The Last Human by Tom Walsh

A short film about the last human being left alive and their mission to implant DNA on a strange world in an attempt to seed new life in the universe. Set to the mesmerizing music by Swimming (who collaborated with Simon Ellis) and Alex Herington.

The brilliant film has caught the imagination of the sci-fi world. It has sparked a debate on the origins of mankind over on the io9 blog.

Tom says:
As a director I’ve always been interested in collaboration with other artists and the exploration of different methods of story telling. So when the opportunity arose to make a music video for Swimming, I grabbed it with both hands. This was a chance to work with a group of like minded artists – musicians who think progressively and see their band as an art form itself, not just a means of making music. I had recently written a short film script called The Last Human. The narrative follows the fate last human being left alive – a concept that I have had a long standing fascination with.

When I listened to the song I Do (Come True) I immediately felt a connection between the music and the story I had written. The song has an ethereal quality and a chorus riff that descends into minor chords, taking the listener down into a place of profound meaning. It was that musical connection that made me want to turn the short film into the music video for the song.

As we explored the idea we decided on making two versions of the film. The first would be the music video and the second would be a longer short film edit with natural and elaborate sound design and which uses elements of the song as the basis of the film’s score. We teamed up with Alex Herington, who we had worked with on previous projects, to develop the song into the cinematic score.

Further ideas came through as we went into pre production, the concept had such narrative scope that it felt natural to explore the back story and so we are now utilising various platforms for the transmedia storyline which will allow people to explore the world that has been created via online and mobile.

In the music video the viewer will see the word HERA appear quite often. This is the title of the mission in the story and is named after the Greek Goddess of childbirth but also has a double meaning – it is an acronym for the mysterious Human Evolution Recovery Administration. This organisation will form the backbone of the fictional narrative in the story but will cross over into a real world exercise in disinformation and transmedia storytelling. For more information visit: hera.im

A project of this kind can only work with a band like Swimming, whose music reflects a progressive sensibility and helps to inspire such interesting ideas.

Producer/Director – Tom Walsh
Music – Swimming & Alex Herington
Art Director – Amy Nicholson
Costume Designer – Tonia Brown
Art Dept. & Make-Up – Sarah Lewis
First AD – Ken Coppel
Visual Effects – Tom Walsh & Nic Pylypiuk
The Pilot – Hester Ruoff

Thanks to David Houghton, Georgina Sparks & Rob Knapp

Thursday, 12. April, Naherholung Sternchen

After the huge success of the first party of all Berlin Filmfestivals during The 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge it was only a question of time to set up a new edition.

Thursday, 12th of April, will be the your second chance to party with all the movers and shakers of the Berlin Film Universe. We start with a wild mix of shorts selected by the hosting festivals around 8pm, followed by

Doro & Tobi Filmmusic

Youngbois Italo Disco

Ångstrøm Electro

The incredible Yip Yips Electro

Enough Festivals To Kill A Rhino.

admission 5 Euro

(more at Festiwelt-Berlin | Partys 2012)

photo: kt/DL

THE GREAT SWIM ACROSS THE CHANNEL

“Swimming” in Berlin, Privatclub, 27.03.12

John Sampson is a good guy. More than that, he’s a good singer, a very good one, and the young Englishmen surrounding him on stage are good too, at least from the sound of things. Surprisingly good, to be more precise. Swimming by name, they are playing to nodding heads and swaying bodies in Berlin’s Privatclub, not their first trip to this city. The music is a shifting mix of fibrous tonal guitar waves punctuated by John’s quavering vocal trail, itself a hybrid of conversational melodic statement and benevolent falsetto. Not bombast and not understatement, the music is also much more than simply a comfortable compromise in between. The band is loud, and guitar strings are occasionally attacked to within an inch of their existence. This goes over very well. Despite the low ceiling in the venue and its determination to throw the sound back at the audience in a distorted din, the band plays like there was a great blue sky over their heads. Drummer Peter Sampson is concentrated and of athletic aim, while guitarist Joff Spittlehouse, bassist Blake Pearson and keyboardist Sam Potter veer between solid stance and more fluid moves.

Among the throng is multi-award-winning filmmaker Simon Ellis, who has come down from Hamburg, where he is working on a trailer for the Hamburg Short Film Festival, to see his friends play, although they’ll be in the Hanseatic City the next day for the last stop of this tour. Theirs is a fruitful trade-off, with Ellis making most of the band’s videos, and Swimming providing inspiration for Ellis, as with the film “Binaural Swimming (Beach)”, which had its World Premiere during Ellis’s retrospective at [DL8] (the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge) in February this year. He brought John along for the occasion.

The show increases in intensity before ending, with the guys on stage moving their well-meaning assault on their instruments up to a tornado-grade rush of layered melodic energy before bidding good night and disappearing into the relative sanctuary of backstage. The feeling on the ground is good, like seeing after-images of fireworks, but in your ears. Swimming has surely just added to their followers. Norwegian indie-stars Megaphonic Thrift, also playing here tonight, are luckily not in competition.

Outside after, I chat a bit with the singer. John gets my vote if anyone’s looking to cast St. Francis of Assisi. Already in Berlin in February, moving around the goings-on at [DL8], he displayed some of that hypnotizing inner peace that is a rarity in people who can belt their lungs out. Now, on the subject of the current state of things, he talks of “shedding old skin”and quickly correlates this to the name of the new single, “All Things Made New,” from the optimistically titled Ecstatics International. Sam, the keyboardist, is a new man on board, replacing Andy Wright. What else is changing? Before I can follow this line, a demure voice asks something. Two Russian girls have made their way to the show and speak in quite good English, but with enough accent to make them exotic. They seem shy. They talk to John but appear anxious to meet his brother, Peter. They first encountered him when he played in the far-flung Russian industrial city Perm, a million inhabitants sidled up near to the European side of the Urals. Peter, it should be noted, has a musical alter-ego: as THePETEBOX (the preferred configuration of capitals and lower-case), he has a fanbase all his own, and it is a widespread one. Blake joins us and he and John sign CDs for the girls. The latter win points with me by understanding my Russian.

Peter emerges from inside. He is somewhat harder-edged in appearance than his brother John, looking a bit like he’s seen some underbellies John might have been spared. They may yet come. It’s a good bet that Swimming won’t be submerging all too soon. When the girls address him, he seems polite enough but somewhat tired and not sure who they might be. They talk some more; he sifts through his memory and then places them. Peter is a busy man, with THePETEBOX doing his thing on various continents, and Swimming (and another project, We Show Up On Radar) filling in what time is left. THePETEBOX gets around to places Swimming has yet to hit.

Sometimes, it seems, it can go the other way around, with the audience coming to you. John tells me a girl once travelled from Marseille to London to see a Swimming gig, and ended up living with the (then) keyboardist. How far do you have to go to keep a fanbase? Or, the other way: does being a musician really have that many perks?

Another girl approaches. She is German, but first saw the band when living in Britain. She talks to Blake, who seems unassuming, not the one you’d pick to be the art-man of the outfit, but the covers and other paraphernalia are, I’m told, made up of images from his hand and mind. As far as I can make out, in hiding behind another moniker. Another alter-ego. When Joff (a.k.a. Jonathan) joins them, John and I get back to talking about what’s afoot these days. This brings us to Simon Ellis. They met back in Nottingham when Ellis came to a gig of theirs and said “a lot of nice things” about them afterward. Ellis has since dedicated a great deal of time to the boys from his home town, and it seems to be paying off. As well, they have begun to pay back in individual style – at least John. Presently, he is doing the music to Ellis’s trailer for the Hamburg Short Film Festival. Anything like Swimming?, I want to know. “Dance beats,” he answers. Not really what Swimming sounds like, even of their last album is pop-friendlier than the debut The Fireflow Trade. Talking of his efforts, he refreshingly uses pictures to describe sounds, rather than references to instruments and studio tricks. The music he is working to achieve here will feel like “flying at low level, low enough to see the whites of your eyes from the ground.” It is left to me to figure just how you put this into music, but I appreciate this visual-to-musical leap. He thinks the way I do.

It all sounds like a well-oiled machine. No catastrophes to speak of tonight either, save Blake’s hand catching fire backstage from a flaming Sambuca. All quiet on the continental front, eardrum-threatening volume aside. Did you make any mistakes tonight, I ask. “Nothing but mistakes, a united intent of mistakes,” he quips, his eyes gleaming. No, these guys haven’t made any major mistakes yet, from the looks of things.

And from here…? “I don’t know, world domination?” John laughs. Joff is now listening in, his demeanour loose and relaxed, although John says he is the one whose fingers can move in blur speed on the guitar. “The next album will be imbedded directly in your mind, like in that movie with the dreams….” He fights to come up with the name; Joff helps him recall it. “Yeah, like in Inception.” No question about their wanting to come in through the front door, maybe without knocking.

The world may belong to them yet. Right now, on a planet peopled by the bad and the good, Swimming still number among the good guys. And fairly high on the scale, too.

(Kenton Turk)