Closure

Halo 12 - Closure
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Closure (also known as Halo 12) is a double VHS video set released on November 25, 1997. The first tape is a documentary of the Self-Destruct Tour, and the second tape is a compilation of music videos that had been created up to that point.

According to Russell Mills, who created the artwork, a live album was also planned as a companion to Closure and artwork was made for it, but the idea was scrapped. The unused paintings can be seen here.

Video listing

Part 1 VHS artwork

Part 1

Part 1 shows live and behind-the-scenes footage from the Self-Destruct Tour. The titles in brackets were given to those portions when Closure was authored for DVD.

(00:00) [introduction]
(03:17) "Terrible Lie"
(08:33) [preparation]
(13:10) "Piggy"
(17:25) "Down In It"
(21:45) [complication]
(25:52) "March Of The Pigs"
(29:48) [peregrination]
(31:21) [exhibition]
(33:27) "The Only Time"
(38:49) [chaos]
(43:57) [congregation]
(46:01) "Wish"
(49:40) [miscellany]
(54:26) "Hurt" (with David Bowie)
(60:15) [diversion]
(62:06) "Something I Can Never Have"
(68:23) [conclusion]
(71:27) [credits]

Additional items are included on the DVD version:

Appendage (newly discovered footage, 1989-1997)
Stills gallery
Easter eggs (accessed by pressing return on the respective menus)
- Live clip of NIN performing "Down In It" at Dance Party USA (accessible from main menu)
- Live clip of NIN performing "Sex Dwarf" (accessible from extras menu)

Appendage

- (00:06) MTV News dressing room interview, Reznor and Richard Patrick
- (00:29) Live snippet of "Get Down, Make Love"
- (00:45) (cont'd) MTV News dress room interview, Reznor and Patrick
- (00:56) Live snippet of "Sin"
- (01:17) MTV interview clip, Lollapallooza '91 opening night
- (01:43) Live footage: "Now I'm Nothing"
- (03:42) (cont'd) Live footage: "Terrible Lie"
- (08:57) MTV News interview, Reznor explains Phoenix Lollapalooza technical difficulties
- (10:01) Live snippet of "Sin"
- (10:20) MTV News dressing room interview, Reznor
First live show. Cleveland, 1989.
- (10:52) Live footage: "Sanctified"
- (14:06) MTV Lollapallooza interview, Reznor discusses large vs. small venues
- (14:15) Live snippet of "Down In It"
- (14:44) Lollapallooza Phoenix interview: Punishing equipment
- (14:57) (cont'd) Live snippet of "Down In It"
- (15:33) Band rehearses "Big Man with a Gun"
- (16:54) Montage of live footage set to "Mr. Self Destruct"
- (17:15) Live footage: "March of the Pigs"
- (17:31) Keyboard destruction
- (17:37) Live footage: "Get Down, Make Love"
Hurt. 1994.
- (19:15) Behind-the-scenes of scrapped "Hurt" video
Woodstock. 1994.
- (22:50) Live footage: Introduction and "Reptile"
- (29:49) Band in studio listen to prank phone sex call, ending with mix into "Memorabilia"
- (31:37) Live: Reznor plays a keyboard solo from "Happiness In Slavery"
- (32:46) Alternate "March of the Pigs" video
- (34:17) Live: "Mr. Self Destruct"
- (36:25) Reznor and Danny Lohner go over chord changes for Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf" cover
- (37:27) Live snippet of "Closer"
- (37:43) Live: Stage crew Stonehenge prank during "Wish"
- (38:25) Live: "Big Man with a Gun" filmed from offstage
- (40:22) Someone does a trick with their eyes
- (40:26) Snippet of alternate "March of the Pigs" video
- (40:44) "The Perfect Drug" video behind-the-scenes
- (42:50) Woodstock '94 footage: "Something I Can Never Have"

Part 2 VHS artwork

Part 2

Part 2 shows the music videos, in order, that were released up to the point of the release of Closure. The videos are linked together by interstitial footage directed by Peter Christopherson, as well as odd bits of old black and white stock footage.

"Head Like A Hole" – 4:31
"Sin" – 2:11
"Down In It" – 3:50
"Pinion" – 1:16
"Wish" – 3:42
"Help Me I Am In Hell" – 2:03
"Happiness In Slavery" – 4:48
"Gave Up" – 4:27
"March of the Pigs" – 3:03
"Eraser (live)" – 4:23
"Hurt (live)" – 5:10
"Wish (live)" – 3:49
"Closer" – 4:36
"The Perfect Drug" – 4:13

Additional items are included on the DVD version:

Behind-the-scenes footage documenting the creation of the "Closer" video with commentary by Mark Romanek
Easter egg clip of British Airways cabin crew listening to "The Downward Spiral" and reading the lyrics to "Reptile" from its booklet.

DVD

An improved DVD version was first announced to be released in late 2004, but due to issues with Interscope Records, this has yet to happen. On December 20, 2006, two DVDs of Closure were leaked through the use of BitTorrent. Shortly after the leak, a message on Trent Reznor's personal blog on The Spiral was posted possibly linking Reznor himself to the leak:

    12/21/2006 : HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
    This one is a guilt-free download.
    (shhhh - I didn't say that out loud).
    If you know what I'm talking about, cool.

The download is intended to be burned onto dual-layer discs. A single-layer version was eventually supposed to be uploaded, but it never materialized. Closure: Part 1 and all of the bonus material from both parts of the DVD version have been uploaded to the official Nine Inch Nails Vimeo account. As was the case with the And All That Could Have Been DVD, the menus are accompanied by several different dark ambient music pieces recorded specifically for them.

Several years before this higher quality DVD was leaked, a bootleg DVD version of the original VHS titled "Rated 'R' - A Retrospective" was spread around. Aside from the main menus which were fan-created, it is virtually identical to Closure.

Credits

Executive Producer: John A. Malm, Jr., Nothing Records, Inc.

This project was made possible through the efforts of: Jeff Anderson, Gretchen Anderson, Steve Berman, Jennifer Carpenter, Diane Mayer, Brian Pollack, Ross Rosen, Dawn Zillich, Sioux Zimmerman

Package by Gary Talpas
All Paintings by Russell Mills
Photography by Andrew Morris

Part 1:

Directed by: Jonathan Rach
Concept: Trent Reznor
Produced by: Adam Stern for Acme Filmworks, Inc.
Additional Footage Directed by: Jeff Richter
Director of Photography: Jonathan Rach
Supervising Editor: Jeff Richter
Editors: Will Godby, Chris Osterhus, Jonathan Rach, Scott Richter, David "Sketch" Sketchley
Editorial Assistants: Michael Bouchet, Brian Boyd, Tracey Browne, Frank Lagnese
Production Manager: D'arcy Mastrangelo

Nine Inch Nails: Charlie Clouser, Robin Finck, Danny Lohner, Trent Reznor, Chris Vrenna, James Woolley

Thanks to Nine Inch Nails' Special Guests: Die Krupps, Fem2Fem, Hole, Marilyn Manson, Melvins, Pig, Pop Will Eat Itself, Prick, The Jim Rose Circus, Treponem Pal, Type O Negative

Part 2:

Director (for the overall collection): Peter Christopherson
Producer: Fiz Oliver
Cameraman: Simon Archer
Editor: Peter Christopherson & Scott Richter
Production Design: Mike Grant

Special Thanks: Jeff Anderson, Steve Berman, David Bowie, Ann Brubaker, Paul Conolly, Hank Corwin, Sheria Reise Davies, Renee Dodson, James Dowdall, Erin Gilligan, David Johnson, Sam Kirby, Bob Kubic, David Lynch, Diane Mayer, Lynn McDonnell, Jacqueline McPherson, Tina Montalbano, Fiz Oliver, Michael Papale, Brian Pollack, Cordelia Plunket, Rodney Robertson, Brenda Romano, Jay Sendyk, Adam Stern, Oliver Stone, Mary Sweeney, Rick Szekelyi

Original live footage

The original live document of NIN's 1994-1995 tour was to be helmed by Simon Maxwell, director of the videos for "Hurt", "Eraser" and the live video for "Wish". The footage was eventually rejected and footage that had been shot concurrently by Jonathan Rach and Jeff Richter was compiled instead. Maxwell expounded on this in an interview [1]:

SM: "Yeah. I shot all this footage. This is a really funny story, actually. We shot all this footage, and put it all together, and sent it over to Trent, and.... I don’t know what was going on. But anyway… he didn’t like some of it. For various reasons. I have no idea why. So we cut three or four of the songs, and they were okay, and then… we didn’t hear from him anymore.

DF: So to clarify, you were cutting songs from the tour, not from that studio shoot in New York you did [for 'Hurt']?

SM: From the live tour. We were going to do a whole live thing. So we shot all across the States. And we recut it several times, and then there was – I’m not sure if there was a falling out between management – with him and Interscope? There was some politics going on in the background. And so, yeah, that was probably the last time I saw him.

DF: So he said 'no' to that stuff you’d shot with a million cameras.

SM: Well, it was the editing side of it. Because it was such a huge thing, we had three or four editors working on it just to get through it all. So from memory, there were three or four songs that worked really well, but some of the others.... I dunno.

DF: So from there, you all decided to cut it back and make it much simpler, and we have the ‘Hurt’ video we know today?

SM: Well that was done earlier. That was done about six or eight months earlier. Then Trent wanted a documentary-style thing of the tour. So we shot loads for footage of the tour. We had 35mm cameras on the main performance, and then Super 8s on the audience. There was reams and reams of footage. And from what I remember, someone stole all the Super 8 footage! It just disappeared. It was shot all over the country in the States, then it was shipped to LA and then it was shipped back to England. When we came to put it all together, a lot of the Super 8 footage had disappeared. I knew we had it – I had seen the rolls of film – but when we came to put it together – you know, we had these rolls sitting next to the telecine machine - I am going, 'Where the fuck is all the Super 8?' Because that was the idea, capturing the essence of the whole gig on Super 8, and intercutting it with the high production, 35mm stuff. But – it disappeared!

DF: How weird.

SM: That kind of put a spanner in the works, and we were really short on that footage. It’s not something you can go back and repeat again. So yeah, that did cause a problem. And we didn’t reshoot anything as the tour had finished."

External Links

Discography

Previous release - "The Perfect Drug"

Halo number: 12

Next release - "The Day The World Went Away"