h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What was the Pink Floyd song that matched up with the start of the Wizad of Oz? Anyone know what I'm talking about? No?

Great.

Just start up Dark Side of th Moon. The whole album goes right along with the film.

In school one of my teachers taught a section on Pink Floyd. It was a great class. You wont find many teachers who will blare The Wall at 9:00am in the morning. Unfortunately that man was fired for making porno films in his spare time(notwith the studens). But that is another story.

I was on a camp once where they played a Pink Floyd song with bells and chainsaws and stuff at the start and ran around sticking chainsaws in our tents to wake us up...very weird experience

The trick to get the music to sync with the movie is to start the CD when the lion roars the second time in the opening MGM title. It's a very cool trick. I did it once. The most amazing part is when Dorothy gets to the Emerald City and she pulls the bell, at the same time on Dark Side there's a big gong sound. This is more fun when under the influence, tho.

So it doesn't bother anyone that the album finishes long before the movie does?

Set your CD player on repeat. The movie and the album will continue to sync, though not nearly as well as they do in the first half.

I think the tornado is the coolest part. myself. I don't think any soundtrack could have scored that scene better.

If you are drunk enough you wont realy mind that the album end early....and if your'e a good researcher you'll already be unconcious.

I thought you had to start it when the lion closed its mouth for the third time.

While I've watched/lisened to this numerous times I have always started on the lions THIRD roar and that seems to be fine, although it's not something that I've ever done when sober...
I have heard Douglas Adams himself dismiss this as a massive coincidence, but I don't know...

Well, given that Douglas and Dave Gilmour are good friends, he's at least in a position to know the official answer.

I'm curious - before CDs, what happened to the side break? And the album was released in 1973 - way before VCRs became available - so if you wanted to do this at all, you'd have to wait for the movie to be played on TV, and either have two record decks synced up, or be *really* smooth at changing sides. So if this is an experience the members of Pink Floyd imagined people would want to replicate, woulodn't they have stopped at an appropriate place in the movie, given a minute or two to change the record over, then start over again at a particular point?

Unless you're suggesting that Pink Floyd were so prescient that they forsaw the invention of CDs and VCRs.

Of course, maybe it's not a giant coincidence, and Pink Floyd routinely recorded their albums to be played alongside their favourite movies.

They certainly think so at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Amphitheatre/3528/

But then all these rock musicians have massive country pads with private cinemas and state of the art music systems. You could do this if you had the movie on film and two copies of the album fired up and ready to go (or the album on a massive loop).

Of course, what no one seems to have noticed is the slight frame difference between film and video (and between US & UK). UK TV, video, DVD etc play at 24 frames per second and US TV, etc. play at 30 frames per second. I believe that film is 25 frames. UK Video releases of films don't bother to compensate for this and, in consequence, UK versions run approx. 4% faster than film. US video releases have a bigger gap to get around, so they do compensate and, therefore, run the same length and speed as the film release.

What this all goes to show is that if it was designed to work with the celluloid version of the film, then you would expect to see a drift when playing against the UK version on video. Do you?

(There's a proper explanation of the technical stuff somewhere on dvdrumble [Broken link removed by Moderator]

Oh, BTW, as I was writing that syuff about country pads, I couldn't help thinking of Espedair Street by Iain Banks. A great novel on the subject of larger than life rock stars, IMO.