Lateralus As You’ve Never Seen It

Ross has been trawling through the archives again and has produced a video for Tool’s ‘Lateralus’ which he shot with Happy Medium bassist and now resident of Scotland, Thomas Flood (Moff). Want to understand the craziness behind it and how it was put together? Have a read of this…

Technically, the video was a nightmare to make. At that time the only camera I could get my hands on was a very low budget Vhs-C camcorder, a big block of a thing. We started experimenting with light, the built-in effects the camera had to offer, some everyday household products, our imaginations and what the human eye can see. The result is something I think looks beautiful, and you really wouldn’t believe what we used can actually look like that.

The editing process was a nine and a half hour session of stress. We didn’t have any fancy equipment, so we went with what we had. The camera, a 14-inch tv, a household video machine and a home stereo. We cut between the camera and the video, onto a Vhs-C tape in an adaptor, trying to sync the shots with the song, which was played on the stereo on the other side of the room!

Once we had our cut on a VHS-C tape, we played it through the camera onto a Vhs tape in the machine. Then, for our final cut and to add music onto the video, we played the video through the t.v whilst recording it onto the video camera, as the song was once again played on the stereo to record the sound on to the video.

This process meant the original video was downgraded in quality quite a bit, but I’m still impressed with the finished thing. Nowadays, I’m lucky to be in the company of friends who own equipment that could bring the video into the digital age. Many thanks to my good friend Alan Slattery who “digitally remastered” and cleaned it up for us.

See the homepage? Thats the video in the top right there… go on…. click play. It might be 9 minutes but it is worth it! Check out also KilkennyMusic.com TV on YouTube.