We thought it would be a good idea to help you get to know some of our fantastic filmmakers. So, borrowing an idea from LA Weekly’s Karina Longworth (the Bernard Pivot to our James Lipton), we submitted four questions to each filmmaker about and themselves and their films. We’ll be randomly posting as many responses as we can fit in between now and the kick-off.
Let’s hear from Aaron Gibson, whose film The Good Soldier will premiere in the X-Files shorts program, Friday, June 11th at 10:00pm.
The Good Soldier is a WWII era nostalgia film with a Hitchcockian slant. A solitary soldier struggles for self-preservation as his situation appears more dire with each passing day. If only he can determine, “Who is the enemy?” he could save himself. But by then, it might be too late.
This film deviates from digital cinema and opts for an old-school medium: Super 8 film, but applies new-school methods of editing and sound. Super 8 is often over-looked as antiquated, impractical, and difficult to use. Truth is, it is. And I like that. I also like that it produces a picture unparalleled in artistic expression to digital. It has a quality and history to it that is rich for storytelling.
I am not a full-time filmmaker. I am a co-owner of Rocktown Climbing Gym in Oklahoma City. Besides being a screenwriter and filmmaker I am an avid climber, a climbing instructor, an entrepreneur, and a website/graphic designer. In order to raise money for my films I started F47 Productions in 2001 and began doing website design on the side. I have no “professional training” in filmmaking or website design – I am entirely self-taught, self-read, and rely on experience as a guide and teacher.
It took me years of saving money and years of reading, practicing, and tinkering before embarking on a journey to make, what I consider a professional film project, from start to finish.
3. Have you been to deadCENTER before? What’s something you look forward to discovering (or re-living) at the festival and/or in Oklahoma City?
I have been to deadCENTER before. In fact, Rocktown was the host of the Flaming Lips showing of Christmas on Mars in 2008. Before then, I can remember my earliest deadCENTER film festival – I think it was the first or second year! The venue was at UCO. I remember being impressed that here was a venue for Oklahoma filmmakers to display what they had worked so hard on. I remember thinking then – years ago – that one day I would have a film to show. Now, here I am. Took me long enough, right?
4. Every filmmaker has influences and cinematic heroes. Name one of yours, and while you’re at it, tell us one film (or scene) in history that you wish you had directed (and why).
There are more influences they we even realize.
I have heroes in every genre but to name a few, I guess the list has to begin with the biggies: Kubrick, Coppola, Lynch, Ford, Scorsese, Tarantino, Cohen brothers, (do I really have to list Lucas and Spielberg? Come’on). Moving beyond the cliché, I’ve always been drawn to foreign cinema. I appreciate cinema outside the “Hollywood” realm: French cinema, Latin cinema. Lately I’ve developed a real fascination for Korean cinema – something about their stories are just….unhinged! The viewpoint is remarkable.As far as actors go, I really enjoy watching Philip Seymour Hoffman, Casey Affleck, Robert Downey Jr. I just watched Precious and Gabourey Sidibe delivered an incomparable performance. She should have won for best female actor, hands-down – she was brilliant in that film! It was an unforgettable story and performance.
All of that said, when picking a movie for kick-backed viewing, I’m more likely to pick a comedy than anything. When I need something to blow my mind – I go for the deeper stuff. And when I want to experience real art, the real human experience – I go for whatever I can find in Super 8 film. The more grainy, the better. Some of the best documentaries I’ve seen are in Super 8. If you don’t believe me check out a film called I is for India.
Honestly, I don’t value the directing aspect as much as I do the writing. The director only has to be good enough to get the writer’s story on screen. Man, directors will hate me for that one. So be it.
If I were to choose a scene that I wish I had directed – that someone could point to and say, “You directed that? That was unbelievable. Nice work.” It would have to be one of the following:
In one of the car chase scene in The Blues Brothers
The diner scene in Pulp Fiction
The wood-chipper scene in Fargo
The final scene from The Good The Bad and The Ugly
One of the “War Room” scenes in Dr. Strangelove
Eraserhead – the entire film
The “Seabass diner scene” in Dumb and Dumber (no, I’m not kidding).
