Ilias 'The Blade' Bulaid—Short Film
Inspired by Rene Magritte's works, I wrote this portrait of Dutch/Moroccan MMA fighter Ilias ‘The Blade’ Bulaid as a personal tribute to one of the most beautiful countries in the world: Morocco.
Although we shot this portrait about the internal motivations for stepping into the octagon documentary style, I wrote the entire voice-over in advance and pre-visualized most of the shots digitally before the shoot based on extended online research. On location, the cinematographer and I could get pretty close to the pre-visualized storyboard, but there was a lot of free-styling in between.
To create all the bloody shots in the film, I brought along half a liter of fake blood, and the laundry on the roof consisted of my bedsheets and dirty clothing from the days before. You gotta love movie magic (and dirty laundry ;) ).
For the music, the composer invited some of the finest musicians to his studio during the coronavirus lockdown in the Netherlands. This resulted in recording every instrument separately and in one hell of a score that emphasizes the oriental vibe of the film.
When I jumped into the studio to finish the audio touches with the sound designer, I told him it would be cool to do something about the sound effects with Ilias’ nickname, ‘The Blade.’ So we devised the idea of recording two big kitchen knives sliding over each other, pitching the sounds, and transforming them with various filters. We used them every time Ilias made a punch or kick movement in the film to give all the moves a sound identity of their own.
You can read the full story here, including the possibility of downloading the original treatments, script, storyboard, and shot list used for this project!
Writer & Director - Robin Piree | Production Company - Chapter Amsterdam | Cinematographer - Kevin Kimman | Music - Jorrit Kleijnen & Jacob Meijer | Editor - Robin Piree | Sound Design - Mark van der Male | Colorist - George Balatoni
