Seamus Deasy is one of Ireland's most acclaimed cinematographers, with credits ranging from Bob Quinn's Poitín to Pearse Elliott's The Mighty Celt. Denise Woods talked to him at this year's Galway Film Fleadh, where he was honoured with a career retrospective.

Denise: When did it all start for you, working in film?

Seamus: I worked for a small radio studio in the sixties doing sponsored radio programmes. It's very strange to think of it now; RTÉ Radio came on the air at 8am, shut down at 10am, came on again at 12.30pm, shut down at 2.30pm, and came on again at 5.30pm, and stayed on for most of the evening till 11pm. Most of the programmes were sponsored, and they were made by this company. They would be 15 minutes long: music, soaps, quizzes. I worked for a studio who made about 28 of these sponsored programmes, including a soap called The Kennedys of Castleross. I was 15 years of age when I started working for them; putting on the discs, doing the sound effects on the soaps. The guy who owned it, a guy called Bill Stapleton, was really interested in film, so he bought a film camera. RTÉ TV wasn't even on the air at this time, but he was really keen.

So he had the camera, and he bought a small place in Bray where he developed a studio. He then went to get work with RTÉ supplying them with facilities and crews. A complete crew was a cameraman, a soundman, and an electrician; I was in that first crew that he supplied to RTÉ – I think was in 1964 or [19]65. I worked on farming programmes for most of that time; the odd time when farming programmes weren't on, during the summer, we would do documentary.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 106.