The manufacturing of MOUTHPIECE’s “Can’t Kill What’s Inside”

An amazing video of a manufacturing process of MOUTHPIECE‘s “Can’t Kill What’s Inside” has been made available.

Here’s the author’s word:

When the Mouthpiece discography was getting to close to going into production I wasn’t working there but I pitched the idea to Jordan that we should film the production process and make a web clip out of it. He was into the idea and he agreed that people would probably enjoy seeing the steps in how a record was made.

Jordan emailed all the companies he uses for vinyl production and everyone agreed to let us film and we scheduled the days they had opening in their production schedule for us to hand deliver the recording.

A couple of weeks later Jordan had the master recording and completed artwork files from Mouthpiece and things happened pretty quick. The artwork files for the LP jackets, inserts and labels were sent off to the printers and it’s one of the only steps of the process we didn’t get to see in person.

A few days later Jordan and I met at Rev and left Orange County at 8am and drove up to North Hollywood to Dorado Press. We got there around 10am and the jackets and inserts were already printed so all we got to see and film was the folding and gluing of the covers which you see in the video. It was really cool to see and I got to take an unfolded, unglued cover for a souvenir. We stayed for the entire run of covers being folded and boxed up and we took them with us to deliver to Rainbo Records were the record was going to be pressed.

We left Dorado Press and headed to the mastering studio (with master recording in hand) which was called AcousTech Mastering Camarillo, CA. I shot video as Jordan asked Kevin Grey questions on the mastering process and you get the basic outline of how the music gets onto the lacquer and how they decided on the space and depth of the grooves in the record during the extended credits section. I think this was by far the most interesting part of the process and could have pretty much been a video in it’s own right. A couple of hours later the lacquers for both sides were finished and we were off to Rainbo Records.

We drove to Rainbo Records in Commerce, CA with the lacquers, jackets and inserts and delivered them ourselves. We were escorted to the back where the lacquers were washed and sprayed with a variety of chemicals and then set in a nickel bath for 24 hours. We faked the part of the video where the lacquers come out of the bath 24 hours later. We were only there for the one day and what I filmed was some other record coming out of the bath and being cracked open to reveal the two sides. That’s called movie magic folks.

Jordan and I said our goodbyes and split to Beverly Hills for some pizza. The next day your lacquers came out of the nickel bath and set up to press up the test pressings. Those were mailed to Rev and then to you guys for approval. After you guys approved them, Rainbo was notified and the pressing job was put into their production schedule. When they knew the date of pressing Jordan and I drove back up to film it. We got to see the labels come out of the baking oven that removes the moisture so there aren’t any air bubbles under the labels once they are pressed onto the record. Something I had no idea was done. After that it was straight over to the pressing machine to see the black vinyl being pressed.

Before the entire pressing was completed, we took about 25 copies over the the assembly area of Rainbo. The vinyl and inserts were assembled by hand which kind caught me by surprise. I figured some type of machine would do that. Then the fully assembled copies were taken over the the shrink wrap machine and thats what you see in the video. The white vinyl copies were pressed on a different machine that we didn’t get to see. The white vinyl and full black vinyl pressing were assembled and shrink wrapped when they were completed and then shipped down to Revelation.

I thought this would be a quick and easy video to bang out. When loading the footage into the computer to edit I discovered most of the audio turned out really bad due to the loud background noise at these factories. Everyone explained the processes of manufacturing while they were working so I could have informative audio to go along with the visuals but most of it was so hard to hear it was getting frustrating to edit. I got a rough cut going of how I was originally envisioning the video but later abandoned the project out of audio frustration and just got busy with other stuff.

Jordan later enlisted the help of an intern, Vincent C. Garcia, to work on the video and he helped get an edit going. I later reviewed the video and the audio was still a mojor concern. Recently, I’ve been going into Rev to help with some ideas and do a bit of behind the scenes work for the upcoming Revelation Records 25th Anniversary shows and I figured I better start with finishing this video because it’s been hanging over my head for 2 years. I started from scratch with a “music video” styled edit. Just visuals and music. That’s pretty much what you get in the video and then Jordan suggested we add in a bit more of footage at the end with some of the clips which has good audio to make it a bit more informative to the whole process. So I created the extended credits idea to include with the extra footage at the end.

So there you have it. Hope you guys like it and I’m sorry it took two years.