Q: Red Road is a universal story so why set it in Glasgow?
AA: There were practical rules that were set for Advance Party and one of them was the film had to be shot in Scotland. I chose Glasgow. I hadn’t been to Glasgow before I started on this project so I spent some time driving around and trying to get a feel for it. On one of these occasions I saw the Red Road flats and they had a big impact on me.
Q: How difficult was the casting process?
AA: Because the actors had to be in all three films playing the same characters the directors had to cast together. We decided to try and start casting early so that we could think about specific actors in the development of our stories and not get too attached to our own version of those characters. That didn’t really work out, we managed a couple of initial casting sessions but then everyone became so busy we didn’t manage to get together again for a long time. When my project looked like it was going to be greenlit there was a mad rush to cast and as our stories by that time were quite different it was a little harder to decide on all the actors. By this time we as directors had added two more characters to the seven so there were nine to agree on.
We agreed on about seven characters but there were two that were harder to resolve. As directors we were very understanding of each other’s needs without giving up what we needed for each of our films but we were put under pressure to complete casting and so rules had to be broken.
Q: Did you get the cast you wanted?
AA: As we all had different leads in our stories we decided to let each director have main choice over their leads so I did get to choose Kate Dickie and Tony Curran but the others were happy with them anyway so it all worked out. I didn’t meet Kate until the last casting session but had a strong feeling about her the moment I saw her as I did with Tony.
Q: How important were the locations?
AA: We filmed on real locations all around Glasgow and in some of the poorest areas.
The other main location was the CCTV control room where my main character works. A long room with hundreds of monitors trained on different areas of the city. We used a bay that is not in use generally and filmed all our own footage for it.
Q: What are the particular challenges of being writer and director?
AA: The biggest challenge about being both writer and director was going into prep before the script was ready. It was tough trying to finish the script and do all the things that needed to be done practically for the film. I never felt I got the ending of the film quite right in the script and also didn’t spend enough time with all the people working on the film. But generally I think it’s better being the writer and director because you understand the script so well and you can change things as you go, cut stuff that’s not working and try to improve as you go. You know the material inside out and can be very instinctive when working.
Q: What were the main challenges in filming?
AA: I guess the biggest challenge was getting the film done in the time we had. Another of The Advance Party rules was the projects had to be shot in six weeks. We spent a week filming the CCTV material so was left with only five weeks to shoot the main film. This was challenging considering how many locations we had and as it was winter in Scotland we lost daylight by about 3.30. There was very little time to explore or try different ways with scenes. I was under pressure every day to just get the day’s work done.
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