A Smash-ing night

Photo: Vetle Halvorsen

Matt aka Smash of Fairlight (FLT) got to accept a total of four prizes (best demo, best effects and best technical achievement Agenda Circling Forth and best soundtrack for Ceasefire, both by FLT/CNCD) at the Scene.org Awards, which were hosted at The Gathering 2011. While there's a lot of work behind a demo such as Agenda Circling Forth, it does in fact, according to Smash, not take half a year to create a demo.

- We're a quite strange group in a way, most of our demos are made quite quickly. Agenda was made in about two weeks or maybe a bit more, but that's the amount of time to actually make the demo, he tells us.
- But the routines, the code behind it can be months of work. Coming up with things and letting them evolve over time, and then the demos are made. We have a lot of tools and we're good professional people making the stuff, so we make it quite quickly.

It has to be fresh

- We've had our tools for a long time and we create our demos in those tools.
- But the new effects we make take a long time; they're a lot of research work. So it's kind of a slow process and then a very short process in the end where we actually make the demo.
- We find that we can't make a demo in longer than two weeks, while ASD can make a demo in like six months. We can't we have to do it quickly, otherwise it doesn't work.
- It has to be fresh, because otherwise we just sit there changing things and changing things.

Smash also seems to believe that having the Scene.org Awards at The Gathering is nice thing for the scene here.

- I think it probably must have a positive effect on the scene here.
- Because what I think that The Gathering are doing right, is that they are trying really hard to reach out to the scene and doing a lot of work to bring new people in.
- It is however clearly not a pure scene event, but I think there are enough people that are interested. It would be nice if everyone was watching, but that's not going to happen. The only thing they could do to improve it, like Assembly which is quite a similar setup, is that during the demo compos and events they kill all the lights so everyone stops and watches.
- I don't know if that would be possible here, but it would be cool, at least in an area around the stage. It would be nice if they said "This area is going to be killed off, so if you sit here be ready for it", then maybe more people would be watching, that would be really nice.
- But it was still good as it was!

After bringing home a total of four Scene.org awards he has no reason not to have a smile on his face.
- I'm really happy to be brought over here, really happy that it went well and it was a really good show.
One problem though.
- I don't know how the hell I'm going to get all these home, he says as the interview concludes.