It was years ago when people used to play “The Dark Side of the Moon” and watch “The Wizard of Oz” to see how the music matched with the movie. There were some curious matches, but nothing spectacular. I wondered what would happen with a darker movie. I thought about the old silent movie “METROPOLIS”, a story of the upper class that lived on the surface of the planet and the oppressed that worked and lived underground. It was a good candidate for the project I was going to attempt.

   It was 1998 when I went to the library for a copy of the movie, and got a couple of my favorite “Pink Floyd” albums that I had on cassette tape. I hooked up two VCR’s and a cassette player. With one VCR playing the movie, and the cassette player playing the sound, both were plugged into the recording VCR. I started the first audio tape and movie and let them play. When an audio tape finished, I switched to the next one without interrupting the movie. When it was finished, I was astounded at what had gone together. The music intertwined with the movie as if by magic. The words on the screen would many times hold the same meaning as the lyrics to the music. There were times when it seemed the actors were singing and dancing to the songs, and most scenes would start and end perfectly with individual tunes. My jaw dropped as the movie seemed to come alive and grow more intense with coincidence. Soon, it became apparent that there was something here that went way beyond mere chance. When the song “Welcome to the Machine” was playing, the scene of the movie took on amazing meaning that was completely unexpected, and yet perfectly fit with amazing accuracy. The film continued to increase in its complexity of interaction between the soundtrack and the movie. It seemed supernatural with its hundreds of little micro bits of coincidence, pulling the film ever tighter in its amalgamation, as if it was becoming alive.

   Because of the sound quality of the tapes, I was going to try again, this time with CD’s, so I could get a better soundtrack, but when I tried it this way, it would not fit together. The reason was that the tapes were copied from one cassette player to another, and with the slightest difference in motor speed, the speed of the music was changed just enough to fit the movie. This meant that I was the only person who possessed the elements that would make this movie fit perfectly with the music.