obviously people who could stand up and sing. It was a brave piece of casting. The boy (Colm Seoighe) was one thing because he had a certain magic about him, but Michael had never acted before. He had never been in anything like that before. It was such a big step for him. It was a risky casting decision, but Pat was right in sticking to his guns and not getting an actor to try and play him. We did a little test about a year before when we were trying to decide what format we were going to shoot on and we used that as a kind of audition to see what they would be like on camera. What they would look like on screen and sound like as well.
And was that when you made the decision to shoot black and white?
It was a long time in gestation. We'd been working on it for 2 years before we started shooting and Pat had given me the book. Most of the pictures in the book are in black and white so it wasn't a question from the start of whether we shoot in colour or in black and white. It was always going to be black and white. It was interesting for me because my background, my very first venture into anything visual, was black and white photographs as a kid in school. I would have shot and developed black and white photographs, never thinking in my wildest dreams that I'd ever be able to make a living of it. It was quite nice for me because I had always loved black and white. And we did look at shooting on film and Pat was been very keen, and I would have been very keen too. We did shoot on 16mm and we compare that to a digital camera, to an Arri, and when we brought it back we immediately felt that the super 16 was too grainy. We just felt that we wanted a clean look, which meant that it would have to be less grainy. That we would have to shoot on 35mm. Then it became a decision between shooting it on 35mm film or on digital and we discovered that to process in black and white from film would have been quite difficult. We would have had to end up shooting it on colour film and then just bring it back to black and white. Then it became a kind of lie to shoot it on colour film and then my practical nature kicked in as well because I knew that if we were to shoot on colour 35mm that you'd have to be realistic with the budget. And on a small
46 CinÉireann / December 2017