Punk: Beyond the Wire

A documentary chronicling the punk movement in Northern Ireland from 1975-1983, and its lasting legacies.

This is a human interest archive piece documenting those times in Ulster's troubled history, when the much maligned punk culture was in fact one of the very few positive lights, bringing people together regardless of their background (religious/class etc).

We have no political agenda, and see ourselves as apolitical storytellers, nothing more. The piece itself is aimed mainly at music fans and social history buffs, and of course those who have an interest in the history of this island, particularly the bit with the good roads ;0)

When we talk of 'fans' i am using the term (maybe wrongly) to indicate fans of punk, who may or may not have been involved in running fanzines, managing, promoting, running indie labels, playing in bands, all of which represent the DIY ethos of punk. In other words, the people who got off their arses and did something. We're not terribly interested in talking to SLF, or get into the 'rockstar' bullshit feuds they had with the Undertones. We talk to the guys and girls that started bands and got up on stage just to have a bit of craic, or promote their anarchistic political agendas, or just to relieve the boredom. We wish to highlight that DIY attitude, and indeed applaud it. We also wish to tell people's interesting stories of battle with the spidermen (local hoods), paramilitaries, the army, cops etc. We will be focusing on the Clash's aborted gig at Ulster Hall in 1977, that seemed to inspire people to get together as one of the opening points of the story. We also wish to tell the story of lasting friendships that grew between people in this most improbable of environments across the sectarian divisions, because of punk.

The story will be told using contributions of people that were involved in the beginnings of Northern Ireland's infamous punk scene. We will be interviewing, filming and recording all using digital media. Archive footage and music from the era will also be used to propel the story along all of which will be mixed using a digital editing suite. Research for the project will be almost entirely an on-line effort, using bulletin boards, web sites and email to contact these old punks.

Production will require the use of a data base management system in order to store all data relating to the project; interviewees, time code, index, transcript and the audio files themselves broken down by subject and cross referenced. This will speed up the editing phase considerably.

Animation, graphics, old documents, concert and other archive footage will form the basis of the visual aspect of the project (expand)

A web site will also need to be created for both the marketing of the program and also to provide more information on the bands who's music was played in the show, the people interviewed and further background on the subject. The show should be available either as a vod/podcast, or else streamed from the website.