When director Drew Kirsch and producer Nate Bolotin began conceptualizing the film “He Bled Neon,” they knew they needed a score that elevated its dark tone. “We had aspirations of grandeur, but we wanted to give audiences not just a film they remember, but a score and songs they remember,” says Bolotin, co-founder of XYZ Films. “To us, what makes memorable cinema, music is a huge part of it. And so we’re like, we need a banger of a song. We need an incredible soundtrack. How are we going to pull this off?”
They knew early on that the most logical fit was with composer Joe Trapanese and Zhu, the Grammy-nominated musician who’s risen the ranks of deep house over the past decade. Together, they crafted a dark and propulsive score for “He Bled Neon,” a revenge tale that takes viewers on an action-packed joyride across Las Vegas over 48 hours.
“When I make music, I’m a very visual person and even some of the early records, I would imagine scenes and write songs that were very descriptive visually for those moments,” explains Zhu. “And I thought [this] would just be something that fell really into what I enjoyed and how I view music.”
“He Bled Neon,” which premieres at SXSW tonight, is inspired by Bolotin’s own experiences as a Las Vegas native. The film follows Ethan (Joe Cole) as he returns to his Vegas home for the first time in years after learning that his brother (Paul Wesley) died of an accidental overdose. When he receives a tip that his brother was actually murdered, he embarks on a violent quest to uncover the truth, reuniting with his old crew (Rita Ora, Marshawn Lynch, Ismael Cruz Cordova) as they peel back each layer of the mystery.
Kirsch knew early on that Zhu and Trapanese made the most sense for the project. As an accomplished director of music videos for Taylor Swift and Jungkook, he understood the importance of marrying the picture with the soundtrack from the start and made it an integral part of the development process. “Getting the music early, that’s just like how I know how to work,” he says. “Even the PAs on our set had Zhu’s music. And then these guys were awesome enough to even give me some stuff to work with before shooting, which is the same way you do a music video.”
For their part, Zhu and Trapanese were hands-on during filming. They appeared on set to ideate on how to match any given scene’s pace and aesthetic, modifying ideas in real time to strike the right tone. “It’s an interesting handoff between going in with an artistic point of view of what you think it’s going to be versus being open to it changing,” says Trapanese, who previously scored “Straight Outta Compton” and contributed to “Tron: Legacy” and “The Greatest Showman.” “It kind of sums up film composing in general: You try to build something that you think is going to work great, but then you’re also always open to the metamorphosis that might happen in the process.”
“I tried to keep it primal because the story is pretty primal and I didn’t want to litter it with too much gloss,” adds Zhu. “So I tried to really bring my strengths and then let Joe blend the things that he found to be interesting with the things that he was able to do to the pace of the film through score.”
The 25-song soundtrack serves as the backbone for “He Bled Neon” and is unified by its instrumentation, folding in glowing synths and atmospheric hums. Though it traces the peaks and valleys of the film’s pace, it also functions as something of a standalone musical project that sidles up to the ambition of Zhu’s past work. “It’s not just one level, there’s multiple layers,” he says. “You’re able to break it down to a very simple emotion that matches the picture, and then when the music is fully produced, in some ways the picture is just riding along in the edit to the song. So it’s emotion within the story, and that’s what our goal was: to extract the rawest things possible.”
Following the film’s premiere at SXSW, the creatives behind “He Bled Neon” are hoping the marriage between music and cinema that fueled the process continues to be the gold standard of filmmaking. “There are moments like this in which you can inspire younger creatives to take some risks and to incorporate and to prioritize the things that they love about cinema and also music,” says Zhu. “Music was a huge, impactful part of watching films, and I think it can make or break films. I’m really happy that Drew can be able to take his background and make a great hybrid and find the sound.”
Leave a Reply