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| Last updated: 9 June 2003 |
| Cartel Part 3 As the months stretched out and the Christmas holidays neared, things were looking increasingly bleak, however, just before Christmas itself, Debbei rang Stephen with some good and some bad news. The good was that there would be editing machines available from 9-12 every Wednesday and Friday morning from January 28. The bad was that with such limited access, it was going to take a long time to get the editing done, and as Admonition was the main priority (not to mention the fact that Keith wanted a finished product by early March for the bands website), it didn't look good for Cartel. Enter Paul Murphy and Terry Lynch. The previous September, Stephen and Terry had founded a film society in St. Pat's. By January, the society was doing excellently, and Terry had come up with the idea of allowing the students to make their own film (he wanted to call it Pat's Man-ia). With this project in mind, himself and Stephen had visited the AV labs in Pats, which were run by Paul Murphy. As it turned out, the film project fell apart when Stephen and Terry failed to generate enough interest in the students, but during the meeting, Stephen had toured the editing lab, and, with Ballyfermot unable to handle both Admonition and Cartel, he had asked Paul about the possibility of editing the video in Pat's, and Paul, happy that somebody was actually taking an interest in the AV lab, was only too happy to help. Unfortunately, by this stage, yet another problem had presented itself. A New Song: With editing set to begin shortly, Stephen had contacted Keith to find out which song the band wanted the video cut to. However, in their infinite wisdom, rather than use one of the songs which they had performed during the shoots, Cartel had decided that they wanted the video to be cut to a new song altogether, one Stephen had never even heard. He tried to explain how awkward this would make things, as he would not be able to use any shot which clearly showed the lead singer singing, or which revealed specific notes being played on specific instruments, but the band was adamant, and Stephen had to agree to cut the footage to something to which it had no relation. On February 9, editing began as Stephen laid the new track down on tape and began the arduous task of trying to find suitable footage to cut to it. When one bears in mind that he couldn't over-use the exterior scenes, as there were only three people in these shots; that all the studio stuff was in close up, hence impossible to match to the song; and that all the stuff on stage was very samey, one can realise how difficult this task was (watch the studio footage closely, and you will see that the band are not playing the song that you are listening to). Another problem with the editing was that the band wanted to try to mask the fact that the video had been shot on video and not film. In and of itself, this was easy enough to accomplish, as all it required was using the colour palette on the editing maching to change the tonal values, and adding some image degradation to reduce the video-quality picture. However, when there are 50 something shots in a 3 minute section, altering the tonal and image quality of every single frame without becoming gimmicky or repeating the same change is very tricky, and it was this, more than anything else, which extended the editing out over three days. Nevertheless, editing wrapped on February 23, after 3 Wednesday sessions, and the Cartel video was finally complete. The finished product: The Cartel video is something of the black sheep of CherryPie Productions. While Stephen, Debbie and the band are undoubtedly proud of it, it bears no real relation to any of the companies other projects, and is somewhat more commercially orientated than the usual produce of the team. Having no grounding in literature, or no real connection with either theraticalities nor filmic vocabulary, the video was essentially a 'job', made bacause it could be, not for any real intrinsic value in the essence of the work. It serves neither to instruct nor provoke, and it has no essential narrative or thematic point. However, having said that, it is merely a music video, made under far from ideal circumstances, and both Stephen and Debbie put 100% into the production of it. It may not fit into the ouveur of CherryPie Productions, but it is certainly something which can be found on their CV, and the difference is perhaps more minimal than may at first seem to be the case. The Cartel video has no connection with the complexities of Admonition or The Gates of Paradise, but as a technical achievement, it ranks up there with The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours. on to cartel page 4 back to cartel page 2 back to products links page back to home |