miika saksi, April 8, 2005 8:41:27 PM CEST
Carpark North - Human (dir. Martin De Thurah)


Easily the coolest music video of this year, so far.

Click here for Quicktime.

here's an swf
         
can anyone say something about this band?
where from? label etc.?
         
woah..:! great casting, like the photography, interesting little ideas. great overall atmosphere; no columbine gonna happen in this school anytime soon.

shame the track's mediocre (though the my sharona riff at the end is humorous enough...)
         
m-m-m-myyy Sharona.
         
I wonder if this is what those Daniel Levi videos (Prodigy, LFO) were supposed to be like.
         
Definitely great casting...the use of children at their most awkward age helps show a starker and more uncomfortable reality than if the band used the typical pretty female models and hipster pretty boys.
         
great video... great song... what was the treatment like for this?

the shot where the kid slams his hand on the desk is better than all the work done by Daniel Levi or that "We Are not ready to die" dude.
         
i'll post another video by this guy in a minute. meanwhile here's some info on this one (from mtve.com)


Artist: Carpark North
Video: Human
Director: Martin De Thura
Album: All Things To All People


Story: This week's MTV Pick Of The Week is Danish Carpark North and the first single from their new album "All Things To All People". This is the follow up to self-titled debut album "Carpark North" which was released in 2003. The track is called "Human" and is a classic guitar driven rock/pop song. Martin de Thura directs the video, which is a brilliant piece of film featuring amazing dancing kids in different environments, in the gym and in school interacting with each other. The director used to go to the school where the video was filmed. The camera seems to be focusing on the movements, body language and feelings of these children. You could say focusing on everything human.

What else: Carpark North consists of Søren, Morten, and Lau, all in their early 20ies. 1999 they started to form what is now Carpark North. But in the beginning they played under the name "WEED", not knowing what the word stood for. The band's debut album got great reviews in the Danish press and Carpark North sold over 40.000 copies in 2003. The kids who were casted for the "Human"-video were accepted if they dared to dance ugly. Most of the kids are dancers and maybe that was one of the reasons the video was shot in only two days.
         
Killer video. So many fun ideas and tweaks on things in a sort of playfully haunted school. There nothing narrative or overtly substantive here but it doesn't need it. The casting is so good and the lighting and feel is very pure feeling. The hand slam on the table shot is so fucking awesome - it's a shot that most directors/editors would hold on. But we're in and out perfectly. This happens a few times in interesting little ways. So great. If I stop analysing from a filmmaker's viewpoint it's even better.

And the band wasn't in it! unheard of!
         
awesome.
         
Amazing video. Just exquisite, in a really stripped down (no pun intended) human Jonathan Glazer kind of way.
Oh, and captainmarc, the guy's name is Daniel Askill, and his film was called "We Have Decided Not to Die". He also directed the video for U.N.C.L.E.'s "Reign" and co-directed the video for Sia's "Breathe Me", both of them exceptional.
         
Wow, this was really great, and the two Daniels suck even more now for some reason.
         
came for the video, stayed for the Daniel Levi sass.

good times :)
         
Almost there.

All around great. Easily the best promo I've seen posted here in months. As a whole, it explores a thrilling concept: some final moment(s) of adolescent empowerment before the crippling and transformative loss via puberty. These kids are superheroes, untainted and unaffected by the world and my disappointment with this piece tends to lean toward how figurative the execution and presentation of said children are.

It's powerful to see them frontal, face first and awkward. Visages robbed by wind. Absolutely thrilling to find kids touching each other in exploratory and non sexual ways. Children with super powers (flying, jumping, sliding). A chalkboard that explodes with writing.

The bare kid displaying his muscles as the light fades is incredible, but shots of hands clenching, neck straining, and maniac dancing is in the ballpark but getting at something entirely less.

Moreover, it's unnecessary to have macro shots of blood flowing through veigns/cappilaries/etc. We understand transformation and growth from the collective whole and don't need to penetrate their physiology in order to grasp this.

- - -

The shot of the kid hitting the desk is better than 100% of the work by our current promo directors.
         
checked out this video just because it was said to be "coolest video music video of this year." I'm glad what was said was..right. it's excellent.. the cast, the kids, the lighting. just amazing.
         
Credits (from Boards):
Director: Martin de Thurah
Production company: Rank film, Denmark
Photography: Kasper Tuxen
Editor: Peter Brandt
Producer: Christian Rank
Postproduction: Martin de Thurah Produktion/ Rasmus Lange- Gul Stue/ Duckling
Record Label: EMI music, Denmark
         
well the music is really crap. but visually it´s pretty good. try to play this muted in slow mo alongside a track from boards of canada, it makes so much more sense
         
making the best video of 2005 even better? video remix, please, juice!
         
You're right, juice. The song isn't terribly great. BoC is my favorite band: kick it!
         
great video, no adults, teenage rebellion.

the quicktime link doesn't seem to work anymore - does anybody know where I can find a downloadable .mov or other format?

cheers!
         
here's an swf; also: you can find the quicktime on this site (upper right-hand); it is - hatefully - embedded (though once it loads you can save it to disk).
         
human: 50mb squashedscreen mpeg downloadable here.
         
PROG: The aspect has been squashed. It's a kind of shotty widescreen.
         
i know - sux.
there's a good qt here

(odd little hare trailer there, too. and: look out for his first commercial, for ikea, coming soon - the offline promises poetry...)
         
human - concert version. also: interview with de thurah.