A BioShock Music Project: Making some records and a record bin [Image Heavy]

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I suppose this thread will document three projects that I've been working on.

My BioShock Record Collection
The first is something that I've been doing since shortly before BioShock 2 came out. It's not really a prop so much as an introduction on why I'm doing these projects.

I've loved the music of the BioShock series and it was a bit thrilling to discover the actual records. It's almost as if Rapture had come to life.

Naturally, the most difficult parts were tracking down the original 78 rpm records. They seem to have been forgotten nowadays even with the vinyl record resurgence. The reason why I focused on them was due to the inordinate amount of phonographs scattered throughout Rapture. You can only play 78 rpm shellac records on these hand cranked machines as opposed to vinyl 33.3 rpm LPs and 45 rpm singles.

You may be more familiar with shellac records than you think. The old Tom and Jerry cartoons where records are thrown against walls? They'll shatter like plates, which highlights the inherent fragility of shellac. Vinyl would more likely bend or warp.

However, the events of BioShock 1 and 2 take place during the so-called "War of the Speeds" during the 50s and 60s. Though shellac had cornered the music market in the first-half of the 20th century (supplanting cylinder recordings) Columbia introduced the "Long-Playing" record which could hold up to 20 minutes of music per side as opposed to 2-3 minutes for shellac singles. RCA Victor countered with the 45 rpm single which was marketed for teenagers with small amounts of pocket money. Record companies during this time often made 3-speed record players to see who would win out. Eventually vinyl edged out shellac while reconciling with each other; LPs were good for soundtracks and 45s were good for cheap singles.

However, much of the music of BioShock comes slightly earlier from the 30s and 40s when shellac was still king. What's notable is that Rapture never experienced rock n' roll even during its Civil War in 1960 due to forbidden contact with the outside world. So much of BioShock's music is found on shellac singles. Amusingly, it's also possible to find original pressings available on both 78 rpm and 45 format.

I currently curate my collection at: rapturerecords.imgur.com

Of course, video games and big band and traditional pop sometimes go hand in hand and I'm making inroads to the music of Fallout, Mafia, and L.A. Noire.

I also run a blog where I take the recordings and record images and put them in context with the real world.

rapturerecords.tumblr.com

The process is still on-going, but the journey has been fascinating which has involved tracking down pseudonyms and obscure record labels as well as finding out the origins of different takes and re-recordings.


Recreating an Albert Fink's Magical Melodies Record

I was both dismayed and thrilled about the release of the new BioShock: Infinite game. I already had my work cut out for me. 60-year-old records are already hard enough to find. The game's setting in 1912 makes the records nearly 100-years-old. I've already managed to locate several recordings on wax cylinders.

Caution: this next bit has some mild spoilers about the plot of BioShock Infinite

One of the subtle instances of time-bending, aside from the tears, is the inclusion of obviously anachronistic songs. Memorably, a barbershop quartet sings the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" despite the game's setting in 1912. It turns out that Albert Fink, the celebrated composer of Columbia, has been stealing music from the future by listening to them through these "tears".

All in all, there are a total of six deliberately anachronistic songs. ("After You've Gone" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" are actual period songs which have been re-recorded, "Wild Prairie Rose" was composed for the game). Of course, I could find the vinyl 45 singles, but I would not be able to find physical copies of these songs.

Enter the laser cutter. I was able to adapt a previous instructable intended for 33 rpm and adapt it for 78 rpm to comply with the numerous phonographs also found in Columbia. (Oddly there are no cylinder players, but it's fairly easy to record your own cylinder on the player itself). The original instructable suffered from lower audio fidelity due to the compression. However, I threorized that increasing the rpm would increase the amount of data passing through the needle per second and increase fidelity. Also, "microgroove" LPs are impossible to recreate on a laser cutter since its kerf is already so wide. 78s have much wider spaced grooves anyway. It was also surprisingly difficult to fit all the grooves onto a reasonably sized 10" record due to the sheer increase in groove count.

I wrote up my own instructable complete with documentation here: Make a Playable Laser-Cut Gramophone Record from Bioshock Infinite


I was able to make a record featuring "God Only Knows" and play it on an actual phonograph.

I still need to make several improvements; aside from using actual black acrylic, I need to reduce the cutting time from 8 hours/side. This mostly involves fiddling with the idiosyncrasies of my machine which is meant for precision work as opposed to the other author's "laser-printer".

However, the process is mostly complete. Other songs I have lined up are Grace Holloway's rendition of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" featured in BioShock 2, Elizabeth's rendition of "You Belong to Me" featured in the Burial at Sea DLC as well as the other anachronistic songs.


Still, I'm running into some playback problems on test cuts. "Fortunate Son" and "God Only Knows" are examples of "live recordings" so I'm able to get clearer results on playback. The others, such as "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" have been run through vintage filters and added foley. This mixed with the cutting process' digital to analog rendering makes the playback sound muddy. I would like to gain access to the original takes of these songs without the added effects, but with Irrational Games downsizing, I'm not sure if I'm able. I've already contacted Jim Bonney, former music director, but I haven't heard back from him.

I was also able to recreate the record label using in-game textures.

However, the record sleeve was never in the game itself. I managed to capture shots of in early development videos as documented in my instructable.

I still would like to gain access to this original sleeve texture to make sure it is correct. Additionally, the record label visible appears to be distinctly different from the one in-game. Again, I'm not sure where to turn to with Irrational's downsizing.

WIP: Recreating BioShock's Record Bin


On another note, the next of my ongoing projects is recreating the BioShock record bin.
You can catch a brief glimpse of it in the BioShock Developer's Commentary at 12:30 which features an early version of the Record Store.

I'm currently housing my record collection in the ever-versatile IKEA Expedit. However, I'm a little tired of reading the spines of my LPs as they're extremely thin or in poor condition to be read. And I've always loved flipping through records in upright bins. 78s, of which I have many have no spines with titles, just paper sleeves

Making record bins has certainly been done before out of plywood:Record Bin From single 4 x 8 Sheet of Plywood - Plans - AudioKarma.org Home Audio Stereo Discussion Forums

Period record displays also have to show 78s front face so customers can see the labels which were the only means of identification.

So I hoped to find take screenshots of the model in-game. The finished version of the record store was Rapture Records in Fort Frolic. Unfortunately, I forgot that the store was burned out and most textures were obscured from the charring.

I was able to figure out how to get umodel to render the clean texture and the model.




Hit the link to see some reference shots of the record bin: Record Bin - Imgur

I figure that I can use MDF for most of the body. I think that selective staining will give the illusion of wood inlay. And maybe some flexible molding for the carved edgings.

I still have to draw up blueprints for the project and figure out scale. I reckon that each bin should be able to hold 12" records as opposed to 10" so I can extrapolate from there.



Sorry for the rather rambling post, but I'll try to publish blueprints when I get the chance.

 

[Trooper_trent]

Awesome. I love Bioshock and have a thing, myself, for vintage music and technology like this. I recently bought a kit to build an antique style gramophone to put in my home office. I've ordered some 78s for pretty cheap off amazon (frank sinatra, glen miller, judy garland, etc.). Cant wait to try them out. For the time being I've tested it on a cheap 33 of Joe Haymes & his orchestra from the 30's.

 

[CaptainEO]

I love this! Thank you so much for your research! I love the 20's/30's look of the games, and especially the music! I will definitely be following your progress closely

 

[bookface]

Very cool man. I'm not much for games myself, but I recently heard some of the music from Bioshock: Infinite, and it blew me away.

 

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I finally got around to importing the record bin file to 3DS Max for some proper head-on screenshots.

I used glidor's umodel with the batch export script to extract the files from the 4-Recreation.bsm (Fort Frolic) file.

The model itself is stored in the Rec_Stores folder as Record_Bin.pskx

Glidor's ActorX Importer is a script for 3DS Max to import pskx files. And I got some nice orthographic shots better than the UEViewer's quick render.


Most of the time you can't see the actual texture since the Rapture Records store is completely burned out.

I forgot about this bin in the corner near the window in relatively pristine condition. I had to adjust the brightness as Bioshock is a very dark game.


I was trying to get a sense of the scale with the corpse. Assuming that the average male is 5'10", the bin should come up to chest height. It is surprisingly difficult to arrange bodies with the Telekinesis plasmid as it tends to grab them by the waist.

Again, you can see an early (cleaner) prototype of the record store in the tech demo at 12:35.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzoVzKRRBg

 

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I had some time to make some mockups in Inventor to see how the parts will fit together, complete with really ugly material rendering.

The only real measurement I had was the width of the record. 12" LPs would be the most common today, but during Rapture's era, 10" 78s would be far more prevalent (especially given the number of phonographs lying about).

However, 12" 78s also existed mainly for longer classical works. Since most people use the IKEA Expedit (or Kallax) for the storage of records, I measured the width of a storage cube and got 13.5". So I scaled the rest of the parts around that figure.



The blatant scale figure confirms my hypothesis that the bin only comes up to chest high.

The gray panel on the top indicates one possible way to design the upper brown block visible in the game rendered version. Either the brown top panel piece is a solid wooden block or it is composed of two separate panels with half of the gray panel painted/stained brown.

What was really valuable from the 3DS Max import was the ability to delete polygons so I could see how the cross section looked like which is visible in the plan above. Of course, I had to create additional support structures that were not visible from outside, but it looks feasible enough to be built.



Some other features I noticed were that you can display/place records on the little ledge above the bin.

Also, as with most furniture designed for retail, there is a lot of empty space within whose only function is to bring the product to the customer's eye level. I was thinking that it would be nifty to be able to pull the ledge out and reveal a secret compartment in the base. It could possible work with a hinge installed in the interior.

As it stands, this structure is composed of about 40 parts. Luckily most of them are rectangles with the same width of 13.5".

The most difficult part will be exactly replicating the curves of the deep brown side panels.

I also will have to look into the sheet thickness available for either MDF or plywood. The audiokarma bin uses a 4' X 8' sheet.

Initially, I scaled the extruded thickness of the sheets to 1", but it seems that lumber sheets are available at a max of 3/4".

It might be difficult to scale the thickness of the proportions of the side panels correctly. The two end panels are clearly thinner than the inner two panels (most likely to have the appearance of one continuous bin when positioned next to each other).

Maybe I'll have to cut 6 side panels and glue them together. There also appears to be some moulding-like ridges looking at the side panels from the front.

 

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Regarding the legs, I'm not sure whether or not to include them.

If you've ever lifted a crate of vinyl records, you know that they're very heavy. However, since most of the intended collection are 78s and made of shellac instead of plastic. I've seen people load 78s into car trunks and the rear end drops nearly to the ground.

I'm not exactly sure if 4 legs would cut it without sagging, maybe 6.

The current scaled measurements of the tapered legs are roughly 6" high with the upper portion being ~3" and narrowing to 1.5". So pretty stocky and stubby compared to typical mid-century furniture.



In any case, tapered conical legs are emblematic of mid-century style. So they're not really common in big box home improvement stores.

I found this at Home Depot which is a possibility, though it has to be specially ordered.


http://www.homedepot.com/p/Waddell-16-in-Wood-Round-Taper-Table-Leg-2516/100554141

The legs on the record bin appear to be a gray metal which is odd since most of these kinds of legs were wooden.

This page was helpful for trying to source these really stocky furniture legs.

http://retrorenovation.com/2014/02/04/mid-century-modern-retro-table-legs/

The Ferrous Hardware link has some really striking chrome legs that are a visual match, but cost $20-30 each instead of by sets of 4.

Tablelegs.com offers a similar wooden version under McCobb legs. Choosing the Bun Foot style with white pine results in $10 each.

The thirteencolonies etsy shop link offers a complete set of 4 for $38.00 with the Danbury 5 7/8" with Shimmering Silver matching best.

However, it is entirely possible to make some legs with a lathe and some paint.

Or at the very least, going without or using some wooden blocks.

 

[Professor Steve]

Very fascinating read, thank you. I remember my mother telling me that when she bought her early Elvis Presley 78's, getting them home in one piece was like something out of Mission Impossible, On several occasions, she had to buy them more than once.

 

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So I finally managed to port the Inventor Assembly into a proper Drawing file. The PDFs could do with some editing, but here are some quick rendered PNG versions.


There's a lot of angle measurements for the side panel.

The entire bin looks to be around 4' high including the legs. It's 3.5' wide and about 2' in depth.



I've been able to fit most of the panels on two 4' X 8' sheets. The parts that are missing are the top dark brown block that I'll probably cut from 2" x 6" plank and some of the support boards from the bottom and the back which are not visible from the outside and can be cut from cheaper material or scraps.

I'm probably going to have to selectively stain the stripes and diamond pattern as inlaying is not something that I'm skilled out.

MDF looks to be not an option as it doesn't take staining very well.

I might try to get plywood in the 4' x 8' sheets with a max of 3/4" thick.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/unbrande...l-0-709-in-x-48-in-x-96-in-HD-LAUAN/205434008

Home Depot looks like it'll make some preliminary cuts so I can fit the sheets in my car. However, I have to make a lot of 13.5 boards and cut them to size.


Professor Steve: Sadly 78s are notoriously fragile. They're used in comedy when they smash against walls like in old Tom and Jerry cartoons, but also for dramatic effect like the scene in Catcher in the Rye with the "Little Shirley Beans" record.