Ed Boase
Ed Boase makes his feature length directorial debut with British thriller Blooded, which hits the big screen today.
I caught up with the director to talk about his new movie, the difficulties during the shoot and what lies ahead.
- Blooded is about to be released into UK cinemas so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
The film is about a group of hunters who go up to a remote Scottish island called the Isle of Mull for a hunting fun weekend. They wake up one morning to find themselves stripped and freezing on a hillside.
And then they start getting hunted themselves by what turns out to be a very extreme animal right group called the Real Animal League. So it's a kind of thriller (laughs).
- It was written by James Walker so what was it about the script that drew you to the project?
Well James is a very old friend of mine, in fact we work together, and he went on a deer stalking trip to the Isle of Mull - so he has experienced that process first hand.
He came back and said 'look I think there's a great story in that instead of a deer being at the other end of the rifle scope... people.
It had gone through his head when he was on this deer stalking trip, which he had never done before so it was a completely new process, what if that was me?
So that was really the genesis of the idea.
- Blooded is shot documentary style so what was it that made you decide to film in this format?
We wanted to make a thriller in a completely new and fresh, and hopefully, different way. We were big fans of a film called Touching The Void, which is a reconstruction which is inter-cut with people and interview, and we wanted to see, as a challenge, if we could convey that in a realistic way without ever saying that this real and this happened.
So it was really a stylistic choice and it certainly wasn't a case of 'aren't we clever' and 'we're going to try and hoax people' that was not the intention and it wasn't want we set out to do.
- Well you have touched on my next question really I read that you were inspired by the likes of Touching The Void so what was it about that movie that really struck a chord?
I think it was the immediacy of being told a story by people who were more or less sitting directly in front of you - I think we found that really engaging as a stylistic approach.
And the other thing that was challenging was trying to make this documentary format, which you see on TV all of the time, as cinematic as possible - like with Touching the Void you felt like you were watching an exciting, cinema style film but just told in a different way to what you are use to seeing. That was the idea.
- The movie involves an animal rights action group that kidnaps five young deer hunters so is there any particular message that you wanted the movie to portray about hunting? It will provoke arguments from both sides.
Of course. The first thing to say is the Real Animal League are a fictitious organisation and are not intended to be representative of any animal rights group - they are quite clearly a very extreme form.
The real message of the film is about extremism and it's about when people start shouting louder then anyone else until the message is lost and that is when people get hurt - that's the first line from the film.
And really the film is about the politics of extremism it's not about hunting as such although is set against the hunting debate. So the message, if any, is is extremism every justified?
Because there are extremists on both sides in the film; Lucas Bell is an extremist saying 'I will hunt no matter what' and the animal rights group in the film are also extremist because they take extreme action. The film does not intend to come down on either side it is intended to be a debate on the issues.
- The movie stars Nick Ashdon, Oliver Boot and Sharon Duncan-Brewster so can you tell me about the casting process?
It was an interesting one because with the likes of Touching The Void they would film the interviews several months before going out to locations to film the reconstruction footage with actors. So with out film it was almost the other way around because first thing we filmed was the reconstruction footage on the Isle of Mull.
We then essentially went backwards and had to cast again for another set of actors who were vaguely similar looking to the reconstruction actors - the reconstruction actors had the challenge of being absolutely freezing cold on the Scottish hillside; one of them was taken to hospital as a result, the interview actors had arguably a harder task which was trying to be real and sitting in a chair with nothing to act off.
What we were looking for from the reconstruction actors were people who when they looked us in the face and said 'I have no problem with being in freezing conditions, being shot at on a remote Scottish island' we had to believe them.
And that turned out to be the case as they were all fantastic. And with the real people if you like we had to cast people were sufficiently brilliant so that they could come across as the real McCoy.
Lots of people have thought, and again this is not what we were trying to do, but a lot of people have assumed that the film is real - which is a great credit in the interview situation because people have thought that they are real and not acting.
- This is an independent British feature so what with all the problems surrounding the likes of the Film Council how difficult a film was it to get off the ground and get made?
The budget was just under half a million pounds, which is a huge amount of money but in film terms is quite low budget still. We raised half the money and then shot all the reconstruction stuff on the Isle of Mull for about two weeks.
We then showed the footage, half the film, to the investors - they looked at it and they said 'Great. We like it and we will come up with the rest of the money' and the investors were private individuals so we didn't have any involvement with the Film Council or anything like that.
- And what challenges did you face during the shoot - you have already mentioned that filming in Scotland is quite cold?
It's certainly cold if you are in your pants and it's October. And one of the things that was definitely a challenge was people being in freezing conditions so what we did was prepare the reconstruction actors we put them through an army training exercise on the Isle of Mull.
Unfortunately one of the actors drank so bog water by accident and developed a very severe intestinal disease, a sort of bacterial infection, was incredibly horrid.
Having not filmed anything he had to be flown off the island and was in hospital for a week. We wanted him to continue to do the film because we had cast him and liked him but there was a real question of 'is this going to be sensible?'
His first day back, this is Ollie Boot who wakes up next to the loch and he is really cold, that was his first day after being in hospital for a week. So it was extremely tough on the actors.
- Blooded is also your directorial debut so how did you find the transition from shorts to a full length feature?
Good question. With a feature it's the equivalent of making a short film every day - so you are shooting five minutes per day; or slightly more or less depending - it's more to do with a momentum and energy than anything else.
The physical factor of getting up very early, going to bed very late, looking at the edits and not really sleeping for several weeks is in itself quite tough.
The other thing that we were lucky to have was a helicopter on set, not all the time just for certain periods. The film is really about the land and we wanted to show the British landscape in a different way to how it has been before; British film tend to be quite urban and if they do show the landscape it tends to be a horse and carriage riding through.
We wanted to make a modern film that was about the British landscape so the big difference of making a feature film was we could have a helicopter to get the views and scale that the landscape really warranted.
- Finally what’s next for you?
We, by which I mean the producer Nick Ashdon and the writer James, are developing four new scripts as part of a development fund - this is funds that we have raised off the back of Blooded. And we are going to be making a diverse range of new films - one of which is going to be a kid’s film which we will be launching at the Hay Festival in May.
The idea behind the film is it will be an entirely kid generated enterprise - so literally children will be involved from start to finish - so that is something that we are really looking forward to. So there is plenty on the horizon.
Blooded is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Ed Boase makes his feature length directorial debut with British thriller Blooded, which hits the big screen today.
I caught up with the director to talk about his new movie, the difficulties during the shoot and what lies ahead.
- Blooded is about to be released into UK cinemas so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
The film is about a group of hunters who go up to a remote Scottish island called the Isle of Mull for a hunting fun weekend. They wake up one morning to find themselves stripped and freezing on a hillside.
And then they start getting hunted themselves by what turns out to be a very extreme animal right group called the Real Animal League. So it's a kind of thriller (laughs).
- It was written by James Walker so what was it about the script that drew you to the project?
Well James is a very old friend of mine, in fact we work together, and he went on a deer stalking trip to the Isle of Mull - so he has experienced that process first hand.
He came back and said 'look I think there's a great story in that instead of a deer being at the other end of the rifle scope... people.
It had gone through his head when he was on this deer stalking trip, which he had never done before so it was a completely new process, what if that was me?
So that was really the genesis of the idea.
- Blooded is shot documentary style so what was it that made you decide to film in this format?
We wanted to make a thriller in a completely new and fresh, and hopefully, different way. We were big fans of a film called Touching The Void, which is a reconstruction which is inter-cut with people and interview, and we wanted to see, as a challenge, if we could convey that in a realistic way without ever saying that this real and this happened.
So it was really a stylistic choice and it certainly wasn't a case of 'aren't we clever' and 'we're going to try and hoax people' that was not the intention and it wasn't want we set out to do.
- Well you have touched on my next question really I read that you were inspired by the likes of Touching The Void so what was it about that movie that really struck a chord?
I think it was the immediacy of being told a story by people who were more or less sitting directly in front of you - I think we found that really engaging as a stylistic approach.
And the other thing that was challenging was trying to make this documentary format, which you see on TV all of the time, as cinematic as possible - like with Touching the Void you felt like you were watching an exciting, cinema style film but just told in a different way to what you are use to seeing. That was the idea.
- The movie involves an animal rights action group that kidnaps five young deer hunters so is there any particular message that you wanted the movie to portray about hunting? It will provoke arguments from both sides.
Of course. The first thing to say is the Real Animal League are a fictitious organisation and are not intended to be representative of any animal rights group - they are quite clearly a very extreme form.
The real message of the film is about extremism and it's about when people start shouting louder then anyone else until the message is lost and that is when people get hurt - that's the first line from the film.
And really the film is about the politics of extremism it's not about hunting as such although is set against the hunting debate. So the message, if any, is is extremism every justified?