Director Chelsea Christer, BLEEDING AUDIO
Director Chelsea Christer is a longtime fan of indie rock band The Matches and chronicles the ups and downs of their musical journey in her documentary BLEEDING AUDIO. SFF Contributor Connor Ryan caught up with Christer for a quick chat prior to the film's Massachusetts Premiere at Salem Film Fest.
Connor Ryan: BLEEDING AUDIO is remarkable for its music, certainly, but so many characters discuss so many other sensory details and experiences. How do you account for this in a work? How do you create such layered textures? To ask it another way: what do you think this film smells or tastes like, and why?
Chelsea Christer: The description of the strain and hard work that goes into touring for a musician was an important thing for me to capture. We were fortunate enough to have an extensive repository of archival content that captured the sweat and the mess of touring in a van, so SHOWING the textures of being on tour wasn’t the issue—so I knew in our interviews I wanted to get the feelings behind those images captured to fill out the texture in a way that gave the imagery emotional weight.
I feel like while as consumers and fans, we outwardly have an understanding that touring is “hard”, but I intentionally wanted to get into the grit and the firsthand feelings of touring direct from the musicians’ testimony. I wanted to dispel the “glory of touring” shimmer that we cast on our artists, and take away that filter to make you truly feel the sweat and the exhaustion that comes from such a labor intensive part of being a musician.
The shorter answer of the question is.. the film probably smells like 3 day old sweaty red jeans, and tastes like garlicky chips and salsa leftover from the green room at the venue the night before.
Filming BLEEDING AUDIO
BLEEDING AUDIO streams as part of Salem Film Fest from Friday, March 19 - Sunday, March 28. Tickets to view the film can be purchased here.
