Nine Inch Nails Wants You! (To Make Its Videos For Free!)
Pinned to his La-Z-Boy by the money bags recently delivered in the self-distribution triumph that is Nine Inch Nails' latest album Ghosts I-IV — "800,000 transactions in its first week, totaling $1.6 million in revenues," according to Reuters — helpless leader Trent Reznor apparently has little to do but watch online video until his bandmates dig him out. There will be no Dakota Fanning ogling for Reznor, however, who's now soliciting movies from fans for the "Ghosts Film Festival":
The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual "film festival" with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.
Don't get your hopes up for prize hardware or other material glory, Reznor adds; the most you can win is some schlubby YouTube love and maybe, if you're lucky, a spot in the backdrop at a one-time-only NIN performance of Ghosts. But the more ambitious among you can always take solace in your role as a grass-roots shill pushing the phenomenon as far into the dyed black as it can go, with only a couple hundred grainy cell-phone movies, some musty, goth-chick nostalgia and Mark Romanek's all-time great "Closer" video standing between you and cinematic immortality. Or you could always, you know, just watchalong with the rest of us. We're just saying.