I hid behind my mother’s legs as she led me to the back row of a darkened room. We sat down. The lights went out. A disembodied voice boomed and I buried my face in her arm. Peering through her sweater, I saw the massive screen flicker to life…and I ran out crying.
As we walked to the car she said, “It’s just a movie. It isn’t real.”
By the time I was in high school, abject terror gave way to insatiable appetite. I attended New York University Tisch School of the Arts received a BFA in Drama. I appeared in off-broadway plays, Caligula Maximus (LaMama ETC) and The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller (Dog Run Rep) and films Irresistible, Richard Jewell, as well as television shows, American Soul, Dynasty among many others.
It wasn’t enough.
I needed to learn every aspect of dramatic storytelling. So, with a lot of help, I taught myself how to write, direct, light, edit, and do everything I needed to make a film. I saved money, bought cameras, bought lights, bought better cameras. And in 2018 I founded my production company, Stranded Entertainment, on the principle that if you love what you do, a story can change the world.
Today I still feel that a tickle in my stomach when I walk into a theatre. I’m still that little boy, peering out at the overwhelming spectacle. To me it is real.
- Aaron Strand