Year Zero Trailer
The trailer for Year Zero has been uploaded. It can be viewed in high-res and lo-res. A description of the video follows:
The shot appears to be taken looking out through the window of kind of vehicle (due to the speed) travelling in a desert-like area. About 5.4 seconds into it, a blue sign flashes by, which, when viewed frame by frame can be seen to read
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referencing, of course, I Am Trying To Believe.
At this point, the audio (formerly just slight road noise) changes to a high pitched noise. At 11.4 seconds (or about there), there is a loud thump and the camera begins to shake and swings backwards, where there is clearly a Presence Hand. This is visible (shakily, with a lot of static) for about 4 seconds. During this distortion, at frame 24 of the 12th second, the text "/0024" can be seen (it is inside the second black bar that appears on the screen). The screen then fades black and the words "Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero" appear, fade, and "4.17.07" shows up, fades, and "www.NIN.com" fades in. All three screens of text seem to have "tracking issues" with the words having a shaking ghost-like image behind them.
Production
Rob Sheridan writes [1]:
The idea for the trailer came about with Trent while we were on a long bus ride through Spain on the NIN 2007 tour. The landscape we happened to be passing through was perfect for the idea of a sighting caught on camera accidentally by someone filming out a car window. We filmed it out the tour bus window with a little digital camera to give the “home movie” look, and I added The Presence visual effects frame by frame, as well as the text on the sign that passes by, a hidden clue for the Year Zero ARG experience. Then I added the static/glitching effects and the title animation while Trent and Atticus Ross designed the sound. The trailer took two days from concept to posting, created on laptops while on the tour bus. A real case of creative lightning striking.
Sheridan writes more extensively about the trailer on his Patreon: In-Depth: The Year Zero trailer, 15 years later