The Beginning These mixes were one of the hardest things I ever created. It was quite easy to begin and very hard to finish. I drawn few pictures for Nata, but she said she couldn’t repeat difficult elements, because we have no enough computer power for the high detailed 3D video. Art work was not easy, because I didn’t know what I really wanted. Mixes I was sure I release NUMB mix first, but… I got To Step Aside and stopped working on NUMB. Some Pet Shop Boys songs are created to be remixed. To Step Aside was one of them. Perfect melody, fantastic Neil voice. The first version was a mix of To Step Aside and West End Girls. That version will stay on my hard disc. Heavy Estrada Mix First versions of Heavy Estrada Mix was the mix of To Step Aside and West End Girls as I said before. I did that version using only VST instruments. If you notice the mix has three different parts. When I played it to my friends they didn’t like that. You should make 3 different mixes instead this one – they say. I think they were wrong. Otvaga - Zaraza Mix Heavy Estrada Mix should have been just the only one mix, but I bought a new synth Clavia Nord Modular G2, that was the second reason why I did Otvaga - Zaraza mix. Second mix was written quite fast, I played it few times for myself and decided not to make it difficult as Heavy Estrada. The last part I wrote for 10 minutes. I played it for my friends and they liked it. I should say there were few versions of it. I changed the second part of Otvaga and put a part where Neil sings “Will I always need you…”. I have been thinking about putting the second version in the net, but… The first version is more compact and sounds as a single whole. When I beagn to make that mix I wanted it absolutely unusual. My experience was to mix Neil’s voice and bass part in one. So the bass part is always the same during all track as beat and the second bass part. I used Nord for that, of course it helped me its beauty bass sounds. On of the earliest versions was almost instrumental and I wanted to use the chorus but it didn’t suit. Only at the end I played new synth and added a pad that sounds not very loud. The bright ends with massive arrangements – that is I really love in my tracks and I got it again! So, the mix looked like Daft Punk met The Soviet cartoon song of early 80-s. The mix was a little odd but in the same time it was interesting to listen, I think. I played this mix in metro, busses, cars and during my walk. It sounds good when you are walking but its almost impossible to listen to it in metro or moving objects, because it makes slow all around.
Probably, I will put the second version on my MySpace page. More I did a dub to TSA, but it still unfinished and will be released a little bit later. I should say I don’t know how to call it:) It’s more danceable and sounds quite funny sometimes. Render The first part of video with flying synth wasn’t successful and we decided to extend our clip. Nata created a small planet with streets and bridges, channels, rivers, flying objects and few graphic elements, but it was quite heavy to render. Rendering of the one frame (film) was about 1-3 minutes(it depends on light, objects and etc.) Imagine that 1 second of this video includes 30 films, so 4 seconds would be rendered about 6 hours! 3D
Of course, I wanted something unusual. After we rendered few frames I asked my wife to make absolutely new castle, clock, sun. Neil sings: By the cathedral into the sun Pilgrims are singing, their journey done So my idea was - to create a world with a cathedral, sun and few people who play trombones. Nata was agree, but she said: I don’t want to copy Pet Shop Boys videos, no people with trombones. She designed a cathedral (it took time, by the way), sun and etc. I wanted the clock turn into the sun, but we gave up that idea later. The video was made for Heavy Estrada Mix , by the way. Video
Dim lights Oh… It took so much time. I had few versions of music part to this video. One day you will hear all of them, I hope. I began to work with frames in Adobe Premiere when Nata did her first version with flying synth. I didn’t really liked that and we decided to do something new. Yellow, blue and grey had to be basic colors for it, big abstract objects and a lot of flying space ships. As I add many synth sounds to the song I wanted a synth world, planet and creatures. After I designed few odd cars and trains with glass tubes, my wife told me she is not going to spend her life making this video… She was right. 1 July 2008 I watched all films we’ve done and found them quite boring. I was very anger and told her: Let me sit here and I do it by myself. I work in 3D program Maya a little, but of course I can’t do difficult objects. So I loaded old file where we used three basic colors: blue, yellow and light brown. I said: We begin from the start. My idea about vinyl records which turn into towers was released awful as I thought. So I had to rebuild few objects and changed textures on objects. My wife was upset because I shouted at her. My point was: you can’t do difficult scene on this computer but you can do that beauty. I moved few objects, removed some small details that just eat recourses and built new objects. Nata created a castle that had to be in that video. I colored that castle in stripes, and left only 3 main colors. It looked like comics, that I really liked. Maya lets makes few different renders as Menatl Ray, Vector, Hardware render and Software render. We gave up Vector. I did changes on that scene and my wife began to draw… That was the point where we began to work better. She drawn few persons, few flying object with people inside. I looked at that and said: they look great, let’s use them in our video. So she was agree and started to model them. After many months we really understood we did a lot of useful work. The audio part was ready but I’ve been waiting for the video but the video that I planned release in May wasn’t so good as it would be. The Idea I really like classic Pet Shop Boys tunes. I love experiments and I like to change melodies, rhythms and add my own parts to their songs. These mixes are individual and absolutely different as all I did, I hope. It was 1997, probably when I bought DJ Pierre mixes to “I wouldn’t Normally Do”. There was a single with three tracks and all of them were almost similar. Then I have thought, if I will make my own music and mixes I will never repeat tracks.
