The adventure of our main character continues, he has to face again himself and this time he will be forced to take hard and significant decisions.

He will be into paradoxical situations… but you will discover everything reading the fifth episode of our story, The Cide, that is reaching a turning-point.

We are sorry for the big delay cause of acts of God.

See you soon and enjoy the reading.

click here to read the fifth episode of The Cide.

The remarkable quality of the past edition’s songs has highlighted the value of emerging Italian and international bands, thus strengthening our will to give room for these talents.

So, what are you waiting for? Same contest, same rules plus one: songs that participated in the first edition or in any The Cide-related competition will not be deemed eligible again.

ELIGIBILITY
The contest is open to every band (or single artist), whose members are 14 years or older at the time of entry, submitting one music piece, in any language or entirely instrumental.
The music piece must satisfy the following requirements:
- it must be unpublished
- it must be 100% original (no remixes or remakes of other songs, including your own)
- it must be royalty-free and must not violate or infringe any third party’s copyright or other rights and it must not be under an exclusive contract or any other kind of legal contract
- it must be no longer than six (6) minutes and no shorter than one (1) minute in duration
- it must not contain vulgar, obscene or indecent language or behaviours
- it must not have taken part to any previous The Cide-related competition
Any entries that do not comply with these terms will be disqualified.
Entrants will be deemed responsible for any violation of the copyright, literary, privacy, publicity, trademark, service mark or any other person or property right of any person or entity.
Moreover, the previous editions’ winner bands will be excluded from the contest.

REGISTRATION
Registrations for the contest will be open from 12 p.m. on January 9, 2010, until 11:59 p.m. on February 14, 2019. Any registration submitted later than these terms will not be deemed eligible.

Entrants must fill in the online entry form at http://www.thecide.com and follow the instructions to send the song in mp3 format. By submitting the entry form the entrants agree to the above regulations and restrictions.
To complete the registration the entrants must:
- add to their own myspace profile the banner of the contest, unchanged and clearly visible until the end of the contest.
- add “The Cide” to their myspace friends list.
- add the “The Cide” myspace profile to the top-friends list of their own profile until the end of the contest.
The organisational committee reserves the right to check at any time the observance of the above rules. Any entrants that do not comply with these rules will be disqualified.

WINNER SELECTION
Entries will be evaluated by the “The Cide” Artistic Committee to select the finalist bands after the registrations closing date.
The finalists will be named on February 15, 2010 and will be admitted to the final phase.
The winning music piece will be chosen by a public online voting at “The Cide.com”. The winning music piece will be the one receiving the largest amount of votes during the final phase ending at 11:59 p.m. on February 21, 2009.

PRIZES
The winning music piece will be added to the “The Cide” official soundtrack. Specifically, it will be added, partly or entirely, to one or more sections of the 5th episode and, when necessary, in one or more sections of any episode.
The band name and the song title will be added to the credits section of the website and will be promoted and advertised in any media format or medium and through any media channels the organisational committee will deem appropriate.

GENERAL CONDITIONS
- Entrants shall not issue any statement concerning this contest without the committee authorization.
- No payment or repayment will be paid to entrants for any reason and during any phase of the contest.
- By submitting a song, entrants and, if applicable, each individual band member appearing in the entry materials agree to grant “The Cide” organisational committee a royalty-free, non-exclusive, unconditional and transferable right and license to use the song for any advertising, promotional or commercial purposes, including without limitation the right to publicly display, perform, reproduce and distribute the song. Entrants and each individual band member appearing in the entry materials also grants to “The Cide” the non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to play the song on its web sites and to make available entrant’s name and song music submission on The Cide.com without any compensation.
- The organisational committee reserves the right to modify these Contest Rules and Restrictions in any way or at any time as long as there is notice posted on www.thecide.com
- The organisational committee disclaim all responsibility for entrants behaviours.
- The organizational committee warn the entrants against false recommendations or granted winnings in exchange for money. The committee dissociates itself and take precautions from such behaviours: only those who prove to be artistically deserving will be rewarded.
- By submitting, entrants totally agree to the above regulations.
- Any entries that do not comply with these requirements will not be deemed eligible.
- Music pieces can not be changed or modified or replaced with other pieces in any case.
- Decisions of the “The Cide” artistic committee are final and binding on all matters relating to this contest.

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE CLOSED.

BANNER (To add on your Myspace profile)

Use this code to put the banner on your MySpace page:

<a href=’http://www.thecide.com/theband’ target=’_blank’><img src=’http://www.thecide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tctbc.gif’ style=’border-style:none’ width=’450′></a>

Many of you have been impatiently waiting for the release, and we humbly apologize for this considerable delay due, however, to unavoidable reasons such as the increasing amount of work engagements and partnerships and new projects we’re working on. That’s because, as we all know, everything runs fast on the web, even what is totally new on the scene, like our Comic 2.0.

We thus apologize again and hope you will enjoy the reading.

The aim of the contest is:
- to increase the spreading and distribution of music, mainly to the new generation
- to highlight the work of the emerging bands, both in the Italian and international scene
- to promote new and original artworks

ELIGIBILITY
The contest is open to every band (or single artist), whose members are 14 years or older at the time of entry, submitting one music piece, in any language or entirely instrumental.
The music piece must satisfy the following requirements:
- it must be unpublished
- it must be 100% original (no remixes or remakes of other songs, including your own)
- it must be royalty-free and must not violate or infringe any third party’s copyright or other rights and it must not be under an exclusive contract or any other kind of legal contract
- it must be no longer than six (6) minutes and no shorter than one (1) minute in duration
- it must not contain vulgar, obscene or indecent language or behaviours

Any entries that do not comply with these terms will be disqualified.
Entrants will be deemed responsible for any violation of the copyright, literary, privacy, publicity, trademark, service mark or any other person or property right of any person or entity.

REGISTRATION
Registrations for the contest will be open from 12 a.m. on May 13, 2009, until 11:59 p.m. on May 31, 2009. Any registration submitted later than these terms will not be deemed eligible.
Entrants must fill in the online entry form at http://www.thecide.com and follow the instructions to send the song in mp3 format.
By submitting the entry form the entrants agree to the above regulations and restrictions.
To complete the registration the entrants must:
- add to their own myspace profile the banner of the contest, unchanged and clearly visible until the end of the contest.
- add “The Cide” to their myspace friends list.
- add the “The Cide” myspace profile to the top-friends list of their own profile until the end of the contest.
The organisational committee reserves the right to check at any time the observance of the above rules. Any entrants that do not comply with these rules will be disqualified.

WINNER SELECTION
Entries will be evaluated by the “The Cide” Artistic Committee to select the finalist bands after the registrations closing date.
The finalists will be named on May 27, 2009 and will be admitted to the final phase.
The winning music piece will be chosen by a public online voting at “The Cide.com”. The winning music piece will be the one receiving the largest amount of votes during the final phase ending at 11:59 on May 31, 2009.

PRIZES
The winning music piece will be added to the “The Cide” official soundtrack. Specifically, it will be added, partly or entirely, to one or more sections of the 4th episode and, when necessary, in one or more sections of any episode.
The band name and the song title will be added to the credits section of the website and will be promoted and advertised in any media format or medium and through any media channels the organisational committee will deem appropriate.

GENERAL CONDITIONS
- Entrants shall not issue any statement concerning this contest without the committee authorization.
- No payment or repayment will be paid to entrants for any reason and during any phase of the contest.
- By submitting a song, entrants and, if applicable, each individual band member appearing in the entry materials agree to grant “The Cide” organisational committee a royalty-free, non-exclusive, unconditional and transferable right and license to use the song for any advertising, promotional or commercial purposes, including without limitation the right to publicly display, perform, reproduce and distribute the song. Entrants and each individual band member appearing in the entry materials also grants to “The Cide” the non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to play the song on its web sites and to make available entrant’s name and song music submission on The Cide.com without any compensation.
- The organisational committee reserves the right to modify these Contest Rules and Restrictions in any way or at any time as long as there is notice posted on www.thecide.com
- The organisational committee disclaim all responsibility for entrants behaviours.
- The organizational committee warn the entrants against false recommendations or granted winnings in exchange for money. The committee dissociates itself and take precautions from such behaviours: only those who prove to be artistically deserving will be rewarded.
- By submitting, entrants totally agree to the above regulations.
- Any entries that do not comply with these requirements will not be deemed eligible.
- Music pieces can not be changed or modified or replaced with other pieces in any case.
- Decisions of the “The Cide” artistic committee are final and binding on all matters relating to this contest.

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE CLOSED.

BANNER (To add on your Myspace profile)

Use this code to put the banner on your MySpace page:

<a href=”http://www.thecide.com/theband” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.thecide.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tctbc.gif” width=”450″ /> </a>

Back to Kevin Grace and his crew, yesterday night we finally heard the most beautiful sound ever: the click that signed the third episode’s publication!

I finally decided to answer your many questions and to “unveil” the secrets that transform simple photos into The Cide. Because The Cide is made out of photographs, if anyone didn’t already notice..

To develop a system that could fit every kind of photos (bright ones, dark ones..) we spent almost three months working hard on Photoshop. We had many problems trying to find a universal macro.

The result of our experiments is this process that, taking the original picture, makes it flatter and more homogeneous highlighting both the bright and dark parts. After that, the process enhances yellows and greens and adds several filters that gives the picture a more cartoonish look. The last step of the process has been the most difficult to us: we wanted to create an effect that was dirty, watercolour-like and, above all, always different. This is our trick: the original photo is overlapped with 46 different films that interact on colour and saturation with the consequent always different effects we were searching for. You can notice that in some iterative elements (like a red background) where you can barely perceive the same kind of overlapping.

In some pictures (like the one on the left) we had to add non-existent elements (the cross), change the colour of an item ( the wheat from yellow to crimson) and remove environmental features (trees and pylons).

In the picture below you can see all the steps from the original photo (the one on the left) to the final effect (the one on the right).

I tried to be as clear as possible, simplifying a lot the work we actually made.

I hope I’ve been exhaustive and have satisfied your curiosity.

Daniele “Zed” Berretta

Cristiano Malacrino

Third episode is on the doorstep..new characters will emerge from the shadows of this dark and crimson story, and every event, every discovery or apparently innocuous sentence should be carefully analysed by Kevin Grace, and, above all, by you, in order to shed light on this plot, seemingly too complicated even for a professional detective like Jason Minardi.

Ostensibly honest and devoted to justice, visibly nervous and stressed, the detective is known in the underworld as a mastiff whose hold is too tight even for a jackass like J.B. Nobody ever tried to dig into his past. Which seems quite comprehensible since every criminal, even the most dangerous one, tends to keep away from a cop known for his sixth sense and his ability to enter the criminalís psychology and take advantage of his weak points.

But you know, the suburbs never sleep..in dark alleys and disreputable bars, after the sunset you can always find someone murmuring in rivers of alcohol, desperate for his debts..and the voices are like sparks burning too soon to realize that when the silence explodes there will be no shelter at all.

September came and took away the summer but not the heat that kept haunting the shooting sessions, finally ended in the freezing December. During those sessions Zed and I totally relied on our fantasy and on the experience of our partner and photographer Fabrizio Bottacchiari. We also pled the Divine Providence for helping us with the actorsí and placesí availability, but she was possibly busy and gave us a lot of tough nuts to crack..we soldiered on and finally we managed to crack every single fucking nut of those!

Anyway, weíre still talking about 2007, a very special year that ended with a new beginning: the post-production phase.

And then Lorenzo, already performing the gloomy Jan Boris Magenia, made his entrance starting his real work of designing, programming and managing the website and all that is Videns Pictures- (and The Cide-) branded. He also worked on the creation of those flash-animation systems we still use in the production of every single episode.

After nine months of what seemed a real pregnancy, the first episode of The Cide came to life. It was the 15th of September, a day none of the five of us will easily forget.

Personally, regardless of the economic context and the public agreement, always growing and enthusiastic so far, the biggest glory for us who worked and still are working on The Cide project is the awareness we created something new and innovative, whose strength is the emotional impulse of five open minds, held together by, besides the enthusiasm, a very deep friendship and that pinch of recklessness that is never trivial.

Cristiano Malacrino.