From 1985 to the present day The Pet Shop Boys have made some of the most iconic music videos of all time. From West End Girls, through the computer generated videos of the Very era to their most recent releases, SMASH was a celebration of their audio visual art.
Parlophone wanted to put together a collection of these videos on two blu-ray discs, but before any design or authoring could begin, there was a need to dig into the archive and find the correct and best versions of each of the promo videos.
The first step was to get a list of all the versions of the video held in the Warner Music archive and then to dig down and try and find which would be the best versions to run from. Often a couple of versions were pulled for assessment to see which would be the best source for restoration.
Never Being Boring
With the right masters found the restoration process began. At the same time the design of the menus, based on the artwork, started, mashing together various clips from different promo videos to instrumental versions of some of the Pet Shop Boys most famous hits. Once ready all the videos were encoded, authored and QC’d to make sure the discs were of the highest quality.
Always On My Mind
During the process we remembered that the BFI had previously restored the PSB film “It Couldn’t Happen Here” for release on both blu-ray and DVD. The video for the number 1 hit “Always On My Mind” featured footage from the film cut to the song. Mentioning this to the team at Warner it was decided to conform the picture from the film to the original SD music video master. After a day of working away we had the video, in a gorgeous 4K restored version ready to be encoded for the disc and uploaded on to Youtube.
SMASH is a fabulous collection of the stunning promo videos of The Pet Shop Boys, featuring all the hits lovingly restored.