As noted byVariety, Abbey Road Studios is a location that is synonymous with the Beatles. The studio, located on Abbey Road in north London, is where Paul McCartney and his fellow bandmates recorded most of their albums. After the group named its seventh album after the road itself, the studio (which was then called EMI Recording Studios) changed its moniker to honor the album’s title. Nowadays,Abbey Road Studios is helping one of the former Beatles' member’s daughter,Mary McCartney, make waves in the entertainment industry with her directorial debut,If These Walls Could Sing. The new documentary is expected to drop on Disney+ on January 6th.
With her directorial debut right around the corner,McCartney talked with Variety about transitioning from photography to filmmakingand what she has planned for the future. Initially reflecting on her upcoming documentary, McCartney said, “I started working on this a good couple of years ago in lockdown. I was invited by John Battsek, who is an amazing Oscar-winning documentary-maker who did “Searching Sugarman” and “One Day in September,” to name but just a couple. And he emailed me out of the blue, and said, “Have you thought of directing documentaries?” And I said, “Yes.” And then he sent me through the idea.”
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Mary McCartney Says That “Interviewing Is an Art Form in Itself”
McCartney also noted that she did all of the interviews in the documentary herself before stating, “interviewing is an art form in itself. But in a way, that’s where my portrait experience came in. It’s interviewing without speaking, so much as encouraging, but it’s getting an interview with someone in a weird way through a portrait. But it was nerve racking because I was making sure it was lit properly, checking the frame and then getting the interview.”
She continued, “And the interviews were so important in this documentary because there’s actually a surprising lack of archive footage. Because recording in a studio – I hadn’t even thought of [this] and I grew up in recording studios – the etiquette is you don’t really take pictures and film, because it’s a safe play for the place for the musicians. So you don’t think “Oh, someone’s got a camera,” you’re literally just focusing on making the music. So there’s not a lot of photoshoots that go on inside the recording process. So it was heavily reliant on getting really good interviews.”
McCartney also noted that her transition from photography to directing “felt quite natural.” She continued, “Because when I’m lighting within my photography, in my portrait work, I’ve always used more continuous lighting, which is more what’s used in films. I’m not a flash person. And because when I’m shooting portraits it’s sort of continuous lighting, making a nice space for somebody to feel – the subject to feel – comfortable in, so that it’s collaborative and I get something out of them that maybe they haven’t given before: a look or a feel. It’s about that unknown little, fairy-dust moment that I haven’t planned. And so I approached the interviews in a similar way for the documentary. I did as many of them as I could in Abbey Road Studios, so when the people came in to be interviewed they were in the atmosphere and it made them more reminiscent of the time they’ve spent here.”
McCartney later finished by saying, “I have definitely, definitely got the bug for directing documentary I really just need to get my head down and think about the next subject.”
