thanx! I often play around with old military footage and other captured footages, emulating the old-skool industrial videos with old newsreel footage and fx etc. I don't usually show these publicly, but here's one I worked on for a while for "Gun" since you like that one so much! Keep in mind this is not a "finished" video in my world - just how I entertain myself:

http://vimeo.com/9844606

Well if you're getting heaps of praise for the video elsewhere then rock on. We only drink champagne and eat beluga caviar here anyway

continued notes on the making of the video:

when I listened to the lyrics for the song, I felt like I had two choices, either to film a BDSM film shoot or a snuff film shoot. Either would fit the concept of "peering through a keyhole seeing something you're not supposed to see" and at the same time be "shifting through the lens". Since Trent did the snuff film video I opted for the BDSM film. Sometimes the most obvious thing has never been done, and when I looked into this it seemed wrong that no one had ever shown this type of imagery in a music video before. Seemed like it was about time for something so simple and yet completely different as far as keeping with the traditional Front Line Assembly videos. And as an artist I'm always looking at ways to break from tradition and anything that gets established, even the previous image of the band. I think I surprised a lot of people by taking this approach. I didn't want to do something that had been done already. I knew some of the old die-hard fans wouldn't approve, but I was making a video to get new young fans, so I had to think about what young people would be attracted to visually, what would make them listen to a track by an artist they've never heard of before. Something to grab their nano-attention.

When I'm thinking about a video, I'm really focussing on certain imagery that I feel has intensity. This eventually develops into a story board with an associated shot list. The main imagery I wanted to show was the full body suspension spinning, and also the vac bed. To me, this imagery looks really cool whether you're into this kind of thing or not. I wanted to show this imagery in such a way that if a child saw it they wouldn't necessarily get any sexual references from it. I wanted to avoid any displays of sexuality between the women in the video, and portray them more as the performance artists they really are. When I listened to track, I could clearly imagine a full body suspension spinning around at the outro, and really couldn't see anything else at that part of the music. I wanted to also show a vac bed at the golden section of the video because Julie has one of the coolest ones you can get (see-through) and also many people have never seen one or even know that such a thing exists. Even Bill had actually never seen one before I emailed him a picture of one. A lot of people have never seen one, and never in a music video. The vac bed imagery fit with the lyrics, particularly "sterilize all contact points". I also wanted a section that would focus on foot fetish - as a tribute to Luis Bunuel (who was known for having a foot fetish), creator of the world renowned BDSM masterpiece film "Belle du Jour". So those shoe scenes at the opening of the video are my "homage to Luis Bunuel", R.I.P.

back to work again - more on the story later…

"Shifting Through the Lens":
http://vimeo.com/13375947

Nasty, I feel bad for not being a fan of the STTL video, seeing as how there was an obvious amount of effort and artsy passion involved. And the fact that I like to draw, so I have guilt about criticizing anyone's artistic expressionism (except for Richard Corben, his art pisses me right off for some reason...), so no hard feelings? It's just not my thing.

redoing it with footage of the dramatic chipmunk and star wars kid would be a huge improvement.

No one should feel bad or apologize for not liking something - taste is a very individualized thing that no one can explain and everyone's opinion is totally valid for themselves. I'm not posting anything here to convince anyone who doesn't like the video otherwise. You can't convince me to like something I don't like. For many years I wrote the video reviews for Side-Line Magazine (back when it still existed and was in print form), have my own strong opinions and don't like a lot of videos, including some of the old FLA ones.

But here's what's really interesting to me because I like statistics:

from Front Line Assembly's youtube channel:
Epitaph: 305 views in 2 months
Plasticity: 1342 views in 9 months
Body Count: (newly remastered) 153 views in two months
Body Count: (old) 11,076 views in one year

Shifting Through the Lens: 1400 views in 5 days

Oh I don't doubt that a sizable chunk of people out there want(ed) to to see it. One look at any goth/industrial show's audience will confirm that.

I agree that many people must have viewed the video out of curiosity, or in the case of people from the Death Guild shoot, to see themselves in it. That is why I currently only have the video posted on one site. That way when I post it on other sites, like youtube for example, the numbers won't reflect as many curiosity-seekers.

I must say though I've never had so many people "curious" to see a video before. With as much promoting as I did for the Delerium dvd, the preview videos I've posted are barely getting any traffic when compared to this one.

STTL has been viewed in:

United States
Germany
Great Britain
Canada
France
Poland
Denmark
Slovak Republic
Belgium
Sweden
Russian Federation
Mexico
Finland
Switzerland
Turkey
Iceland
Czech Republic
Spain
Italy
Australia
Austria
Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
Greece
Brazil
Argentina
Ukraine
Norway
Bulgaria
Romania
Japan
Ireland
Columbia
Hungary
Morocco
Luxembourg
Czechoslovakia
Costa Rica
Estonia
South Africa
Croatia
Egypt
China
Israel

http://vimeo.com/13375947

Let's be honest, that's largely due to the 'explicit' content.

Doesn't feel like the video has any real connection to the music at all.

Just seems like STTL set to some random BDSM footage.

Im sure the clubscene kiddies will love it.

@jon,

I took special care to not show anything explicit - the only explicit content is in your imagination. There's a little bit of female cleavage in a few shots, but that's it, and that's not considered explicit in most of the world.

the reaction to this video here reminds me of the reaction to Dust in Gravity. You always take a chance of losing favor from some people who have pre-established expectations when you venture off in a different direction. for all of you who wanted a sci-fi themed video, fyi I would have loved to do something that would look like the band was in the spaceship from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Set to I.E.D. However I don't have access to a set that looks like that, but if anyone out there does, I'm still up for it. It would have to be a nice set though because I won't do anything that looks like an Ed Wood film, although I do love watching those cheesy sci-fi and horror cult classics. I'm in the mood for Bucket of Blood right now.

But see that's the point, how was this a "different" direction? This type of imagery has been intrinsically tied to this scene for almost 20 years now. Unless you mean different for FLA, in which case yes it is, even if it doesn't quite work (IMO).

Not that keen on this clip sorry. I don`t get the connection to the song, unless you include watching people in fetish gear when you shouldn`t be etc?!. The viewing figures maybe be down to the implied adult content but also simply down to the fact that it is a class song that many people want to hear. It seems like a random goth/fetish thing with STTL playing over it. Goths hi-jacked decent industrial/electro years ago & this re-affirms that belief for me.

Just my 2p worth. No offence intended.

@Nasty - Like others, I suspect a large majority of people are just wanting to see the video of the BDSM, the actresses, and couldn't give two hoots about the music in said video.

You've tried very hard to justify the BDSM video, posting information about the performers and the like, and you still seem bemused as to why we're not connecting with it. The only way I can best explain this is to replace the word BDSM with "stamp collecting". The stamp collectors could be sat in a room with SttL blasting out whilst putting stamps into albums. You could even get some respected world class stamp collectors in the video for a wider appeal. Once you've done that inform stamp collectors worldwide that there's a video featuring these world class stamp collectors. All the stamp collectors watch in awe, pushing hits up rapidly over a short period, then switch off. Give it a few weeks and nobody outside of the fanbase gives a flying one about the video and hopefully you'll begin to understand why we're griping?

Another example for you, read the lyrics for The Blade then watch the video (I couldn't find in on YouTube for you, so dig out your VHS). The lyrics scream "BDSM video" and look at what we got, something far more interesting than doing something that obvious. Sure the bondage is in there but it's reasonably subtle and the video is far more ambiguous with its actual theme. This was released around 1993 IIRC.

Regarding the number of views on the video so far, my wife did a video of characters from some computer games dancing. Views so far? Half a million. Does that suggest you should've used dancing computer game characters as a the theme if you wanted to reach a wider audience with this track? And her video was recorded and edited for free. Actually that would be pointless because the people who watch her video are only interested in seeing the computer game characters dancing, the music is secondary and this brings me back to the start of my post..

I could well be proven wrong, if I am I'll take it on the chin, but the video for SttL is either going to work big or fail extremely badly, I really can't see any middle ground with this one. Honestly, I do hope it succeeds because success for the band is something we all want but we remain to be convinced that this video is going to do that.

Industrial stamp collecting is such a cliche.

@Bug16

So let me see…. The Blade, as you say, is clearly about BDSM knife play. And I agree. And as you point out, The Blade promo video clearly bares no relation to BDSM knife play or any form of BDSM for that matter, even though the lyrics are about that, to which I also agree.

Then you say Front Line Assembly is not and has never been about BDSM, however your statement about The Blade refutes that. Then on top of that you state that it's ok for The Blade promo video to NOT reflect the lyrics and meaning of the song, and then you say that my promo video bares no relation to the lyrics and meaning of the song and that basically that it's ok in the case of The Blade, but that's not ok for another video - ?

In my mind my video fits the lyrics. But even if it didn't fit the lyrics, as you state, that's ok, because as in the case of The Blade, the video obviously doesn't correspond to the lyrics and it still works. And I would add that there are other FLA promo videos that visually have nothing to do with their lyrics either.

As for the video views numbers, you can't compare apples and oranges. I'm comparing the stats on this to those of other videos set to Front Line's music, not comparing to Criss Crocker crying about Britney Spears for example. I'm up to over 3.6 million views on youtube, so I have loads of statistics specific to the audience for this type of music. One thing you did say that I agree with, is that it will either work big or fail badly, and time will tell. My vote obviously is that it will work big to promote the band. I've never had viewers in this many countries before. I might also add that this video is attracting a bigger female audience and also a younger audience than the other videos I've made for Front Line.

The Blade is my favorite FLA song btw and I ask Bill to play it every time for like 15 years now, but he won't! (I'm guessing he probably doesn't have the DAT files anymore - maybe Soy Leeb can do it!)

I dunno I'm tired of reading through your essays full of self-praise.

Err.. nope I've not said that.



I never said that either. I'd like to hope that this is a misunderstanding of the context of what was written by me or you're getting confused over who's been posting what and not the start of a tedious straw man argument.

I've said all I have to say on the subject of the SttL video. Obviously you'll respond but from this point I won't be.

when I don't like something, I just walk away from it. no one is forcing anyone to read this thread.

then bugger off!

Though I'm not into SM/BDSM, I quite liked the video. I can see why some people didn't enjoy it, but I personally think it was a pretty interesting 4 minutes and 5 seconds.

on making the video:

I decided that I wanted to show a behind-the-scenes at work in the life of a professional rigger/videographer rather than any real BDSM goings on. I originally wanted to open the video with footage of Julie washing ropes in a bathtub and hanging them out to dry. We had too much trouble however finding the right bathtub so we scrapped that idea, and I replaced with foot fetish imagery - my homage to Bunuel. The video basically still showing you what a working day is like with Julie Simone. This is what these women do for a living - create a visual fantasy and sell that fantasy, because there is a great demand for it. I can also tell you from my own experience that at the end of the day, most of these girls curl up with a book and in Julie's case also a few kitty cats and a puppy. My dad worked in a bakery and when he got home he didn't want to eat any bread either.

I did. Only I didn't say that, what I said was FLA has never been intrinsically linked with said sexual imagery or nature. FLA is primarily political & technologic in theme, I think we'd all agree.

All the research, planning, and thought put into this (and I will admit there was a lot and you should be proud of that, Nasty) doesn't change the fact that for an industrial music video, S&M/fetish imagery is far too commonplace, cliche', and overdone now. Bug has a great point about it having an initial spark of interest for a small subset of the public at large that will die down and not perpetuate because it only relates to that small subset. I've yet to see you address that...I get that you know about your subject, and that is really great & professional to see, but how can you reconcile the fact that S&M imagery isn't anything new or different at all for this music?