didn't have growing up, which was a great shame. It wasn't part of my life, but thankfully I'd other wonderful aspects of my life. In these people's lives it means so much for a parent to be pottering around in the background and to hear their children practice. I got that sense from people that it was just one of the joys of life. No matter how badly the student or kid was playing they are safe and well and enjoying and learning something at the same time.
You managed to capture a wide spectrum of stories in the film, from big houses to small front rooms to parish halls.
It's interesting that you should point that out. There was no agenda at play. When we went out to cast the film we threw the net wide. We didn't have any quotas that we must have x amount of young people and x amount of mature students. It just all fell in place. I think that when you look at the film now in its totality it is a fair representation of modern Ireland. There's a lot of mixed cultures, mixed backgrounds and we didn't go out with any agenda. It just happened. And I think that shows modern Ireland at its best.
It also went all around the country, rather than just being centred on one area or one particular school of music or through one particular teacher.
We went as far north as Derry and as far south as Crosshaven and as far west to Kylemore Abbey to the wonderful Sister Carol. When I say there were no quotas we did split up the country into the four provinces, and I did say let's get a good spread. I did want it to have that flavour of accents and flavour of people, in the sense that it didn't become a Dublin-centric children and parents learning a musical instrument. I wanted to bring it into the countryside. I wanted to dig deeper into the Irish nation. Making a film is expensive and it's a lot easier and cheaper to stay in Dublin. One of the things that we did on this film, which could be another film, was that we spent our evenings in B&Bs spread out across the country.
Piano playing isn't cheap and it is an investment from parents to invest in the education, but fortunately now pianos are relatively cheap. What's most expensive is actually moving them into a house. You can pick up second-hand pianos now as there are so many of them on DoneDeal. Then of course there are the electric keyboards that are disliked by the vast majority of teachers but liked by the parents, because if you invest in an electric keyboard it's very easy move in and out. Just in case your child only wants to play for a few months before they discover ballet or horses or GAA. So they are not such a
big commitment. What we found was that when it came to music people
found a way of affording it. It was seen as a necessity rather than a luxury in some of these people's lives. Which I think says a lot about it as a hobby and a pastime. That it brings so much more than other things do to your life.
Because a piano is there with you in the house you can sit down at any time and play. You don't get that with a lot of hobbies.
I think that's one of the beauties of learning any instrument. Apart from a piano, most instruments you can throw in a bag and go. But with a piano now you can find them almost anywhere. I was only in Heuston Station and they have put a piano in there. And there's been one in Pearse Street for some time. Around the European capitals now it is a thing to put pianos in public spaces.
You've featured piano music in your films before...
Often over the years I've edited my own films, and my first port of call when I'm looking for music is piano music. I always go up to this classical collection that I have, 50 CDs in a box. Somebody said to me once that I really need to improve my musical knowledge and avoid going back to the same old familiar pieces. Piano music has always been around me in a way. There's something that I enjoy about the piano and the sound of the piano. and maybe with the films that I have made it just suits and I think looking back on it that would have been part of the inspiration as well. In this film when I went out to make it I just wanted to use the piano music from the film as the soundtrack. there's no other music there. Everything that appears in the film would have been played. Apart from the final piece, everything that appears was played by the person on the screen. There was no other music needed thankfully. But someone did ask me did the students ever get the opportunity to learn other pieces, more modern pieces, as opposed to just the graded pieces. And I answered yes, but I couldn't afford the copyright of Ed Sheeran and Adele, which are pretty much the only ones that are played. You would go in and it was literally either Ed Sheeran or Adele that was their other piece, so i said we'd stick to what was in the red book because I knew how much that was going to cost me.
This was a departure for you in that you were your own DoP and you hired in an editor.
Yes, on the other two films I'd worked with cinematographers and had to edit myself, but on this occasion I was either going to have to go with a
40 CinÉireann / April 2018