Blood Cells: Live Soundtrack Show – The Most Vivid Cinematic Experience

One Powerful movie, one “expressionistic” soundtrack linked to one “apocalyptic” imagery:

This is the subtle spices of a recipe rekindling the taste of true and inspiring Entertainment…

Much more than this, it revives the authentic beauty within The Seventh Art.

Projecting a film while playing live the existing soundtrack is an audacious, original and purely authentic way to introduce a cinematic work

To showcase the poetry in the imagery and to dive the public into the filmmakers’ vision.

Blood Cells, the only British project ever to be selected by Biennale College: Cinema, BLOOD CELLS  and was made for £119,000 and funded solely by the Biennale / Venice Film Festival 

This is a film by Luke Seomore & Joseph Bull (LS and JB), starring Barry Ward who appeared in the successful movie Jimmy’s Hall, as well as Chloe Pirrie (Paulo Sorrentino Cannes’ 2015 Youth; Shell; Black Mirror) Francis Magee (Brighton Rock; Cemetery Junction), and a young playwright, theatre andfilm actress Hayley Squires (Vera, Vera, Vera Royal Court; As Good A Time as Any – Peter Gill, Call The Midwife).  Blood Cells is produced by Samm Haillay and Ben Young at Third Films.

Synopsis:

A decade after a catastrophe destroyed his family and their farm, momentous news from home compels an exiled young man to journey home across the broken and beautiful margins of contemporary Britain.

Now what is interesting is  how two filmmakers gather to translate in the cleverest way the power of emotions and individual states of mind, captured in one picture, and emphasized by a soundtrack meaningfully composed.

The film will  release in UK cinemas across the country from 27th June, with two live score screenings in London, on 28^th June with live score is at: the Ritzy and Hackney Picturehouse Cinemas.

This live score shall be led by the award-winning English film director and composer Luke Seomore himself alongside the musicians Michael Garrad.

The filmmakers made us the honor to take time to discuss about this one-of-a-kind experience of live score.

Interview:

1) Can you talk about the experiences of the double bill live score of short films Solace and First Dead Lies at Hackney Picturehouse in 2013?

LS: It was part of London short film festival, Phil Ilson helped with our 2010 tour of UK with ‘Isolation’, so he invited us to perform two short pieces.

It was very interesting to create a live soundtrack show for shorter films, usually we perform for features. But this was like two little bursts of energy, the score live helped to draw the audience into the world’s of the characters a little more we hope.

2) You say “Each performance will be unique”. Could you deepen what makes a performance unique, according to you? What kind of experience do you want to provide your public?

LS: I don’t want to dictate what they feel at all. The idea is to create an atmosphere that has a myriad of different emotions. But obviously the music is part of the story of the film. When we play live sound show – for these Blood Cells shows at Picturehouses with Michael Garrad and our violinist Helena Moore – the presence of us playing live makes the score more visceral.

We are actually there reacting to the imagery, we can play with more passion or violence in certain points in the film. Obviously you do this when you write the score but with the live experience its bigger, more intense.

3) How do you translate the powerfulness of the images of the Foot and Mouth crisis’ damages within the music/score?

Joseph Bull: The imagery is very evocative, it has a very apocalyptic quality but also quite expressionistic. So we wanted to mirror this with the sound design, mixing field recordings from the actual shoot with loops and orchestration.

4) Is this your first live score? If not, what are people impressions about this authentic experience?

LS: No we have done live shows for our documentary ‘Isolation’:

But on 27th June in Ritzy this will be our first live score for ‘Blood Cells’ our new feature. We want the experience to immerse people in the film, create an event that tries to transcend traditional cinema.

JB: People’s perceptions of live score is usually bands scoring, usually improvising over silent films. Our screening is a live interpretation of the existing soundtrack.

5) In Blood Cells’ pictures and soundtrack, do we feel the same “emotional intelligence” here as in Isolation?

JB: We think more so, technically we have developed as filmmakers. A lot of the score was written when we were developing the characters and writing the script, so they’re very much intwined, it is at the heart of the film.

LS: I hope our documentary films have informed this first drama. You started getting an intuition with people, revealing the truth to their personalities, we tried to embrace this approach in ‘Blood Cells’, getting a film that is as intimate as possible.

6) Exposing the warmth in relationships, the power of emotions, and the different states of mind of the presented characters that the public can definitely relate too, it seems that along all your projects, your artistry focuses on a humanist angle with authentic connections. Would you relate to this?

LS: Yes, its a good observation. I hope we did convey this, as a filmmaker its rush of emotion and adrenaline when you start to reveal an essence about your characters. Seeing into a hidden world, especially the stories we like to tell, people on the verges of society. There is more mystery in those lives we find, but all our work is character lead. Trying to explore their inner lives, there is a plot but that is not as important as the characters. They are the heart and soul of the films, everything is through their perspective.

We thank you both Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull for these insightful answers, and we can acknowledge even more how much this live score is a unique experience, and how profound is their artistry and their work as filmmakers.