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Cartel
Part 4

There is little to really say about the finished product that has not already been said. The band are not playing the song which is on the soundtrack, there are only three people in the exterior shots because a band member couldn't find the Phoenix Park, the reason there is such a bizarre use of colour is to mask the video origins, etc. What might be worth mentioning here is that the newscast stuff at the start and end of the song is on the soundtrack, it had nothing to do with Stephen, although it was this newscast that gave him the idea of a fade to testcard finish, as seen at the end of the video. Also worth mentioning is that the four part quarter screen and the image translocation were done merely because the machines had the facilities to do them; as already said, from a filmic point of view, this project has no real artistic merits of its own, it is essentially a technical achievement. But its a pretty good technical achievement!

Critical Reaction: Due to circumstances beyond the control of CherryPie Productions, critical exposure to the video had been fairly non-existent. The band were scheduled to put the video onto their website and to send it in to various music shows, but shortly after the completion of the editing, they broke up, the website was abandoned and no music shows ever got to see the video. That was essentially as far as the project got.

For what it's worth, all four members of the band said they liked the video (although some of them wondered why there is a camera tripod in one shot), and Stephen himself is very proud of it. Both Andy and Martin have expressed their fondness of it, and although its is probably the least exposed of the CherryPie team's work (which is ironic considering it was supposed to be their most comercial enterprise), it did elicit some favourable comments from some people in DLIADT (although considering how much those smucks actually know about film, this is probably an indictment akin to having a young Irish person tell you you haven't had enough to drink).

All in all, the Cartel video was an interesting experience. At times frustrating, at times rewarding, in the end both the band and CherryPie Productions got something out of the venture. There can be little doubt that, in terms of thematic ambition and narrative complexity, the video is somewhat at odds with such work as Oedipus: A Context and Admonition, but what it is certainly not at odds with is the experimentalism of these projects. Shot without a budget by a group of people who had never done anything like it before, it was bred in the exact same environment as Admonition, and although the finished products of each project were completely different in terms of what was achieved, in terms of how it was achieved, there is little real difference. And, in the end, the Cartel video is just as much a part of the CherryPie output as anything else, and they are just as proud of it.

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Last updated:
9 June 2003