Cinematic Music

Jesus, Judas, and a U2 Song
"Until the End of the World"

(To watch the video, click here for a full-scale viewer or on the first one to the right)

Sometimes it takes me awhile to figure things out. The words to U2's song, "Until the End of the World" had been bugging me for some time. I just wasn't sure what Bono was referring to, until during one listening, I heard, "In the garden...". Then I realized it was referring to the Garden of Gethsemane and the betrayal of Jesus. Only Bono was singing from Judas's perspective.

I wanted to capture this song's point of view and show it to a group of students in a chapel, so I took highlights from the movie "Jesus" and created a rough music video. The quality was bad from the VHS so I only showed it once. Then Mel Gibson created "The Passion" and I had some dramatic footage to recreate the visuals for the song.

In the spring of 2006, a book was released which attempted to portray Judas in a sympathetic light; a light which is not reflected in the Gospels. So, to offer a countering position - again, in an educational setting - I built the video around the song and sought to create the images of extreme conflict between Judas' decision and Jesus' purposes.

Taking the musical elements of The Edge's guitar, I cut the scenes to provide cinematic soundscapes - a soaring guitar riff was used at the point of a sweeping camera angle, or in the climatic scene, with the serpent crawling toward Jesus.

In addition, I choose cuts to show the contrastive nature of Judas', "waves of regret" and Jesus', "waves of joy", and the responsive crying out of Jesus "Love, love, love" from the Cross scenes.

From the opening scene of Jesus teaching on loving one another and the sun rising and Judas fleeing the tormenting children to the last scene of Jesus' triumph, this music video is intended to demonstrate the biblical story as portrayed by the Gospels that Judas was not a character to be admired.