02 Days In Hammersmith – Voices UK & The International Fan Clubs’ DVD

During mid-July 2005, we were contacted by the presidents of the well-established European fan clubs. They had come together and decided that they wanted to give their members a special Christmas gift in the tradition of the discontinued Christmas CDs that DTIFC had distributed with their end of year issues. The idea had developed of filming a tour DVD, drawing contributions from the various clubs at shows across Europe during the upcoming tour through the region. Naturally we jumped at the chance!

There would be no content coming directly from the band (contrasting the old CDs, which were compiled by Mike Portnoy) – this material would be shot, edited and produced by the clubs, and would generally look at the tour from the fans’ points of view.

Mike was very keen on the proposed project and suggested that it should consist of one show per country per fan club (DTNorway – Oslo, Italian Dreamers – Rome, Your Majesty – Paris, The Mirror – Dusseldorf, and Voices UK – London). It was agreed that each club would interview a band member (excluding the ever enigmatic John Myung – John Petrucci would appear twice) who would steer the footage for that section. They might take the film crew on a tour, show off their gear or just answer questions. There would be certain common questions asked such as what they liked or thought about playing in that specific country, what they looked forward to eating while they’re there, and if they have any special ritual before going on stage. Each section would also feature a complete song from each show, which Mike determined for the most part beforehand based on songs that have not yet been available on DVD. Another set question would relate to that song, with each band member talking about what it meant to them.

Mike personally volunteered to do the interview for Voices UK. We were in a special position as London was, of course, a ‘two night stand’ with DT’s cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon planned for the second night. Naturally it made sense to cover this and Mike was enthusiastic to be the one to talk about it. Furthermore, it was confirmed that we would be allowed to include The Spirit Carries On as our full track, something made “especially special” by the fact that vocalist Theresa Thomason herself would be there to provide her gospel talents, as she did on the Live Scenes from New York performance.

Being as we were being asked to be part of a DVD project we decided to tap our resources. Kasper Kristensen is a good personal friend of ours (he even filmed our wedding exactly a year before!). For those who don’t know him, he is the Danish filmmaker responsible for the live action story footage from Live Scenes, in which he also starred as the character Julian. Being known and trusted by DT as well as an experienced filmmaker he seemed the ideal ‘man for the job’ to make vUK’s contribution become a reality! Kasper was very keen to be part of the project and immediately started making plans.

The whole operation was carefully planned with production manager Ray Amico, tour manager Rikk Feulner and Mike in the weeks beforehand, with interviews with Mike, Jordan and Ray (the first for the DVD, the others for the fanzine) organized in and around facilitating the video shoot. However, all this was nearly undone...

On Monday 17th October, exactly one week before DT’s first UK gig of 2005 and five days before Kasper was flying in, both of us had been forced home from work and ended up in bed with full-blown flu. Both feverish but feeling so cold, we had all the blankets we could find piled on top of us. Richard said ‘do you think we’re going to be well “enough for DT?”

One week, much soup and many tablets later we had managed to make some degree of recovery. The fever was finally gone by the time we collected Kasper from Birmingham Airport on Saturday 22nd October, although by the end of the John Petrucci guitar clinic the following day, we were feeling pretty exhausted. A very early night helped and first thing on Monday we set out to Hammersmith with the excitement to keep us going!

The DVD project was actually filmed over two days. Although the primary shoot was the DSOTM show on Tuesday, we had been granted permission to cover the set-up on Monday and were also going to be shadowing Ray to get an idea of how the production comes together prior to interviewing him. Consequently, we arrived at the Apollo at 8am on the Monday morning to film the load-in, meeting up with Kasper and Tom Manning, Voices UK co-founder and webmaster who had both stayed at Tom’s parents’ house outside London after the guitar clinic.

First thing we noticed (as did Ray) was a certain common and unfortunate mis-spelling! On the front of the venue the sign read ‘An Evening with Dream Theatre’. It was literally the first thing Ray took to dealing with. He told us it clearly states in DT’s rider that Theater must be spelt correctly and the band hate to see it wrong. The venue promised to get the situation rectified ASAP! This was not before it gave Kasper an idea for the intro to our section of the DVD – more on this later.

As we filmed load-in, Ray explained to us that there are two key things that must get set up first, catering and the production office. Once these are in position – so the show can be run and everyone fed – everything else starts to come together.

With the catering and production office gear unloaded and in place the focus rapidly shifted to the stage set-up. After shooting some basic unloading footage, Kasper set up a time lapse camera at the front of the Apollo’s balcony to capture the entire stage rig assembly. This was set to shoot a half second at thirty second intervals for approximately six hours. The results were then sped up in playback and can now be seen at the beginning of our section of the DVD lasting for only a few seconds in total.

Along with “Eagle Eye Al” Muirden and his brother-in-law Robbie Crawford, we had full access to the stage during set up. Robbie and Al were photographing Mike’s new tech Eric Disrude setting up the Albino Monster and later interviewed both him and Mike for all the little details and changes in the new kit (for these, see the Octavaridrums article in this issue).

That’s where the DVD starts to get a bit clever! Although it seamlessly flows together in our 20 minute section, filming then actually stopped for 24 hours! Much of the rest of the day was taken up with Kasper’s planning for the second night and our featured interview with Jordan. We then all got to enjoy the show that night without all the pressure that would come with the following evening’s plans!

October 25th arrived. It began with us waiting for the mid-morning arrival of Asger Norskov Bak and Christophe Dolcerocca, who would be manning two of the six cameras that we would have available for the shoot. They flew in from Denmark first thing on Tuesday specifically for the evening’s shoot. To quote Kasper: “I know Asger and Christophe from the University of Copenhagen where we all study film. They’re great guys and very easy to work with.”

“Asger is the one who filmed my two newest short-films, Surprise and Jackpot, which can be seen on my site, www.eyelight.dk (shameless plug – Ed.!). Christophe and I had actually never worked together professionally but I’d seen some of his previous work and had great faith in his abilities.”

We loaded up with everybody’s bags, Kasper’s gear and the extra equipment Christophe and Asger had brought with them and took that to the venue; meanwhile the pair of them and Kasper hopped on the tube to Hammersmith (a minibus would have been useful at this point instead of Kerry’s Nissan Micra!)

Around lunchtime, we conducted the interview with Ray (featured in this issue) while Kasper coordinated with Asger, Christophe and Tom, who would be behind one of the two balcony cameras.

The two of us and Tom then vacated the Apollo for the duration of soundcheck (these are largely closed sessions) and rook a camera to the Voices UK pre-gig pub meet at the William Morris where we hung out for a while and shot some additional footage for the DVD. We then went back to our car outside the Apollo and caught a little sleep while we awaited the “all clear” phone call from Ray to tell us that it was time to come back in to conduct the DVD interview with Mike before the final build-up to the show.

As can be seen in the DVD, the interview was shot on the Apollo’s balcony, overlooking the stage, something that had been Mike’s idea. He talked very extensively and was very patient at having to be constantly interrupted with Kerry’s coughing – although he warned us not to give him “bird flu” to take back to his family as an end of tour present!

In terms of the interview content, we had decided beforehand that beyond the “set” questions mentioned earlier, we would focus on DSOTM, talking about, amongst other things, what that album meant to Mike, why he had chosen it and about DT’s interpretation of it, as well as about the special guest performers that night, Theresa and Norbert Stachel (saxophonist for the Roger Waters Band. We knew that we would be featuring The Spirit Carries On, but it was also likely that we would have some coverage of the DSOTM performance as we were filming the whole show, so it was worthwhile exploring that as the central theme of the interview. Mike would not tell us beforehand which song from the album we would be able to feature though – we believe this was because he wanted to choose this based on what he had been especially pleased by during the show.

The interview was shot with two cameras; Kasper filming straight on and Asger the stylish black and white footage from a side angle. Kerry asked the fan club prescribed DVD questions and Richard the more in-depth ones. We were very happy with the outcome, both in content (the fan club DVD only features a small segment of the full interview) and in a visual sense: during the interview, Bert Baldwin, DT’s video and lighting director was playing with the lighting and the animated Octavarium cover video, which ended up looking particularly cool in the background.

And so to the main event: Voicee Neil Wood (“Woodee”) would be manning the remaining camera from our set-up (the sixth camera was DT’s own house camera, used more commonly for the band close-ups seen on the big screens). We had asked Neil on Monday if he would be interested in filming for us – he had been an obvious choice, having been the creator of the DVD of the first Voices UK meet-up in 2004. He joined us in the Apollo after we finished filming the interview with Mike and despite looking slight awed by the situation he found himself in, setup next to Bert and quickly got down to business. In terms of the positioning of the other cameras, Tom and Christophe manned the balcony cameras, Asger a camera to the front of stage left, while Kasper moved around the stage, mainly covering Mike and Jordan.

As mentioned, the show was shot in its entirety, with the first set mainly serving as a “dry run” for the principal shooting of the second set from which we would draw our fan club DVD material. The intermission served as a point to regroup and check that everything was proceeding okay. Show audio was recorded by a studio truck that the band had hired for that night. Overall, the filming went pretty smoothly, capturing more than enough elements to make for a very fine addition to the DVD.

Of course, those present at Voices UK’s first official meet-and-greet after the concert know that this wasn’t the end of filming either – Kasper captured more than enough footage of the gathered Voicees to mean that some people are going to have something to show their grandchildren in years to come!!

By the end of the evening, both of us, Tom and Kasper were all pretty spent – but no rest for the wicked as we left the aftershow, gathered the gear together, put Asger and Christophe in a taxi to their hotel (they were flying home in the morning) and drove 120 miles north to Derby where we collapsed into bed at Kerry’s parents’ house (we were beginning to get some idea of what the long days and late nights on tour for a band like DT must feel like).

It wasn’t until after the Wolverhampton gig the following night that Money was decided upon as the DSOTM song from which we could include a section to give people a flavour of the performance. We also shot our finishing touch to the Voices segment that night: Mike’s “WTF Tony!!” reaction to the spelling error on the front of the Apollo on Monday morning. Kasper had come up with the idea to transition between the wrongly spelt sign to the corrected version, but needed some sort of connecting comment or reaction from Mike and we had forgotten to shoot this on Tuesday. Mike’s hilarious performance is apparently an in-joke within the band and was certainly perfect for the job. It was also the last time Kasper would have to shoulder a camera on the project – a good thing as by Wednesday night, his arm was so tired from controlling the steadicam that he could hardly lift it!

And so, our adventure was finally over. Exhausted, the four of us piled back into Kerry’s trusty Micra and headed to another temporary home – Kerry’s grandparents’ house a 20 minute drive from Wolverhampton. Thursday morning, we went our separate ways, the two of us back to Manchester, while Tom dropped Kasper to Birmingham Airport, so he could get home to Copenhagen and start editing!

In total, 1200 minutes of raw widescreen footage were shot from the six cameras across the two full sets and encore. Kasper spent a total of twelve hours editing the 24 minute Voices UK section together.

Kasper: “I choose to do it in widescreen because I like the possibilities of “imbalance” that the format gives: for example, having John Petrucci in full view off to the right and seeing the audience to the left, or superimposing Mike on the left and James LaBrie on the right. Also, the Apollo stage is wide so it makes for some great views of the whole stage without blanks at the top or bottom of the screen in wide shots.”

Each fan club edited their chapters and then sent them along with the digital fan club logos that introduce each chapter to Sebastian Beloch, a friend of the staff of The Mirror. He was responsible for editing the whole DVD together along with creating and animating the menus. The completed DVD was then sent to Norway for pressing, as well as production of the insert and booklet. These were designed by Kim-Arthur Sakariassen (“Noxon”), who also coordinated the entire DVD project. The insert and booklet features photos by both of us as well as long-time German DT photographer Darko Böhringer. We had to pay hard copyright charges for every second of published music we featured. To aid with keeping our costs down and to increase the unique nature of the DVD, Jordan agreed to write some original music for us to use in the menu section.

And there you have it – the end product of many months of work and coordination between a lot of different people in five countries (six if you include our imported Danish cameramen!).

As our particular contribution had been primarily organisational, we had it relatively easy compared to those actually filming in that once the lights went down we could just concentrate on enjoying the show. Those behind the cameras (not just in London but across Europe) deserve all our thanks for what they achieved as do people such as Sebastian and Kim for the very hard work they put into translating the project’s separate elements into a unified whole. The band and also Ray and Rikk deserve special thanks for having been supportive and giving their time to us so generously.

Hopefully you will all be enjoying watching this DVD as much as we enjoyed the process of filming it and putting it together – stressful at times but worth it to see the outcome.