Get Busy Living: Dominick Aznavour

Hey, I was very happy when my friend Dominick from California agreed to share his thoughts on my blog. More or less everybody is interested in cinema. And I am not an exception... Also I admire people who have a strong attitude, who know what they want from life, don‘t pretend, but do their best.

I minimally contributed to this article, because I just wrote some questions to Dom and after I read his answers, I decided to change nothing and let you read his monologue. It is really nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, Dominick Aznavour from Santa Clarita, California.

Dominick

CHOICES
I am studying film/tv production at California State University Northridge in the last semester.

because I've always had an obsession with the visual arts. All my life I drew, I remember even in elementary school I was getting in trouble for drawing in class. I began with pastels and graduated to oil painting. I took classes for drawing and painting for about 8 years until I hit high school. Once I was in high school I became involved in acting and playing drums, doing many plays and going out for extra work where I finally joined the Screen Actors Guild. After high school I decided to study film and television production because I always knew I wanted to work within the entertainment industry because it would allow me to continue to be creative, and what better place than Los Angeles? I thought I would continue to persue acting outside of school. I then became interested in photography as a hobby. Through studying film and television production at school, I realized that Cinematography is what I ultimately want to do. The aesthetics of film are something that I always paid attention to and loved, that I could create the beauty of an image in real life rather than just drawing it. I basically just moved from medium to medium in visual arts.

THOUGHTS, PLANS

My aspiration is to work in entertainment and be able to be creative in a visual department. Its incredible because art is so subjective, everyone can interpret the same picture differently but in the end of the day, we all feel something emotionally. You can look at a picture of a landscape and say "This is exactly how I feel right now." I’m the type of person who wears their emotion on their sleeve at all times and am extremely passionate, so I love to express my emotions. Anything that expresses emotion is attractive to me.

I plan to hopefully get an internship and become employed somewhere that will allow me to work on set. Production work is where I want to be mainly. As much as I love post-production and pre-production, I enjoy being on set the most. The fact that I would be working on movies as a career would be a dream. I would hardly call it work. Being in class just makes me laugh because here I am shooting a scene, while other people are sitting in lecture classes.

Career opportunities in California for the entertainment industry really vary based off of who you know and being good at what you do. It is absolutely true that in this business, it's all about who you know, which is why networking is so important and refining your craft at all times.

INSPIRATIONS

My inspirations are Martin Scorsese, Hunter S. Thompson, Heath Ledger, Jim Morrison, cinematographer Robert Richardson. All these men were great story tellers, whether it was through writing, directing, acting, poetry, or cinematography. These men were also renaissance men, they never stuck to doing just one thing, they were people who dabbled in everything and had a burning passion for the arts. Passionate people turn me on more than anything. You could tell these men had a thirst for life and wanted to be the best they could be.

CINEMA

In my opinion on American cinema is that it’s now a business more than an art. Everything being done now is a remake due to the studio heads not wanting to take risks. They would rather make a movie knowing there is already a fan base for it and a guaranteed audience. I think that is the biggest difference between American and European cinema. Europe has more of an appreciation for the arts and has deeper roots to it, so in my opinion, European cinema still makes the effort to make original films rather than just remakes. The art and originality is still there for European cinema. European movies are even being remade in America. We still absolutely have the ability to make great movies more often, rather than remaking something, but it’s all about taking that risk and believing in what you’re working on.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I began to become interested in photography right after high school. My sister-in-law purchased an SLR, so I started playing and taking pictures of my friends with it. I soon realized I loved taking candid pictures of people. If I could eventually turn photography into a career, I would. At this point in my life, its just a hobby until I finish school or an opportunity comes up for something more serious.

Here are some Dom's works: