Exclusive: TOM DREAM - DREAM CATCHER
Capturing a moment in time, director Tom Dream talks to Joe Bill about his plans to chase down the First Mosh Pit After Covid and all its release of energy and liberation from months of frustration
On returning to print with Issue #16, Team ‘cene decided to remove as many references to Covid-19, the pandemic and the Lockdown Trilogy as we could, with one exception – this interview.
A year deep into the Zoom call-filled purgatory, a shining glint of hope dazzled my phone screen, temporarily halting the ceaseless swipes of social-media malaise. Moving images of bare skin, humans interacting, vigorous motion, pain... pleasure.
It was the trailer for First Mosh After Covid, a film by Margate-based director Tom Dream.
“Maybe we took it for granted,” he says. “It was such a normal thing being able to go and enjoy music with friends and get into a crowd. But after a year without it, and the extremes of feeling apprehensive about touching a friend, let alone hugging them, the idea of being in a crowd of 5,000 people, literally seeing the sweat rising off their bodies in a dingy venue, it feels almost dangerous to think about!”
First Mosh After Covid was but a twinkle in the eye of Tom, who moved to Margate almost five years ago from Twickenham to create the type of films that he had “wanted to make for a long time”. At that time he also adopted the surname Dream, to avoid being accidentally hired in place of another video pro with the same name… again.
“I don’t think you can exaggerate the feeling you get in that sort of crowd environment”
“The reason a lot of my work is set in Margate was part of a deliberate transition point,” he explains. “I had been doing a lot in London for years that I wasn’t really that excited about or connecting with. So the move here was a deliberate attempt to do more of the stuff I was excited by.” And you could say it worked.
He has collaborated on not one but two projects with the sensational Arlo Parks, firstly Shy Radicals, a portrait of award-winning artist, shy and introvert activist and author Hamja Ahsan, and secondly a piece – Knotted Gold – produced for fashion brand Gucci that ended up being set around some of the director’s favourite Thanet haunts.
“Arlo wanted to come up with a piece of spoken-word poetry and we came up with a concept together,” he explains. “For me it was the coolest opportunity to work with people and friends from Margate, and locations like the Walpole Bay Hotel and Morelli’s in Broadstairs, places I go to regularly and know the owners of. It was the perfect opportunity to catch them at their most beautiful and styled in Gucci clothes! It’s mad looking back at it now, I can’t believe that happened.”
And he is deadly serious. Humility is not always a word I would associate with film directors, but as Tom scrabbles around for a pen on our Zoom call (I’m still not sure why) we casually chat about his work on the new Shane MacGowan documentary Crock of Gold by Julian Temple and the creation of music-based documentaries.
“I’m very interested in bringing these worlds together. And someone who does this really well is Julian Temple, who I’ve had the privilege of working with for the past eight years,” says Tom. “On the Ibiza film he did, he manages to bridge these worlds of reality and fiction.
Like the ancient Ibizan people had this ancient god called Bez, and Julian had actual Bez from Happy Mondays play the role of that god.
“There’s this really interesting playful blurring of the worlds. You don’t have to just tell documentary stories in a specific way.
“You can be very playful with the facts and the reality and create new and exciting ideas.”
DOCUMENTARIAN
While working with other talented locals – now friends – such as Margate indie-pop outfit Thandi to create videos, Tom has found a groove in his unique process of linking music and video. A journey that started a long time ago.
“I began by working in the camera department on documentaries and I just liked being on quite exciting jobs in quite small teams,” he explains. “But I have grown up in bands and playing music, with a lot of friends who are artists and musicians.
“So, naturally if you’re into film or video-orientated, I started by filming them live and creating promos.”
The idea for First Mosh After Covid was born in the summer of 2020, before we knew how long the pandemic was going to play out.
“Only a few months had gone without being able to go to gigs and experience live music,” Tom remembers. “Glastonbury was cancelled, and eventually all festivals were cancelled, and the one thing that was the absolute opposite of isolation and lockdown... was a mosh pit, and I found that quite an interesting contrast.
“Going to gigs is the way I connect with my best mates. We have a WhatsApp group called ‘gigs’ and someone just buys tickets for the group and that’s where we meet up.
“I thought about the film a lot last year, but it felt too depressing and it felt so unattainable and almost began feeling a bit inappropriate to talk about going to large crowd events.”
It wasn’t until January 2021 that Tom picked the idea back up and started to research, contacting people and discussing what they loved about going to live gigs. And, of course, the mosh pit took centre stage.
“I don’t think you can exaggerate the feeling you get in that sort of crowd environment,” says Tom.
Tom Dream
“So I came up with an idea of tracking down the first mosh pit that lands after Covid, once restrictions are lifted this summer. And almost like in Twister (the 1996 film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt), where they are out searching for tornados in that van… I thought it was a funny concept to approach it like that. Indeed, much of Tom’s recent social media has been centred on him trying to attain a similar twister/mosh pit-hunting van.”
On April 11th, the ‘Moshumentary’ trailer was released to much acclaim – it was featured by the NME, Line of Best Fit, I-D, Dazed and, of course, ‘cene. And with good reason. It featured snippet interviews with the likes of Idles, Sports Team, Che Lingo, Wu-Lu and many more, including a scientist all the way from Harvard University, USA.
“I found a research paper online about mosh pits – I think it was written in 2013,” explains Tom. “A team of physicists had written about crowd behaviour and created this simulation, which you can find online, where you can play around with the different factors that affect the movement of the particles within a mosh pit, and that was after studying thousands of hours of YouTube videos of mosh pits.”
The pure, raw energy in the trailer took me back to younger days, to The Garage in Highbury, to The Astoria on Charing Cross Road and to The Forum in Tunbridge Wells and the fear and wonder of whether you’d still have your shoes the next time you escaped the heaving mass.
“I was 13 years old,” says Tom. “We went to see Ash at Brixton Academy and I couldn’t believe you could have that much fun.
“I remember my friend’s mum dropping us off and us having a Bacardi Breezer outside and then going in. We were about four feet tall and I remember this older group of guys picking us up and chucking us into the crowd and crowd-surfing for the first time. It was the best feeling ever.”
MAKING IT HAPPEN
When the restrictions lift, there will doubtless be a flurry of activity in the live music scene. So tracking down the very first mosh pit may not be so easy. But, just like in Twister, Tom is already tracking the storm before it hits.
“At the moment it’s about having an ear to the ground and speaking to promoters, festival organisers, fans and bands,” says Tom. “It’s important that with the film we’re not shown to be inciting bad behaviour or contributing in any way to the spread of coronavirus – it has to be an officially safe event that is organised after the restrictions are lifted.
“There are plenty of people putting gigs on around the country at one minute past midnight [on the day restrictions lift], and the idea is to be at those gigs and capture the mood. And experiencing it with fans we’ve been filming since the depth of lockdown, and artists we’ve been filming since then, too.”
Tom explains that there is a potentially fitting ending that could really close the whole documentary, with several of the participating bands due to play the Reading Festival in August.
“That would be great,” says Tom, “to see these incredibly talented people walking up on to the stage that they haven’t been able to share their music from for 18 months.
“The level to which these people have been deprived of their creative outlet has been really profound. Witnessing them getting back to the place they can do that is going to be cool to watch.”
As we go to print with this edition, Tom is gearing up for the challenge ahead, something he knows needs to be speedy because “in a year’s time no-one will care”.
“I’m nervous about doing the moment justice,” he says. “But I’m excited about it. As long as we can follow the most poignant stories from now until then, and just capture what that feels like and what it represents to people, to get that sense of freedom back that is so important to so many people, then I think we’ll have done a good job in capturing this moment in a positive way. It feels like a snapshot of music at this moment in time.”
INSTA: @tomdream_director
INFO: firstmoshaftercovid.com/
