Building the Doomsday Machine from "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" - Part I: Wooden Structures

Next month, our local Community Theater will be performing "The Pink Panther Strikes Again". In case you don't remember (... I never remember which title matches which plot in the Pink Panther series), this is the one in which Dreyfus threatens to destroy the world with the Doomsday Machine shown in the picture.

A group of  artists has already painted beautiful set pieces, and I volunteered to build the Doomsday Machine. Based on my experience from building movie props, like the Flux Capacitor, or the HAL 9000 computer, I think I will be able to build an Arduino- and Raspberry Pi-based prop that will exceed the expectations. The play is in four weeks, so I have about two weeks to finish this.

Plans

Everything starts with a plan. In discussions with the director, we decided that the Doomsday Machine should have a height of about 6 feet. For the theater play, given the time and budget constraints, it is not possible to build a decent replica of the machine from the movie. On the other hand this is also not required. From my point of view, it just has to be impressive in size (a sized of six ft should do that) and in terms of the light effects. If there are enough lights, then programming the different patterns should take care of that. While the machine is supposed to make hums and other sounds, this be be done by the theater sound person - so the machine itself does not need any audio capabilities.

My initial sketch shows a design that is roughly based on the shape as seen in the movie. It is made of three parts: The bottom ("base") has an octagonal structure (everything SciFi is octagonal, right?), the center piece is a rather simple box, and the top piece ("laser gun") is a cylinder with some add-ons. The center piece holds a computer monitor plus switches and LEDs (controlled by an Arduino). The laser gun has a few (maybe 5-8) vertical LED strips. When these are illuminated in steps, from left to right, it gives the feeling that the laser is being fired. I still have a computer monitor lying around that I bought for 4 bucks at a Thrift Store. This is connected to a Raspberry Pi, and simply showing some images that one would expect to see on a computer screen in a SciFi movie. The LEDs on the center piece will blink in various patterns, indicating (a la Star Trek) that the computer is operating.

Main Structure for the Base

[Sun, Sept. 15]  A little geometry helps to figure out the relation of eight side pieces and the width of the octagons for the base.

A little more geometry is needed to determine (for a given height) the length and the angle of the connections between the lower and upper platforms of the base. For a total height of 26", the side pieces should be 26 1/4" long, and cut at an angle of 8.5 degrees.

And these are all pieces that need to be cut for the base.

From Lowe's, I got a few pine boards 3/4" x 12", 4 ft long, and a large 4ft x 8ft sheet of 3/16" plywood. The pine boards are cut into strips of 3/4" x 1 1/2",

and (at 22.5 deg angles) into the appropriate lengths (13" and 10") for the lower and upper levels of the base.

The plywood is cut into octagonal shape,

 and the wooden strips are glued and screwed onto the plywood.

 Finally, the vertical bars (cut at 8.5 deg angle) are glued and screwed to connect the bottom and upper levels.

This is the result: it is 26" tall, 31" wide at the bottom and 24" wide at the top. It is stable enough to hold the expected weight. The open areas will later be covered with corrugated cardboard (I get this from Sam's Club). It only needs to look good from a distance, and the cardboard keeps the weight small. The cardboard will be painted and decorated with various items.

Main Structure for the Center Piece

[Tue, Sept 17] The center piece is a simple box that will hold all of the input/output elements. The basic structure is a frame.

This center piece is 25" tall, 21" wide and 12" deep.

The sides will be made of plywood pieces that are glued/screwed to this frame. The front side has all the openings for the computer monitor, the LED lights, the switches, and a joystick. These are made using a laser cutter.

Main Structure for the Laser Gun

 [Wed, Sept 18] Like the original prop, doomsday machine will feature a laser gun at the top. The laser gun is a cylindrical piece, with a cone at the front, and a stick pointing outwards. The cylindrical structure is based on six wheels with inner holes that will hold the stick. These wheels are cut with a laser cutter. Two of the six wheels have additional areas that are later used for mounting the laser gun on the center piece.

The wheels are connected by eight wooden bars with notches (cut on the table saw) to glue them onto the wheels.

This design was a spontaneous idea and, initially, I was skeptical if it might be hard gluing the pieces together. But it turned out to be very simple, and it came out fairly accurate.

I love how this looks like! Later, the wooden (3/8") stick will be glued to the two wheels in the front, and the whole structure will be surrounded with cardboard, glued to the wooden bars.

continue with Part II: Finishing the Enclosure and Part III: Electronics, Arduino, Raspberry Pi

Johnny Cash - bootleg CD cover artwork

In the early 2000's I had started collecting bootleg recordings more seriously. In those days, internet connections were not that fast yet, and most of the trading happened by snail mail. You contacted other traders, exchanged your trade lists by email, and agreed to a number of CDs that you would trade. And a few days later you would get your new bootleg CDs. While my main focus was on Bob Dylan, I also used these trades to explore other artists.

I had started to get into Johnny Cash in 1994 with the first of his "American Recordings" albums, produced by Rick Rubin. After trading some Johnny Cash bootlegs, I found that I wanted some nice artwork for those. I decided to make some rather simple, but still good-looking artwork, somehow adapting the style and typography of his American Recordings album covers.

These CD cover artworks were posted on a free web page, and shared with others. I did not, however, keep track of my original files. Some years later, the hosts shut the web pages down, and I thought that all of these files were lost (at least, I still had printed versions in my CD cases).

Then recently, I made a Google search for some Johnny Cash related terms, and was surprised to find some of my images in the search results. I found out that some nice individual had uploaded high-resolution versions of my cover artworks for a few CDs at http://www.bootlegzone.com. I was happy to save those, and I am sharing them here.

American Outtakes

These are the outtakes for his first "American Recordings" album, recorded in May 1994 in Rick Rubin's living room.

Glastonbury Festival - June 26, 1994

Shortly after the release of "American Recordings", Johnny Cash played at the Glastonbury Festival in England. This introduced him to new, younger audience.

Newport Folk Festival 1964

Deeply impressed by the young Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash covered "Don't think twice it's alright" at the Newport Folk Festival 1964.

Sun & Columbia Outtakes 1954-1969

... the title says it all.

How to Rip a DVD Audio Track using Free Software

Sometimes it can be helpful to have the audio track from a movie available as a computer file. This post gives a detailed description how to achieve this in two simple steps. It uses the software packages "HandBrake" and "VLC player". In an additional step, one can then edit the audio, e.g. using "Audacity". All of these three programs are free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Below, all screenshots are shown for my Kubuntu Linux system, but they should very similar for Windows and Mac.

Why would you want to rip DVD Audio?

For me, ripping audio from DVDs becomes relevant whenever I build movie props with sounds. A nice example is the HAL 9000 computer from the "2001: A Space Odyssey" movie. My HAL 9000 replica features an infrared motion sensor which triggers HAL's sound clips from the movie. The electronics is based on an Arduino micro controller connected to the DFPlayer Mini module. The latter plays mp3 files from a micro SD card (I have posted a detailed description of this player here).
While one can find many of HAL's sound clips on the the web, they are usually in rather poor quality, different files have inconsistent sound quality and volume levels, and not all of HAL's clips are available. To get the best quality, and a complete set of HAL's sound clips (which I listed here), I decided to do it myself and from scratch, as follows...

Three Steps

Starting with the DVD of the movie, it took me three steps to get all the sound clips.

1. Ripping the DVD. This creates a computer file of the movie (of approx. 1 GB size). 
2. Extracting the audio. This produces a single with all the audio from the movie.
3. Editing the audio. In this step, the individual sound clips are separated and optimized.

Ripping the DVD in HandBrake

When the DVD is inserted in the DVD drive, launch HandBrake and you should see this:

From the File menu (1), select the DVD (2). 

Now, the name of the DVD will show up (3). It will take a minute or two (depending on the disk) to read the structure of the DVD, and HandBrake will identify the titles on the disc and their chapters.

 

Usually, HandBrake selects the main movie (= the longest title) and it selects all chapters. If this is not what you want, you can change this in the "title" and "chapter" pull-down menus.
From the File menu (4), select "destination" (5). This opens the file dialog and you choose where you want the output file to be saved.

In this example, I chose my USB drive with name "Samsung USB". This is then displayed at (6). (Note: the filename is generated automatically, here "Moon.mkv". You may change this if you want)

Select the “Normal” preset, on the right, under “Presents” (I forgot to number this). 

In the "Audio" tab (7), you open the "Encoder" menu and select "Auto Passthru" (8). This means that you will get the original DVD audio file, without any degrading due to re-encoding. 

Then you press "Start" (9), wait for an hour or so ... (depending on the DVD and your computer) ... and you will find the file in the destination that you chose in (5) and (6). Now you can quit HandBrake.

Please note that this procedure was optimized to result in the best possible audio track and in a fast ripping. You should only use this for ripping Audio. If you plan to rip movies, you should search Google to find the best settings for this purpose.

Extracting the Audio in VLC Player

Here, VLC Player is used to extract the audio is extracted in “CD audio quality” with the original DVD sample rate of 48kHz. Launch VLC player

 In the "Media" pull down menu (1), select "Convert/Save" (2)

This opens a new window. In the "File" tab you select "Add" (2b) which opens the file dialog, where you select the output file from HandBrake (here: Moon.mkv) which shows up at (2c).

Pressing "Convert/Save" (2d) brings you to the "Convert" screen Where you select the profile (3) of "Audio - CD" (4). 

The selected profile shows up in field (5). Now you click "Edit selected profile" (6).

Based on the "Audio - CD" profile, everything should be set correctly - but you may want to check. In the "Encapsulation" tab, check that "WAV" (8) is selected.

In the "Audio codec" tab (9), uncheck "keep original audio track", and from the "Codec" menu select "Wav" (10).

Make sure that the "Sample Rate" is set to 48000Hz (10) - and press "Save" at the bottom.

This brings you to the next screen where you select "Browse" (11) and enter the name of the output file for the results.

Then you press "Start" (12) and may watch the progress bar while VLC is producing the audio file. This takes less than a minute. Then you have the complete file with the audio track from the DVD video. If this is all that you wanted, you're done. Have a great day!

If, however, you plan to extract individual sound clips then fire up Audacity and continue reading... 

Editing the Audio in Audacity

Audacity is an incredibly powerful (and free!) audio editor. In the following I will show you how to use it to:

• select a piece of an audio file
• optimize the volume ("normalize")
• apply fade in/out
• save the result as mp3 file

When you open the (huge!) file in Audacity, it takes a moment for Audacity to create the waveform, and the result will look like this.

Let's say that there is a short sound clip at 7:43 minutes into the movie that you would like to edit and extract. You can mark the approximate region with the mouse,

from the "View" menu you select "Zoom to selection",

and the result will look like this.

With the mouse (point and click) you can place the cursor wherever you like, and play from the current location using the Play, Stop, Pause buttons on the top left (note: a very useful shortcut is to use the SPACE bar for Play/Stop). This way you can exactly locate the piece that you want to extract. Maybe repeat using the mark-and-zoom feature as described above, to focus on the region that you need (plus approx. one second before and after).

To normalize this piece (make sure everything is selected!), in the "Effect" menu, select "Normalize"

This brings up the "Normalize" window, in which you select the following - and press "OK".

Now that the volume level is set, it's time to do the fade-in and and fade-out, to ensure that the background noises come in (and late fade out) smoothly. You select approx. half a second before the relevant piece starts

and from he "Effect" menu select "Fade In"

and get this result:

To get a better fade-in, I would suggest to repeat this (for the same selection, do "Fade In" a second time)

Now, do the same for the "Fade Out" (appplied to approx. half a second after the end of the relevant piece)

To save the final clip, select the whole piece, from the beginning of the fade-in to the end of the fade-out piece.

In the "File" menu, select "Export Selection"

In the following "Export File" dialog you can set the filename, the file format ("MP3 Files") and, under "Options", the mp3 quality settings, e.g. like the following.

That's it. I hope this was helpful.