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Lynda McQuaid- Masterchef Ireland

9th Annual Irish Film & Television Awards

11th February 2012
9:40pm RTÉ One

Lynda McQuaid has been nominated in the Director Television category at this year’s Irish Film and Television Awards. The Director Television category is one of the four new craft categories for TV at this year’s awards and also includes editing, sound and cinematography. Lynda has been nominated for directing RTÉ’s new series of the world renowned format ‘Masterchef’ which has had success in England, Australia and around the world.
IFTA talked to the director about how it feels to be nominated, taking on such a well known format and adapting it for Irish television audiences, and how blending together all the different elements can make for very tasty viewing.

IFTA- Congratulations on your IFTA nomination. How did you feel being nominated?

Lynda McQuaid- I was thrilled obviously and since it is the inaugural award in the director television category it is nice to be in the first batch. I know Gary and think he is a great director and I really respect all the others. It is absolutely brilliant to be nominated for ‘Masterchef Ireland’. I feel we worked really hard and put a lot of time and effort into getting the look of it right; so in some way I feel by being nominated in the director category that sort of acknowledges that. I mean it took us six months to find that location and I think that is what makes it look and feel as great as it does.

IFTA- How important do you think it is to have this category in directing television at the IFTAs?
Lynda McQuaid- We have been saying for ages among ourselves that it was a real shame that we weren’t acknowledge;  because sometimes you get the impression in films that they are better resourced. It is easier for them to be more technically brilliant because they are funded differently and there is a bit more money at stake. The sound on ‘Masterchef Ireland’ for example is without a shadow of a doubt exampliary and for people like Trevor, and Alva who is nominated in the editing category, it is a real nod to the fact that on a whole we aren’t as well resourced as film but put in as much time and effort to make it as technically brilliant.

IFTA- What was it like to work on ‘Masterchef Ireland’ and take on that format?

Lynda McQuaid-   It is a format that I have wanted to do for a very long time. I have never in all my time in television done a cookery programme even though I watch all of them. I knew that RTÉ had the rights, so I was just keeping an eye out and ear to the ground as to when it was going to move. I know there were other collegues and peers within the industry who wanted to do it as well and it wasn’t obviously going to be Screentime Shinawil’s gift to get it. I am freelance so I can go wherever but I would do most of my work with Screentime Shinawil, so I was really thrilled to have got it because it just felt like a brand new challenge, like the first and second series of ‘The Apprentice’. I love when it is just something new, spending a lot of your time problem solving and thinking how can we do it as good as in the UK on less resources? I find that very challenging; so I was thrilled to have gotten it.

IFTA- How did it differ from ‘The Apprentice’?

Lynda McQuaid- It differed from ‘The Apprentice’ in the fact that there was less movement. There was obviously a little bit of movement because we went out and did tasks. The huge issue with ‘The Apprentice’ is your crew have to go with candidates and they can choose to go anywhere and that is what makes ‘The Apprentice’ extremely difficult. They can go to the printers and have a book of contacts so you are constantly on the move with the apprentices. That is very tiring and exhausting for crews, you are never really static anywhere. You might do a morning somewhere static. Also the fact that you are solving issues of shooting, technically for me, getting my head around how to deploy cameras so that when the guys are shooting they are getting the best shots. In one, we are in a studio setting with a little bit of movement but with ‘The Apprentice’ it’s just a huge movement. Also the end of ‘The Apprentice’ in the boardroom is very heavily scripted whereby there is a very little of ‘Masterchef Ireland’ that is scripted, you are expecting the boys to very much drive it from their own heads and experience.

IFTA-As the director how did you blend the different elements of ‘Masterchef Ireland’ together, the reality of the cooking, the presenters and the staged elements and how did you keep control?

Lynda McQuaid- Basically my whole thing on how we planned ‘Masterchef Ireland’ was, that I had a few criteria, one of them was from the point of view of where we are culturally at the moment, I was very keen that we were showing off Ireland. The one thing about ‘Masterchef’ is that the format is one that it sells internationally and moves around the world so what I wanted to do as an Irish person, who has worked and lived in the UK for a long time and knowing these programmes, was to show Ireland as it really is;  that we didn’t portray anything that was Irish and paddywhackery, that we showed we are culturally advanced and culinary advanced, that we are open for business and  although we are in recession it is not all doom and gloom; that we are still a beautiful country. It was just important to me that we were showing Irish produce, Irish ingredients, cooking at an advanced level and we took real care and effort in finding these people, that is wasn’t just going out and randomly pick six people who said that their spag bol was the best they could do. We spent a long time casting, we started with a lot of people and whittled it down to the 50 that came in front of Nick and Dylan and they whittled it down to the 16. I did spend a lot of time on it and it was important that we had a nice mix of being in the studio and being out and about and obviously on our limited resources I didn’t want a show that you got bored of 40 minutes in where you were like oh my god we are still in the studio. I wanted a pick and mix; that in some cases they were out on a task or in a professional kitchen and then in the studio. It took a lot of time and effort on logistics and putting a map in place so we knew where we were and that tonally each show had a slightly different personality.

IFTA-Why do you think a show like ‘Masterchef Ireland’ is so popular with Irish audiences?

Lynda McQuaid-For all the reasons I have said previously. I think what it showed off was we are a sophisticated nation and that on a whole people do like eating out and like cooking at home. The thing that slightly surprised me was the younger audience it had; that kids were getting involved. My young nephews, who are down in South Africa; I sent them DVDs and I used to get emails back about it and they are very young. I know a lot of kids are in and out of Rustic Stone and Pichet because they want to meet Nick and Dylan. I am surprised by the younger audience but I think that is also the competitive element and because these people were very articulate about food younger people are brought in by it, into the characterisation of like Little Christine or Mary Bridget or Big Pierce and so they went on the journey with them.

IFTA- You have worked as a producer as well, why the move into directing, was that always something you wanted to do?

Lynda McQuaid- In the UK you would just never really get the chance to do such a big show like this as a producer and director. Nobody would take the risk and it’s a huge amount of work basically. It just wouldn’t happen in the UK but when I came back I had obviously done a little bit of directing, like I directed little inserts for ‘Stars in Their Eyes’ or ‘This Morning’ and the first thing I would have done here when I came back was ‘Popstars’ and I just realised there was an opening in the market. I can do it if it is through a single lens because its story telling through a camera lens and I am quite good at that but I certainly couldn’t do multi camera. I don’t have any spacial reasoning whatsoever. It would be a complete disaster (Laughs) but when I came back I just realised that in this industry it was just something that I could do.

IFTA- So Lynda what is next for you?

Lynda McQuaid- At the moment I am working on ‘The Voice of Ireland’. It is a beast of a thing, a serious beast (Laughs). I am series producing and at the moment we are just in the middle of cutting. Hopefully one would like to think there would be another ‘Masterchef Ireland’ in whatever guise that would be.
Lynda McQuaid is nominated in the Director Television category at the 9th Annual Irish Film and Television Awards. She is nominated alongside Liz Gill for ‘A Story With Me In It’, Garry Keane for ‘Writing In The Sky’ and Kieron J.Walsh for ‘The Savage Eye’. The 9th Irish Film and Television Awards take place on 11th February in the Dublin Convention Centre. The awards will be broadcast on the night on RTÉ One at 9.40pm GMT.

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