Until he won a 2003 Academy Award for writing and directing “Two Soldiers”, a 40-minute short based on a William Faulkner story, Aaron Schneider was better known as a cinematographer. He gave distinct looks to thrillers like Kiss the Girls and period pieces such as Simon Birch before concentrating on TV work and getting his own work off the ground.

“I’m still having a blast shooting films for other people,” says the young director, calling the Georgia Straight from Los Angeles. “It’s all filmmaking, and I love every aspect of it.”

That’s good, because it was a true labour of love to make Get Low, starring Robert Duvall as Felix Bush, a reclusive backwoodsman in Depression-era Tennessee. The film, which opens Friday (August 6), also stars Sissy Spacek as the hermit’s former lady love and Bill Murray as a funeral director who’s taken aback (but who takes the money) when Duvall’s heavily whiskered character wants to pay for his own funeral—and attend it.

“Actually, this thing started right after the short. Other projects might have seemed more obvious or easier, but, of course, the opportunity to work with Robert Duvall was something that couldn’t be passed up. There are a lot of factors that go into the decision of what will be your first movie. In this case, everything seemed right. I just didn’t know it would take five years to make!”

In that context, there are things about being a hired lens that are easy to miss.

“It’s great to have some control over your own destiny as a director,” insists the Illinois native, who was also a second-unit director on Titanic, “but there’s a lot to get in place. And as a working cinematographer, when the phone rings, someone has already done that work.”

Schneider never planned to do two costume dramas in a row, both taking place in the rural South, but he says the tales called for that, although they allowed for liberties to be taken with language and setting.

“Get Low is based on a real story, so we decided to set it in the actual period, the mid-’30s. And, yes, there are certain anachronisms, like Felix having an unlikely friendship with a black preacher. But movies aren’t life; they portray a series of events that help you get at an emotional truth.”

The chance to work with Duvall and Murray seems an obvious driving factor, but Schneider has especially kind words to say about Lucas Black—the kid in Sling Blade and the quiet quarterback in Friday Night Lights—who here plays a befuddled assistant undertaker.

“It is a very humbling thing for a young actor to come and sit in the background and get to know the story through other people’s eyes. We needed someone who could be powerful without being big. I just worry that his work was too subtle to notice.”

Currently, Schneider is reading scripts and exploring options.

“I haven’t had the time to make any decisions, because I’ve been on the festival tour since Toronto last year. But the truth is, if I could do anything next, I’d make a Pixar movie.”