A Quote by Aaron Ruell
I feel as if I've been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director.
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I work in several different groups of pictures which act on and with each other - ranging from several abstracted manners to a form for the surreal. I have been called a preacher - but, in reality, I'm more generally philosophical. I have never made an abstracted photograph without content. An educated background in Zen influences all of my photographs. It has been said that my work resembles, more closely than any photographer, Le Douanier Rousseau - working in a fairly isolated area and feeding mostly on myself - I feel that I am a primitive photographer.
Composition is what's similar between being photographer and director. As a photographer, you're sort of doing everything - you're directing the lights and you're framing and you're moving around. The hardest thing to learn as a director is how cameras have to move. You have to have patience, you have to learn how to look through the lens and then you have to learn to combine all of the compartments into one great image.
When you're directing an ongoing series, the tone has already been set. So a director will come in and fulfill that tone - reinforce the characters and their behavior. The challenge is to find unique ways that you can visually tell the story while keeping the established tone and the pace and the characters.
My job as an actor is to try to do what the director wants me to do. I'm going to do everything I can to incorporate that note and make it work. If it doesn't work, I'll try this kind of thing, and "How do you feel about that?" If you are at odds with the director, neither one of you is going to get anywhere. You really do have to be able to make both of you happy. Even when I was younger, there were times when you have to find a way to make it work for both of you.
I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.
And so, in terms of setting the right tone and finding a way of presenting all of these things, that creates a cohesive whole and doesn't alienate the audience, is tough. That's a challenge. And I think the tone of a lot of shows is discovered through experimentation and actually making it. Eventually, it starts to cohere.
With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.
I'm in between an installation artist, video artist and photographer. And when you work with nude bodies, you're immediately called a pornographer or a fashion photographer.
The director sets the tone, and if someone's ruling it with an iron fist, people are quiet and the days go long in my experience, when there's a very serious tone, the days just drag. When there's someone who, in between takes, is joking or laughing the days go quick.
With a director it's all about the work; I'd work with a great director over - you know, I'm not the kind of actor who that doesn't go, 'I want to play this role.' It's more like, 'I want to work with this director,' regardless of what the role is because if it's a good director, you'll probably find a good role because it's a decent film. But a mediocre director will always make a mediocre movie.
I know there's a difference between being successful and feeling successful. And if you ask me if I feel successful, the honest answer is 'not yet.'
I came up, I suppose, a fairly traditional way. I went to art college. I always wanted to be a stills photographer, really, when I was younger, and I briefly worked as a stills photographer.
For actors, being successful is generally getting a job. If you can work a lot, you're really successful. If you work a lot on projects that are interesting and intelligent and great fun to be part of, then you're hugely successful. And I feel hugely successful. I can't believe that I get to be involved with the projects and the people I work with.
If a director can find the exact combination between the written word as a guideline and improvisational input from his actors, I think that's where you'll find the most successful work being done.
Oddly enough, white is a dead tone in a small room. Choosing something with a more medium tone will make the space feel larger.
I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good.
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