2002 June 25th - Yeah, it's true [Theo]

Screen shots

A first go of the song was created, in which all voices were done by the most annoying General Midi sounds available. That was done absolutely on purpose, as it made the different voices VERY easy to notice and to learn. ("That Ugly Saxophone has been burned into my brain" - quote Martin)

Next up was the actual recordings. Søren and synth player André sang the main parts of the song, and then guitar player Martin did a baritone track and synth player Theo did both a bass and a falsetto track. The lyrics were written by Søren who then set to the task of mixing the final version.

One word about the mixing: Auto tuner!!! Auto tuner is the effect that makes Cher and Eiffel 65 sound as they do (a lot of people confuse that with a Vocoder, but that is a different effect altogether), but used properly, it is in fact an effect that makes bad singers sound decent, and decent singers sound good. It was used in the final mix. a LOT!!! Also, to get the right Boy bandish sound, the vocals were compressed, chorused and equalized in a degree that you would not believe!!!

A few technical bits
The video was recorded on a Sony DV cam, captured directly onto Theo's laptop via Intel1394/firewire and edited in Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video. The sound was created in Cakewalk.

The Shots
The general idea for the video was to make one scene for each of us, and then some scenes featuring all of us, mixing it altogether as they do in those typical boy band videos: fast paced clips and fancy image filters. As you can see the video features all PPOT members, so guitar player Jesper and bass player Uffe are also in the video even though they are not doing any singing on the sound track

André & Søren did a recording of André's part at Visionik (where Martin work). Unfortunately the lighting of the set was too dark even though we used artificial lighting, so the shot could not be used. So just before André left for the US, we made a recording at Theo's place against a white wall using the built-in brightness function in the DV cam to over-expose the shot. It worked, phew, else he wouldn't have made it into the video.

Søren's take was made at Visionik too. In front of a big window we recorded him while spraying about 3 liters of water on the window. André did the water spraying. A reflection of Uffe and Theo can be seen in this shot, if you look very closely. Søren also nosed the window which spoiled a bit of the recording, since the water flow suddenly didn't work. Want any bloopers?

Martin did two recordings, one with Exploding Fist projected onto him and the background and one without. The one with Exploding Fist made Martin look purple, so it could not be used. It was recorded in the Image Lab at DIKU.

Uffe was recorded at Amager Beach, close to Copenhagen. The water was even though it was recorded in May quite luke. But shallow water sometimes gets nasty and this water was exactly that, making it an unpleasant experience for Uffe. We made two takes, one with Uffe in dry clothes and one after the splash shown in the beginning. The distance from Uffe to the ghetto blaster made it quite a job to get the lip sync to work. The ghetto blaster by the way didn't play at 44KHz, not even at a constant rate, nice touch, Aiwa!

Jesper's scene was recorded at his place. We did a lot of different shots of which quite a lot didn't make it into the video - it had to remain PG, erhm...

My recording, Theo's that is, was made in the girls' bathroom at DIKU (hubba hubba). We had to do quite a bit of replumbing before we could spray me with water. Unfortunately in that particular week-end, the hot water at DIKU was gone. So the entire shot was made using only cold water. Imagine how capable you would be at singing while you body temperature slowly is lowered and the cold water running down your face making it virtually impossible to see nor focus at the video camera. I couldn't remember the lyrics being only four lines. Yikes, cold stuff!!

The rest of the shots with all of us were filmed outside Visionik, situated at the Copenhagen Docks. While filming the shot with all of us in the commodore logo outfit, a large police car with six police men pulled up at the parking lot we used for the shot. They stayed until the shot was done, making it very difficult to keep a straight face. The rest of the shots was done the same place, with different types of clothes. Very hot---even in May.

The Graphics
The 3D graphics was made by Søren and Theo. Søren got the idea for the dancing karatekas from "The Way of the Exploding Fist", ripped the men and made a script that copied the images to match the entire dancing sequence. Theo made the 3D graphics and the jumping scroller (written in C++), recreated the alpha channels for the WEF-men in Adobe Premiere, and finally put the entire thing together in 3D Studio Max. The forty second shot took about four hours to render, since the shadows and reflections had to be ray traced (billboard graphics suck big time). The idea for this shots was way more complicated than it came out, but that is how it works when you have deadlines.

The Premiere
The video premiered in public at BIT live in London at the Gossip Club.