Cine É: Richard, you always seem to be in demand.
Richard Kendrick: I've been working on a couple of different things. I've just come off a commercial and I'm working on a documentary about Eavan Boland. That has been quite interesting. It's a BAI documentary with Icebox films, who I haven't worked with before and that's been interesting. It hasn't quite been difficult, but sometimes I think that visualisation of poetry is a tricky area to get into. It's mainly been interviews and she's alive and still working, so we spent a bit of time with her over in Stanford University in the United States, where she's a lecturer. It was interesting to see her there in a real working environment. I would not know a huge amount of her poetry, but I'm getting into it lately. She's a very interesting woman, who is in her 70's now. That's a lovely thing about documentaries. You get to meet and hang out with very interesting people. My
background for my whole life has been documentary filmmaking, and I suppose that's where I feel more comfortable in. It's something that I'd never give up because it's a real privilege to meet and travel with interesting people. By it's very nature you always end up in an interesting situation. It's a different dynamic and much more about the crew. It's more flexible. If you make it, and then you want to change your mind, you can do it more quicker as a cameraman or director because there's not a huge entourage of people. But ins saying all of that I am enjoying the drama side of things for the very opposite reason, because it's fully reliant on you creatively. It brings more out of you. You can't rely on an editor putting together some beautiful abstract pictures or a piece to camera. You literally have to think about everything that goes on to the screen, and I enjoy working with a bigger team and the whole dynamic of that as the DoP. It is much more about picking the team and getting them together for the work, and managing, as well as creatively working with the director, and production designer, and everybody else. I just said that a really important part of it is getting the team together, that they understand where we're trying to come from. It's amazing when you're working with a bigger team of people that communication, if it does lapse, things can go wrong quite quickly. It's effectively because people don't understand what they're being asked to do or they don't really understand why. I enjoy that side of things as well. when it works out right! On any of these Irish films that are of that budget, they tend be more ambitious than the money that they have allows. So it's very important that everyone in the team buys into that and that they all feel like they have some sort of investment in it. And I know from documentary, that if you have a good director, he always makes the best of the job. I just try to do that on the film, I try to get everybody feeling involved. At the end of the day you are out in the middle of a field, in the wet, and it helps if everyone feels like
RICHARD KENDRICK
42 CinÉireann / December 2017