ACTOR Aden Young is determined to get behind the camera, rather than just stay in front of it.
Heralded as the next big thing after his first film, director Bruce Beresford’s Black Robe in 1991, Young has in the 15 years since then done about 20 films.
Moving into directing was, he said, a natural progression.
His most recent short, The Rose of Ba Ziz, was adapted from a children’s book of the same name, written by his father Chip, who died in 1992. "The first words I read were from The Rose of Ba Ziz," Young said.
"I was about to have my first son and thought that it would bea wonderful love letter from his grandfather."
Young has a four-month-old son, Dutch, with his partner, actor Loene Carmen.
Ba Ziz, made in January, is about a much-loved king who leaves his kingdom because he has an allergy and doesn’t want the flowers that set it off to bedestroyed.
Hugo Weaving narrates the film, which was made in five days. "It excites me beyond belief that cost is no longer a barrier and that the technology has become available at a time when I feel ready to use it," said Young, "although easy access to equipment does not always make for great films."
Fatherhood had inspired him.
"The remarkable thing, which is not easily explained, was that it was as if every choice I had ever made was perfect because he is perfect," he said.
"Fatherhood amplified the sense that I had a clean slate; it was as if when he was born, I was born afresh."
The Canadian-born, Sydney-based actor is now editing veteran Melbourne filmmaker Paul Cox’s latest film, Salvation, about a man who looks for love outside his unhappy marriage to a television evangelist.
It stars Wendy Hughes, Bruce Myles and Natalia Novakova.
"A lot of Salvation was shot in Paul’s house and that’s where I learned you could make a film very cheaply by just rearranging the furniture a little bit," Young said. He also edited the documentary Kalaupapa Heaven for Cox and has appeared in three Cox films.
In the next few weeks, Young will go through the two drawers full of scripts that he has written to see what is salvageable.
Most recently, Young worked on the US mini-series The Starter Wife. Next month he appears in cinemas alongside Matthew Newtown and Sibylla Budd in the new Australian feature The Bet, set in the world of corporate finance and directed by Mark Lee, another actor-turned-director.
