
Background
This One Is On Us is the name of a fan organization that specializes in Nine Inch Nails and The Dresden DollsThe Dresden Dolls
The Dresden Dolls are an American musical duo from Boston, Massachusetts. Formed in 2000, the group consists of Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione...
live video releases.
Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
had originally intended to film the entirety of three shows of the Lights in the Sky Tour in 3-D, using James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
's 3-D team, for release on what would have been the act's last live album. Due to Interscope Records
Interscope Records
Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that currently operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-History:...
pulling out at the last minute, the project could not be completed., and thus This One Is On Us decided to create its own single DVD release of the band's final performance in Las Vegas on December 13, 2009. However, footage of over 400 GB
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
worth of video from the band's following shows in Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
(December 5), Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
(December 7), and Sacramento
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...
(December 12) was nevertheless shot by "a mysterious, shadowy group of subversives" and unofficially distributed via BitTorrent on January 7th, 2009 as a Christmas/New Year gift from Reznor to fans for them to do as they wished. In an immediate response to Reznor's announcement of his abandoned project, This One Is On Us quickly downloaded the data and had begun to assemble the footage into a full-length concert film, to twin with the previously made Vegas disc. After a round of voting, Another Version of the Truth was chosen to be the project title. continuing the tradition of naming Nine Inch Nails concert videos after a certain song for its associated album (And All That Could Have Been
And All that Could Have Been
And All That Could Have Been is a double album released by Nine Inch Nails in 2002. The live album contains music recorded during the Fragility v2.0 US tour in 2000; Disc 1 is a live album of their normal set list of the time, while disc B contains a studio album titled Still containing...
, and Beside You in Time
Beside You in Time
Beside You in Time is a live home video release by Nine Inch Nails, issued in Europe on February 26, 2007, and the United States on February 27, 2007. Beside You in Time is also the title of a track on the NIN album With Teeth. The video documents NIN's 2006 Live: With Teeth tour, and is available...
).
While this particular project was well underway for a year, the group also worked on several other releases in the meantime, including The Downward Spiral: Live, a very popular release documenting of the first out of two ever live performances of The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released March 8, 1994, on Interscope Records. It is a concept album detailing the destruction of a man, from the beginning of his "downward spiral" to his climactic attempt at suicide...
in its entirety, played on August 23rd 2009, at Webster Hall
Webster Hall
Webster Hall is a nightclub located at 125 East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, near Astor Place, in Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1886, its current incarnation was opened by the Ballinger Brothers in 1992...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. This specific project earned the group the attention of the band members themselves, who all tweeted about the release, impressed by its quality. The band's art director Rob Sheridan
Rob Sheridan
Rob Sheridan is an American graphic designer, director, and photographer best known for his extensive work with the band Nine Inch Nails....
also posted about it on the official Nine Inch Nails website on October 23rd, 2010.
Las Vegas
Filmed entirely by fans and coordinated by Alex Gamble, this release saw the community fly in from around the world, donate technology, skill, and even airfare to document the final performance of Nine Inch Nails' 2008 tour. Over 200GB of audience-recorded footage was collected, which was meticulously edited together by a team of people from all over the world. The video was released to the public as a free digital download in variety of formats including DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and iPod (MP4).
This particular show is notable for being the final Nine Inch Nails performance with keyboardist Alessandro Cortini
Alessandro Cortini
Alessandro Cortini is an Italian musician best known for touring and recording with the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from 2004 to 2008. Currently, Cortini is also the frontman for the Los Angeles based electronic-alternative band SONOIO. In addition, he was a touring member of The...
and drummer Josh Freese
Josh Freese
Josh Freese is an American session drummer and songwriter. He is a permanent member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, having formerly played drums for Nine Inch Nails from late 2005 until late 2008, and for Guns N' Roses from mid-1998 to 2001. Freese has appeared on close to 300 records....
.
The Gift
Filmed in Victoria, Portland, and Sacramento by the Nine Inch Nails team, edited and produced by their fans, The Gift is presented in 1080p high-definition videoHigh-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
with 5.1 surround sound
5.1 surround sound
5.1 is the common name for six channel surround sound multichannel audio systems. 5.1 is now the most commonly used layout in both commercial cinemas and home theaters. It uses five full bandwidth channels and one low frequency enhancement channel . Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS, and...
, multi-language subtitles, and artistically-driven ethics. The video was released to the public as a free digital download in variety of formats including Blu-ray, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, MOV, and iPod (MP4).
Bonus Content
This release includes:- Making-of featurettes donated by Moment Factory (the company and crew responsible for the Lights in the Sky technology).
- Exclusive rehearsal footage, and alternate visuals to several performances.
- Rarely performed songs from the USA and South America including 32 Ghosts IV and "Down in ItDown in It"Down in It" is a song by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released in 1989. Released as the project's debut single, the song was the first to be written by Trent Reznor, the only constant member of the act. It was released as a teaser single prior to the group's debut album, Pretty...
" (much of this material comes from the makers of other fan-made releases The Downward Spiral: Live, After All This Time (Live in Chile), and Your World On Fire (Live in Kansas City).) - A photo slideshow of the images donated by fans via FlickrFlickrFlickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
, designed by Samuel Trim. Photo slideshow also features the remix In This Twilight - Guild Remix by Bosley Beats and Richard Evans of Guild. - Highlights of Internet coverage from the era, including BipolarMike's Echoplex Drum Simulator and Trent Vanegas' end-of-tour interview with Reznor.
(Approximate running time for bonus material is 3 hours. Due to the variety of sources for this disc, video quality ranges from high to low resolution depending on the feature.)
Promotion and release
On December 18th, the group released the final trailer for Another Version of the Truth. It was then released as three separate torrents (including PDFs) respectively on December 25th 2009, January 25th 2010 and February 25th 2010, followed by an eventual physical release in June 2010.The initial 3-disc physical set included a 16-page booklet (including credits and project documentation), and a themed bookmark and postcard. Initial demand for the 3-disc configuration far exceeded supply and the original run of 5,000 sets quickly sold out by October. In response, an affordable, single disc version (housed in a six-panel digipak), solely focusing on the band released, fan edited show (The Gift) in both DVD and Blu-ray formats is readily available.
Reception
To date, the group and the project has received significant attention from media outlets such as USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Techdirt
Techdirt
Techdirt is a weblog that reports on technology trends, and related business and economic policy issues, often focusing on copyright and patent reform. The website was started in 1997 by Mike Masnick and it was originally based on the weblog Slash. Techdirt has been named among the favorite blogs...
and Pitchfork TV
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
, and holds the support of both the band and its fan community with theatrical screenings being held all over the world. Sheridan noted that "this is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever," whilst Reznor simply tweeted "Nine Inch Nails fans kick ass. Blown away."
Vegas
Gift
Personnel
- Trent ReznorTrent ReznorMichael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
– lead vocals, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, keyboardKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, marimbaMarimbaThe marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
, tambourineTambourineThe tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all.... - Robin FinckRobin FinckRobin Finck is an American guitarist of Nine Inch Nails and former lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses. He is one of only a few artists who has played in two different bands listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock"; Nine Inch Nails and Guns N' Roses .-Career:Finck grew up in Marietta,...
– guitar, recorderRecorderThe recorder is a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct flutes—whistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple...
, backing vocals - Justin Meldal-JohnsenJustin Meldal-JohnsenJustin Meldal-Johnsen is an American musician and bassist, best known for his work with Grammy Award-winning artist Beck. He served as the touring bassist for Nine Inch Nails during their final tours.-Recording career:...
– bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, guitar, keyboard, backing vocals - Alessandro CortiniAlessandro CortiniAlessandro Cortini is an Italian musician best known for touring and recording with the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from 2004 to 2008. Currently, Cortini is also the frontman for the Los Angeles based electronic-alternative band SONOIO. In addition, he was a touring member of The...
– keyboard, synthesizerSynthesizerA synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
, programmingProgramming (music)Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices, often sequencers or computer programs, to generate music. Programming is used in nearly all forms of electronic music and in most hip hop music since the 1990s. It is also frequently used in modern pop and rock...
, guitar, backing vocals - Josh FreeseJosh FreeseJosh Freese is an American session drummer and songwriter. He is a permanent member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, having formerly played drums for Nine Inch Nails from late 2005 until late 2008, and for Guns N' Roses from mid-1998 to 2001. Freese has appeared on close to 300 records....
– drums