Uma Visual Storytellers

Working at Uma taught me about real, the money/business side of, life in filmmaking and how you can live off of something you love and meet some beautiful people along the way ! 

I was lucky enough to work with Barbara, who is a natural born visual storyteller, and Gerbert during the 2016 edition of BredaPhoto; an international photography event held in Breda. For the second time Uma created a series of interviews with 15 featured and very talented photographers over the course of a week, than creating a format and the week following Barbara and I edited all interviews into 5/6 minute items. I must admit it was a frustratingly fantastic experience in making film, and really forced me to speed up my hearing, seeing and putting it all together process. To stop thinking your own ideas and letting the material tell you what it is and go with their flow is most wonderfully difficult. Sometimes. 

I joined UMA Visual Storytellers at the right time and was privileged enough to have jumped in on some 'free' projects as well. 
From; creating a KICKSTARTER page for a ideological project of Barbara's wanting to organize a Global Community of old fashioned storytellers : The Global Storytellers (http://globalstorytellers.global), starting with a 'visual quilt' around a universal theme. 
To; meeting and sitting in on interviews very special persons during the project called ZIEL ('Soul' in Dutch) on the definition of Soul and different perspectives various wisemen ( an open minded priest, a shamane, a brain surgeon, a ... ). One of the interviews turned into a succesfull edit, but the others We believed should become part of the foundation of a film. A film about the doubt of a daughter who can make contact with lost souls and not with the soul of her late father...
...and so so much more! Which I unfortunately can't show you, but I can tell you about! 
Please feel free to contact UMA, apart from what they're reference, they are definitely people worth meeting in your life. 

This is a little experiment that I did for a (Global Storytellers) project of a company I used to work with, UMA Visual Storytellers.
Imagine the green screen in the cup being filled with moving imagery, e.g olden eyes, wrinkled skin, watery wisdom, unknown skies and future light.

It was inspired by and is trying to visually tell this story about one of my grandads.

My granddad died some years ago. My dad’s dad. He used to tell me I was his favourite. Some years ago his health deteriorated quite badly. I visited him now and again. He’d lost so much weight. I should have said, my granddad was a big man. The last time I saw him, I remember, I was there with my dad and my aunt. He was a bit of a grumpy man. When we went to leave and said bye, we walked out but I’d forgotten my scarf. So I ran back in, got a grumpy remark from my Opa, picked up the scarf and I hesitated. I’d wanted to give him a kiss or a hug, I remember. But I didn’t. Even in the car I was still hesitating, still wanting too, but we drove off. We drove off. Only, days later he died. I still feel the feeling I had of pause, of hesitation after I grabbed my scarf. I still can’t accept the why I didn’t, just, act, because I knew. I knew it was the last time.

My granddad carried a big beard, for as long as I can remember. My grandmother had always hated the beard. But he never shaved it. My grandmother died ten years before he did. When he died, in his bed, he was without beard. He had shaved all of it off before he had gone to sleep.

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