The Art of The Kill...Aaron Brown shoots Devin

This is what happens before I had an Art Department!

Assuming there is truth in the statement “every picture tells a story” one can only surmise that photographer Aaron Brown is a man of very many words. I’ve had the luxury of knowing Aaron for more than a decade and his work behind the camera is nothing short of phenomenal. He’s travelled the world and has captured real Life, real Stories every step of the way. To call Aaron a shutterbug is almost an insult. He is a director, an artist, a dreamer, a cynic and a poet.

When it came time to find a photographer to shoot the VOC movie poster, Aaron was my first and only choice. Yes, I entertained offers from other folks (all fine photographers, too) but Aaron brought a sense of understanding to the table that no one else could mimic.

During our initial meeting, I walked Aaron through my thoughts on what I wanted the poster to look like. Admittedly, I am not a photographer. I tell my stories with hundreds of words or with hours of film. However, trying to be as helpful as I could, I designed a movie-poster concept and did my best to sketch it out, hoping that Aaron could use it as a frame work. My artistic endeavor left very little to the imagination. I believe Aaron still has a copy of this on his refrigerator.

After a good laugh, Aaron let me know that he understood what I was going for. He also recommended that we capture the feel through a minimalist approach.

Devin Reeves, our movie’s lead, is a complicated man. He exists 100% in that grey area between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, Life and Death. The day of the shoot, I challenged Aaron to capture all of that; the duality of character, the dichotomy that is Devin, and I was not disappointed.

Over the course of a few hours, in one of the most appropriately mind-blowing settings I could have imagined, Aaron set his lights and conveyed in a single shot the story it will take me more than 60 minutes of film to tell. But that’s Aaron’s gift.

Scattered throughout this post are outtakes from the movie poster shoot. It was a very dark and intimate affair with only myself, Aaron and Buddy Wayne Goettsch on set. The session was….inspiring. That really is the best word I can use. The only real difficulty came days after the session when I had to select one single photo to become the centerpiece of our poster. If I could have, I would have used them all.

The official VOC movie poster will drop here this coming Wednesday, kids. In the meantime, head on over to http://www.aaronbrownphotos.com/ to see some more of the man’s work.

-paul

Buddy Wayne Goettsch as Devin Reeves

"Something wicked, this way comes..."

#vocfilm