Swarm - A McGloughlin Brothers Film / Music by Max Cooper
316,952
Published 2020-07-03
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Stream 'Swarm' here: ffm.to/swarm
Directed By The McGloughlin Brothers
Music and Sound Design By Max Cooper
Animation / Camera / Edit By The McGloughlin Brothers
Fluid Art By Roman Hill, Thomas Blanchard & Oilhack
Drone Photography By Colm Hogan
Special Thanks to Léa Morel, Paul Mignot, Brendan Canty & Greenlight Films.
McGloughlin Brothers
Development and destruction seem to go hand in hand when it comes to human progress on earth. There is a celebration of the human ability to create sophisticated environments in which we inhabit, but also a concern at the price that we are paying for this.
Feeling alien is easy here.
Max Cooper
This project was something special for me. Two of my favourite artists, brothers, and long term collaborators, Kevin and Páraic McGloughlin got together to create a short film with huge visual and conceptual intensity.
It is the story of our planet and us on it. Swarming. The huge scale of our impact on the planet presented as beautiful and terrifying growing structures as we see population growth time lapse set against frenetic activity.
Usually I write music alongside rough visual ideas from my project stories, and rely on the video artist to synchronise them for music videos. But this beast of a short film was presented more or less finished, and I had the daunting task of how to make the music live up to the feeling and spectacle of the film. As well as sync to the barrage of visual cues.
It turned into a bit of an obsession, where I was trying to find the right sounds to link with every new scene, and given the number of scenes, it turned into one of my most detailed pieces of music. If you can listen in HD format with headphones there are many details to find in there, often using spatial/binaural format to make them audible amongst the chaos.
Kevin and Páraic also had a big role in guiding the musical style as it’s their film rather than my music video this time. We tried several different ideas, and they encouraged me to go the route of my sansula pieces which you may notice the link to. It’s a small thumb plucked instrument that I play and record and has formed a major part of my sound over the years.
The main element that I started with was that big pitch bending synth chord sequence. It seemed to capture something of the growing intensity and power of the film, and I could also sync the pitch gliding to the longer scale visual arrangement. The whole process of building the arrangement tightly to the film yielded an unusual musical structure for me, which was a nice habit breaking process that gave me some lessons to take into future projects.
It took a long time to create an audio mapping, but they have made such a beautiful visual spectacle it was a total pleasure to work on and obsess over. Big thanks to Kevin and Páraic McGloughlin for getting me involved in this short film, and I hope some of you can hear and feel the love and sweat and tears we all put into the project.
Directors
@paraicmcgloughlin
@kevinmcgloughlin_gram
Music / Sound Design
@maxcoopermax
Fluid Art
@thomas_blanchard
@roman.hill
@oilhack
Drone Photography
@drumhog
Thanks
@leamorel
@paulmignot_dir
@brendanfeelgoodlost
@the_wild_seeds
All Comments (21)
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Youtube compression algorithm be like: "here we go again Mr Cooper"
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The McGloughlin Brothers could totally make the next Koyaanisqatsi, with a soundtrack by Max Cooper
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E X C E P T I O N A L™
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Can anyone imagine the amount of work that went into this film, and of course the music. Immense.
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This is a completely different level of visual genius. Look what the human mind is capable of. To even be able to piece all of this work together the way they have is insane. Brilliant. I am mesmerized.
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I know this is going to be exceptional, even before I've seen and heard it.
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This tells the story of humanity from a profound perspective.
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"Amazing isn't it? No other animal on earth could do this. Maybe beavers, but not like this." Dwight Schrute
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It’s like Someday by Weval and Order from chaos had a baby.
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Here we goooo
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This is one of the best things ever made!
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Just missed the chat - but wow, this is something else. Coming from an environmental sciences background, this way of looking at land use change isn't too foreign to me, but seeing it like this drives home the point that even in industrialism, there is beauty. These particular human infrastructures will probably be inprofitable and abandoned in one or two hundred years at the most, but I can see how someone who hasn't learnt to see the destruction can see the beauty in it. I would pay to view a less-compressed version of this.
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An astonishing accomplishment.
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Beautiful -
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Flawless
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WHAT A PIECE OF ART MOTHER OF GOOOOOD
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Superb.
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Sincerely one of the most beautifully constructed pieces of short-form media I've seen on this site. You all should be proud.
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This was... incredible. Made the think of Koyaanisqatsi.
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I feel so lost while enjoying this beautiful masterpiece. Help me.
