BLOODED - is it fictional?
Yes. BLOODED is a documentary about events that haven’t happened. Yet.
Why did we choose to shoot BLOODED in a documentary format?
We wanted to explore what the documentary style would bring to the thriller genre. We were inspired by films like ‘Touching the Void’. The compelling power of characters directly addressing the audience attracted us as storytellers. This visual style has nothing intrinsically to do with ‘truth’. It just happens that films purporting to deal with ‘true’ events have historically used this style more than any other.
We could have made BLOODED as a ‘straight’ fiction film, and indeed some have told us we should have. But we challenged ourselves to do something we thought (and still think) is more interesting: to make a documentary about an event that did not happen but that can still engage and affect an audience as if it did.
BLOODED is not a ‘mockumentary’. Rather, it’s a fictional story in a straight documentary format.
What are the political intentions of BLOODED?
BLOODED is a film, not a political statement.
BLOODED intends to engage thought and encourage debate, not to score political points.
BLOODED has no intentional political message.
BLOODED tells a story. To deliver that story, we have worked hard to create characters and scenarios which express, explicitly and implicitly, viewpoints from across a wide spectrum of the hunting debate.
Ultimately though, narrative storytelling concerns have figured more powerfully than political concerns during the editing process. BLOODED is a thriller, not an essay.
Is BLOODED pro- or anti-hunting?
As far as we’re concerned, BLOODED is neither. BLOODED seeks to explore how retaliatory any form of extremism can become, at the expense of the originating issue.
The characters in BLOODED are surrounded by and partake in acts of political extremism in the name of a cause. They are all complicit, and we wanted to explore the results on them personally in a media age when a single picture or video clip can go global overnight.
We have been accused of creating pro-hunting propaganda by antis and anti-hunting propaganda by pros. Each side saw the same tape, but a different film. Politics informs the viewing experience, and we hope BLOODED contributes to a wider debate about whether modern media and political extremism are locked in a self-perpetuating cycle.
Allowing the fictional world of the film to spill out into the ‘real’ world was intended to encourage debate, not to cause offence. We would like to apologize sincerely if any offence has been taken, but ultimately all art is a mirror of sorts. We’ve found that the faux-doc style of BLOODED enrages and engages in equal measure. We see this as evidence of a healthy artistic enterprise, which BLOODED has always sought to be (and as an independent film fighting for an audience needs to be) - not a political one.
BLOODED is released in cinemas and online and on demand on April 1 2011
The DVD will be available on April 4 2011 with the following extras;
Commentary / Unseen interviews / Making BLOODED / Short film - “Home Video” by Ed Boase