His childhood seems quite important to him. A lot of his stories were about that or would hark back to that. We had a load of stories from different periods in his life but the ones that I thought were important were the ones from that period in his life, from when he was a kid. It's hard to leave out stories but you need to ask why do these stories work, who are they for, and do they better inform your understanding?
Do you worry about what Adrian will think about it?
It was just the idea of what would it be Adrian and watch this film alone in a dark room. What would it be like? It must be terrifying. When I see myself in a film I want to die, so what must it be like when the film is ostensibly about you. I genuinely felt stress about being protective of him and not letting him down. If the film came out and a reviewer had a go at Adrian or at the film...I'd care less if it was at the film than if they had a go at him. If you get a bad reaction then it kills, because you've opened up your soul. From making films I realise just how hard it is to make films. So I'm always conscious of that.
And what comes next?
I've described it as the end of a trilogy of music films. I hope that the next one will be different, will be a feature. My very first film was about Irish people emigrating to New York and using the GAA to connect back to home. I co-directed that with my cousin. It came out before Art Will Save the World in 2013. It was made for Setanta and the BAI. That's the only other thing that I've done. I've always been a huge music fan. That's my thing. I think that one thing that I try to do is explore other ideas in my music films, so that they are not just about that. I'm going to try and take a break for a while. I'm working on something at the moment with a writer that would be more fiction based with some documentary elements. It's hard to know. Lost in France was released by Artificial Eye in the UK and played nationwide. If you'd have said that to me 10 years ago that it would happen then I would have said "That'll do!" I don't make art to make money. It would be nice if your art did make money, and it probably should if you are a certain level, but I'm not in this to make money and I've never made money off it. I've always had day jobs. It'd be nice to go home and take some time, and not worry about an edit or a sound-mix.
The Science of Ghosts plays the Audi Dublin International Film Festival on Monday, February 26th.
CinÉireann / February 2018 35