Bristol’s Filmic returns with another explorative two-month long season celebrating the creative connections across film and music. To kick off the season we we’re delighted to welcome filmmaking sibling pairing Gerard and Matt Johnson to Watershed fresh off the back of their 2015 collaboration on British crime thriller Hyena.

Gerard Johnson is the writer/director of two British feature films. His first, Tony (2009) a striking and darkly comic thriller about a serial killer set in east London, received widespread critical acclaim. His follow up, Hyena seems set to take a place amongst the ranks of raw British crime thrillers with its story of an amoral cop who has to extricate himself from a deadly situation of his own making.

Soundtracks to both films came through a collaboration with his musical sibling. Musician and composer Matt Johnson is the founding member of post-punk British group The The. In recent years Matt has turned his attention to soundtrack work, scoring numerous documentaries and films and in doing so, refining the art of blending the visual, aural and lyrical into twisted cinematic packages.

Gerard and Matt joined us in conversation with our cinema curator Mark Cosgrove to discuss their work on Hyena as well as previous collaborations. They also revisit some of the film scores that have proved influential to them, examining the ingredients that are needed to make a great soundtrack and exploring the processes of how music can imbue a film with an emotional intensity that it would otherwise be impossible for it to possess. Watch their discussion with questions from the audience here.

Visit our website to find out more about the 2015 season curated by Gerard and Matt of their favourite film scores.

Related Links:
Hyena
The The

Please note that the film clips which appeared in the original talk do not appear in this video due to copyright restrictions.

Posted on Sun 8 March 2015.

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