By Mikayla van Loon
From humble beginnings growing up in Mooroolbark to international recognition for his first short film, Aaron Lee Noyes is making waves as an up and coming talent in photography and film.
As director and writer of the film ‘Mr.Gypsie’, Noyes just took home best Australian director at the London Director Awards on 9 February.
“Making this film, I was pretty naive. I didn’t write it or make it thinking about festivals whatsoever,” he said.
“I did this for me and to make something beautiful and to show the world that I can do it and get myself on the right path.
“To get this kind of acknowledgment so early is obviously an immensely proud feeling. I’m proud of myself, I’m proud of the crew, I’m proud of the actors. It was a huge amount of work…I’m still coming back down to earth a little bit about it.”
Set in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and in rural Victoria, the film follows “a man [who] is on a bit of a vengeful quest” after his son was abused and eventually took his own life.
“He blames the abuser for the trauma his son incurred and he’s now on this crusade of hunting down child abusers and killing them,” Noyes said.
“We try to show a human element to his character. We don’t see any violence in our film…[and] the audience is taken through effectively the fallout of him taking the law into his own hands.”
With the lead role played by actor and Noyes’ father in law, Sal Galofaro, Noyes said “ I couldn’t have done it without him” and he “learned quite a lot from his experience in character development but storytelling in general”.
Coming from a photography background Noyes said helped immensely in directing ‘Mr.Gypsie’, storyboarding the main scenes and visualising the features of each shot.
“I’m really thankful that I do photography as a profession because I had no industry knowledge of filmmaking.
“The photography side of things meant I knew what I wanted in my head. I knew where I wanted to place the camera, where I wanted the light and where I wanted the actor to stand in a specific scene.”
Having made the transition from the corporate world to full time editorial and fashion photographer last May, Noyes had always viewed the digital mediums as a passion project.
But taking a leap of faith, the teenage dream of pursuing photography as a career came true at 34-years-old.
“I definitely romanticised the idea of it in high school, where I thought I could travel the world and take pictures for a living, that mindset I had early on.
“I had no idea how to action it at all but I felt drawn towards the craft. It has probably been my happy place, it’s probably the best way to describe it.”
First picking up a camera at the age of 10, Noyes used the environment he had around him living between Bimbadeen Primary School and Mooroolbark College, his fascination with the artform growing as he got older.
“In those days, I can still remember heading down to the shops and getting the film developed and being pretty excited about all that.
“I was just taking photos of anything at that stage, mum or dad or something in the garden, or a pet dog. Originally, I was really quite captivated with landscapes and nature and deep, vast, epic scenes, that’s what I really aspired to take pictures of at the time.”
Using the Yarra Valley as his talent early on in his photography exploration, Noyes said those landscapes are still somewhere in his collection and the scenery is still vivid in his mind.
“I liked that element of urban decay [in Mooroolbark] and going out towards Yering Station with all the old rail lines, you have those really early 1900s rail lines that are grown over now and decrepit and falling apart.
“I used to go out there a bit with friends and take photos when I was a teenager and I did like that mix of landscapes from the Yarra Valley point of view, but also the bit of historical detail in the foreground.”
Despite taking on portraiture photography now as a career, Noyes said throughout the filmmaking process he was able to delve back into capturing “big, epic scapes”.
Noyes will begin filming his second short film in March following the life of a man who develops dementia and relives moments in his life.
“We’re going down the highly cinematic route of a memory loop, so a typical dementia patient would start to have memory loops where they relive the same things every day.”
As ‘Mr.Gypsie’ is still doing the rounds at multiple film festivals, it can’t be accessed yet but the trailer can be viewed here, www.aaronleenoyes.com/gypsiefilms
