WHEEL ME OUT - Institute for Eyes

Joe Bull and Luke Seomore

Film makers Joe Bull and Luke Seomore are Institute for Eyes, an independent film company getting noticed for their atmospheric documentaries...

Interview by Ananda Pellerin

Joe - We met 11 years ago in Newham College -

Luke - basically Joe was the only person who talked to me. Everyone else in the class thought I was gay and thought that was a reason not to talk to me, which is weird because it was art college -

J - It wasn't really art college -

L - no, it was more like a sixth form college contained in a university -

J - but there we had the facilities to experiment. We talked about different aspects of art, music, film, photography and started to work together on different projects and it went from there, wasn't it really?

L - Yeah, there was no massive plan.

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L - Our original name was Jesus Loves Us which was conceived when we were in a night club -

J - we consumed eight pills each -

L - eight pills and so we thought Jesus Loves Us was a really good name...and then like a year into it we realised people thought we were a religious company. We just thought it was funny because the only person who loves us is Jesus -

J - and the idea of the Institute would be that we could go off on different tangents -

L - but legally it's not called Institute because apparently if you legally call yourself Institute you have to teach something. We just called it IFI.

It was more a name for a website really, somewhere we could place all our work.

L - Yeah, rather than just 'Luke and Joe'.

J - Joe doesn't really sound like Fellini or Tarkovsky -

L - JOE BULL!

J - I thought Institute for Eyes would be a lot more elegant.

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J - I think we try to create an atmosphere. Everything is a balance, we don't just write a script and shoot the film and then stick music on. Luke does the music and it's one process really, creating a mood.

L - It all feels like one unit in a way; the editing, the writing and the music all melt together. It's sometimes surreal or dream-like but still heavily rooted in reality. It's not art house, even if it's a documentary we try to create the atmosphere of how the person feels in life -

J - it's non-linear.

L - We come up with the theory and then pick stories which are interesting and those two things marry together.

J - That's the thing, it's not so much about the idea, for example we're going to shoot this documentary about a war veteran - we're always interested in social exclusion and isolation - but it's more about the subject or the mood rather than trying to find a crazy character to document.

L - I think it's the eccentricities of English life, people who on the surface seem quite normal but then when you actually look underneath...like Jim Lee from Lost and Found [Jim Lee was born in a field in Kent and abandoned from birth], these are interesting to us.

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L - We did a series on Tenerife for Channel Four's Three Minute Wonders. There's loads of English and European people on holiday and lots of African people who got there in fishing boats, hoping to make money when they arrive.

J - You've got this reality of a white working class holiday destination and this massive contrast with all these Africans arriving on the shorelines, exhausted, desperate for another way of life... And the journey of the Africans -

L - you have to be quite brave to make that journey across the Atlantic. People get dehydrated and start to go insane, seeing images of their mums in the sea -

J - and some die.

L - There's the journey in their heads, them thinking about the future and then there's the physical journey across the Atlantic.

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L - The only thing that separates us is I do everything and Joe doesn't...I think Joe does more of the -

J - photocopying

L - Joe does more of the graphics and I do the sound and music but I give him ideas for titles and he gives me ideas for music, he's not a musician but he has some good ideas -

J - I can play the recorder.

L - Three Blind Mice is it?

J - And London's Burning.

L - Usually one of us comes up with an idea, like Shorelines which was Joe's and then we develop it together. So it always blurs -

J - I mean we're not telepathic or anything but we're kind of on the same wavelength - so normally if a good idea surfaces it almost comes from both of us in a way -

L - it's pretty much 50/50.

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J - We did Duffy's first video which pays the bills -

L - remember on the Bryn Christopher shoot there was actually a chair for the director? I'd like one. I think I might grow a beard and wear a cap as well -

J - no you can't wear a cap, that's Ron Howard style.

L - Ron Howard, he's one of my heroes, he's fucking amazing.

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L - What would we do if someone gave us a big budget right now?

J - Remake Batman? Schindler's List?

L - Oh yeah.

J - We've written a script which is a road movie across Britain, we've got a producer trying to find money for it right now.

L - So [like Shorelines] it's another internal and external journey, an alcoholic's journey. I think now we're going to just make feature films with our own money. We do a lot of paid work and the camera company is going to give us equipment to use for free. So it's a new way of funding films; once we sell it, they'll get their money back.

J - So we can do ideas without compromise. Obviously it would be nice to have funding for stuff, but at the same time there's a silver lining because with the British film industry at the moment you've got to make a massive compromise -

L - that's why I think Lost and Found worked because we spent a lot of time perfecting it and no one else got in the way.

J - The industry is in a transition between film and digital, so a lot of the old guys who are used to 35mm and 16mm don't quite understand how to shoot using a digital camera; it's a different visual language. A young cinematographer called David Proctor is helping us out on this next film, he really understands digital, he's been brought up on it; he knows how to get the image he wants.

I think digital cinema is really encouraging for people like us, you can just express yourself and I think a lot of older directors like David Lynch or Herzog would shoot on digital -

L - they have!

J - they have yeah, and I think they see it as if they were young they'd be doing exactly the same thing.

L - It's a bit like the 70s or 80s when people were shooting on Super8 - it's quite cheap and you can get a nice aesthetic.

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J - Next year we're doing an installation in a gallery that's in the belfry of Saint John on Bethnal Green church in London. It's a visual essay exploring the Essex coastline which is about to be transformed by cheap housing and God knows what, but we're capturing the landscape which has existed for hundreds - thousands of years.

L - We've got another project which is a drama exploring Alzheimer's and the breakdown of a relationship of an old couple. It's a cross between a Kafka book and a Harold Pinter play - but directed by Werner Herzog, but actually directed by us because he's fucking busy...

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J - Our main aim is to make a gangster film.

L - Guy Ritchie's a brilliant director.

J - We're doing a drama about a bouncer living in Romford - that's the one for 2010 -

L - yeah and his son is actually a bare-knuckle boxer who places a bet and then it all goes tits up! It's called 'Tits Up' actually. And there's a stripper in it so plenty of tits for the boys...

J - Then he dies in it as well. WMO

Info, clips and more

www.instituteforeyes.co.uk