Lisa Mulcahy

As a child, I was always curious about how TV programmes and films were made so in my final year at school, I heard about a new Media Studies course that was starting in one of the colleges. I applied for it and got a place. This was in the early 1980s. It was based on a Canadian model – mostly practical, no exams, and we got paid under a European special education fund, to go. So, for two years, my classmates and I ran around Dublin with our Super 8 cameras mostly making terrible films but having a blast. We learned all aspects of filmmaking from scriptwriting, lighting, boom operating, propping to editing. We all did everything. I realised how much I loved editing and  set up my own super 8mm cutting room, complete with viewer, splicer, the lot. It was incredibly fiddly work as the film stock is so tiny but I wasn’t keen on video editing. I wanted to work on film. Towards the end of my course, I decided that editing was what I wanted to do so I looked up the editing companies in Dublin. There were three of them. I knocked on their doors and asked, “How do I become an editor?” I literally said that to whoever answered the door. I got a job and left college early and I assisted an editor for a year. We cut an arts programme for RTÉ, the national broadcaster in Ireland, that was shot on 16mm reversal film so we cut the original film. It was pretty intimidating at the start because of course you had to be careful not to damage the original film, but it was amazing training and within six months, I was cutting full programmes myself, working with different directors. I truly believed that I had the best job in the world. 

After a year, I thought it would be useful for me to go to London to get a different editing experience so I went and knocked on all the doors of all the editing companies in London (a lot more than three) and eventually convinced someone to give me a job. This was in a big company in Soho where I assisted on commercials and documentaries. Although I had got what I wanted, I became very depressed living in London. I had moved from Dublin which had, at the time, a population of about half a million people. It never really had a small town feel to it but when you went out, you’d always bump into someone you knew. People were friendly but also, it was hard to be anonymous. The prospect of moving to such a big place like London was hugely exciting to me. I could be who I wanted to be, could look how I wanted and no one would comment, no one would know me. But those things that I thought would be appealing, became my downfall. I didn’t have a support network like I did at home in Ireland and although the people I worked with were great, they had their own lives and lived at every corner of London or outside, so you wouldn’t just drop in, it wasn’t as easy to connect and I felt very lonely. After a year, I left London and went to the States with my sister and some friends for a few months. Went I returned to Ireland, although I still loved editing, I knew that I didn’t want to spend my life in a room, mostly on my own, so I became an assistant director. Editing is still a great love for me and every director should do it as some stage. It is a wonderfully creative part of filmmaking  and storytelling and my experiences have greatly helped my work as a director. 

As an assistant director, I worked on many movies and TV shows initially as a trainee, then as a third, second  (briefly) and first. During a lull one year (you have to learn to live with lulls), I decided to direct a play. My sister was an actor at the time so we went to Samuel French’s in London and chose 30 plays. The criteria was that it had to be a comedy with no more than four cast. We came home to Ireland, read them all and settled on the one that we both liked. We put on the play in a theatre in Dublin and then toured for a week in the west of Ireland. The venues were small but we sold out for our three-week run. It was a fantastic buzz. In doing the play,  I rehearsed with the four actors for four weeks. It was simply the best thing ever and I realised how much I loved working with actors. That was when I knew I wanted to direct.