Meet Aaron Matthew Kaiser

Thanks for sharing your story with us, Aaron. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
My journey began twenty years ago in San Diego as I was graduating from high school. Back then, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I basically registered a production company and started calling myself a producer, thinking that I had already arrived. The truth is that I didn’t know that I hadn’t even begun and I had a very long path before me. In fact, it would take a few years before I began making content and a few more before I made the move to Los Angeles.

In 2004, I met a big Hollywood producer and called him up to ask him to teach me everything he knew. This wasn’t a request he could grant, but he gave me some parting advice. “You want to learn to produce,” he said, “then start producing. You will learn along the way.”

With that, my first project began. It was an internet talk radio show about video games. Our audience was small, and we never made any money, but I truly did learn how to produce. I figured out that when I did certain things to prepare, we had a good show. When I didn’t, the episodes didn’t go as well. I also figured out where on the team I best fit. Most importantly, it led to my first real short film loosely based on the show, Three Lives.

Three Lives was made as part of the 48 Hour Film Project. Their motto that year was “Stop Talking, Start Shooting” and that resonated with me. I called my friend Doug Jones up, whose career has since exploded, and he agreed to play a role. That film ended up taking Best Film of San Diego and was a great indicator that I was on the right course.

The next year rolled around, and we entered again. Then, in 2007, I decided to try and direct a music video for a competition. This was my first time truly in the director’s chair and, while we won the competition, I found that I wasn’t very strong on set. I lacked confidence and experience and relied on my DP and other crew to figure out what to do next. Sure, I had some initial ideas, but couldn’t think on my feet beyond that.

By the next year, events lined up, and I finally decided to move to Los Angeles. Within a few months, I began making connections and again participated in a competition. This time I was co-producing a slew of spec commercials for the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Competition. We had an amazing team and some really good ideas, which resulted in one of them being a top-5 finalist and almost aired during the big game!

Things were starting to look up! I was getting press coverage, my spot aired nationally on cable, I was being hip-pocketed by a writing agent, and I had just pitched a few projects to a reputable company. But then everything collapsed at once. The company passed on all of the projects, my agent, and I had a falling out, and I lost my place to live. I ended up living on the floor of my office in Downtown Burbank.

This was the first time in my life that I lost hope. I couldn’t see a brighter tomorrow, but this period was important. I needed to have the reality of the entertainment industry revealed to me. I needed to see that things would not come easy. I needed to find my true path.

Around this time, my church began teaching on identity. Often, we will place our identity–who we are inside–in the wrong things. Everyone in the world does it, but I feel it’s more prevalent here in LA because of how we are focused. If we find our identity, hope, and happiness within the confines of transient things such as what we do (career) or who we date (relationships), what happens when we lose out on our dream job or get hurt by the person we love? I had to come to terms with this myself and find my foundation in something much more important: my faith in Jesus Christ.

For a few years, things began to get better. I had developed some side work to keep me on my feet while practicing my craft and producing occasional projects. I bought my own camera and learned photography. This was an important first step to not only craft my sense of image style and tone, but to learn how to work with talent and get the performance I needed out of them.

I began to vlog on YouTube–another major step! This helped me to hone the video aspect of my skillset. How to edit, pacing, telling a story. These were all things I learned by putting myself on camera and sharing my adventures with the internet. I didn’t care about audience growth or what people thought; I just wanted to get better.

I also continued to focus on my writing. In early 2018, I began to feel confident to try my hand at directing again. Another competition came around, and my friends and I used it as an excuse to make a short film. For me, this was something bigger. This was a litmus test of what I was truly supposed to do in entertainment. Our short film was titled Simon and not only did I have the confidence and strength on set that I lacked previously, but we managed to take 2nd place in the competition and prove we had made something that connected with an audience.

So, after twenty years of being in entertainment and saying that I’m not a director, I find myself solidly in the director’s chair. I followed that short film up with a couple of music videos and finished writing my first feature script. I’m also developing an animated series that has some interest and will be directing another short film and music video within the next few months.

Looking back at the path behind me and the road ahead, I can see that there is still so much more to go, but I’ve also traveled so far compared to where I was in the beginning.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I tend to have trouble with working on many projects at once, and that was something I got in trouble with early on. Every time I had a small idea of a movie, tv-show, or comic book, I would write it down on an index card and post it on my wall. Suddenly, I had two dozen projects “in development,” yet few were more than just an idea.

As my skills and storytelling ability increased, I realized that most of these cards weren’t even that great, to begin with. I eventually had to scrap all, but maybe the top two, and even those have to put aside for the one to two big projects I’m working on right now. I had to learn that it really is about having a quality story, not a quantity of stories.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I think my ability to tell an engaging story with compelling characters is my most important characteristic. I’m able to do that both on the page and on the screen. I’ve created characters that are complex, where you feel multiple emotions at once toward what they do. I’ve been able to take stories of places that viewers generally don’t anticipate. It will be this ability that will propel me to the next level and keep me there.