I’m a swim film festival fan, and I love this short film, this short swimming video, The Swimmer, captured by Simon Banthorpe.
I am always on the lookout for great swim videos. If you have an interesting or beautiful swimming-related video and/or animated short, please submit to Gold Medal Mel Stewart at swimswam to be featured. We appreciate all points of view on pools, lakes, rivers and oceans. Please include a little background on why you captured the video and the equipment you used (cameras, lens, editing software, etc.). Feel free to add your own story as well, 175 to 200 words works best.
From the producer:
A short film about a mans passion for swimming in the ocean expressed through a poem.
“The Swimmer took a week to polish in terms of editing and creating the music and recording the narration. I wrote it in a day as the idea soon came together after looking through the footage I could use. Mixing the sound was an issue and became the longest part of the process, not something I’m particularly knowledgable about. It’s still not perfect but it gets the point over. The idea came together through a documentary I watched on the Japan tsunami and it included some incredible footage. Whilst watching the documentary I ended up thinking about the power of the ocean and how unpredictable it can be. Initially, and from the footage, you simply couldn’t tell that a tsunami was on its way. The water just suddenly rises and over spills onto the streets and then seems to gain a mass amount of speed and volume From this I then came up with a swimmer who knew the dangers but looked upon it as something of a miracle to be able to be one with such an unpredictable and mass power as the sea. I wanted to tell people that it’s ok to go back into the sea. I wrote the poem based on that passion of swimming in the ocean. The freedom and the simple love of the water, the sport, the freedom and the power: like it’s a gift or blessing to be able to do such a thing or be a part of it.”
– Simon Banthorpe
If you like this short, please vote for it here:
mishmash.gettyimages.com/en/entries/GRCLL1
