Turin.  Production rehearsals.

Our final day of rehearsals was remarkably civilised, having had a good dress rehearsal yesterday.  There were some technical fixes needed, largely in getting from one song to the next, but these we sorted out.  The band concentrated on the new songs as naturally these are the most likely to be under-rehearsed.

Team Content was still tweaking video sequences until the eleventh hour but this has yielded some very nice new elements.  Tom Krueger shot a bold new piece for Mysterious Ways featuring a dancer (of course!) who seems to be reaching for and clawing at the band's on-screen camera images.  It's clever, sensual and humorous all at the same time which is quite an achievement.   Luke's reworking of the Unforgettable Fire sequence uses abstractions from CERN imagery, whilst Run Wrake has been working with the Eadweard Muybridge images of a buffalo and has produced a beautiful piece.  I've long observed that even though we plan many of these things far in advance, there is still an enormous amount of the act of creation that can't fully kick in until we are on site at rehearsals.  It's only then that everything become entirely clear.

We had an earlier sound curfew tonight, in exchange for an extension last night, and no-one was really in the mood to hang around unnecessarily.  I had quite a few chores to finish but actually made it back to the Hotel Fabulous before the bar closed which was a first.  Chat, a few drinks... here we go.