Jean Claude Billmaier
"My mother is Venezuelan and my father is German, and we lived all over the place - from Hong Kong to Colombia, and everywhere in between. However, most of my life was spent living in Barcelona."
"It was while I was living in Spain that I really started to become interested in art. My mother was an interior designer and she was very artistic, so she had a huge influence on me. We were always writing or painting, so there was this constant learning process about your creativity."
"It is about this time that my parents decided to divorce. I soon found myself going to a magic museum, which was part of a store called the 'The King of Magic' here in Barcelona. In fact, 'The King of Magic' is the oldest magic store in the world – or so they say. In Europe, magic is an art form, seen like a true craft and not like a kid's game. I was amazed by it, and knew I wanted to learn magic too, so I asked the owner of the store to teach me!
"I was quite young at this time, so when he explained that they don't teach magic to kids, I didn't accept that. Instead I went there every weekend for the next three months and just stared at the owner. I would watch him all the time, until one day he agreed to teach me. I’m sure I seemed kind of weird, but ultimately I’m so glad I did!"
"He said that I could come by on a Saturday after their performances and he would teach me a few things. So every weekend, I would go to the store and for a couple of hours they would spend time teaching me their magic – everything from cards to small prestidigitation. This soon became my thing. I enjoyed going there and being with them all and learning how to perform."
"After a while I started to become rather good at table magic. After about a year of training, they allowed me to perform on the weekends as part of their young talent performance. So here I was as a child, doing professional magic shows to a real audience at the oldest magic store in the world! It was just such an amazing experience at that age."
"Although I started with cards, I had always been obsessed with illusionism, especially the art of levitation. I think it was my love of magic and performance that led me to filmmaking. There was this real sense of excitement that comes from being able to engage the audience and connect with them in this special, particular way, coming up with stories and ways to enchant them as you perform for them. The ability to get people to 'lean-in' is something that I still try to achieve with filmmaking, in the same way as I did with magic."
"Just as I was getting really good at magic, we moved to Venezuela. The first thing I found, was that they weren't into magic as a sophisticated art form like in Europe, and there was nowhere for me to perform – at least at a professional level. Being in a new country, I knew that I was going to have to create my own opportunities to perform the magic skills I had learnt in Spain."
"By the time I was sixteen, I had created my own performance company doing acts for multinational corporations. I then teamed up with a circus troupe, so when corporations like Coke or L’Oreal had a corporate launch or big event, they would bring us in as the an opening act. We were something truly different and they loved the edge to our act."
"I did these types of commercial shows all of the time, right up until the time I went off to college. My plan was to study architecture in London, but my dream was to do film – and I decided I was like heck, If I’m applying to a film program I might as well aim high – hence my application to NYU. I had a real passion and love for architecture. But I also wanted to do something that excited me like the magic I did when I was a child. So I left it to fate. I applied to eleven architectural schools and NYU's film school."
"Although I had never actually shot a film, I had been heavily into Photoshop and retouching. Venezuela has this huge beauty industry, so a lot of my friends went into fashion modeling. One thing led to another and I ended helping them on their own shoots where I would then retouch their portfolios."
"I just loved to push boundaries and take those shots as far as you could go before they looked manipulated and fake. By 19 (even whilst I was at NYU), I was doing a lot of photo retouching and if I had wanted to, probably could have made a career of it. However, I knew that wasn't the right path for me in the longterm."
"When I came to study at NYU, I soon found that all of the things I had been into earlier would influence me as a filmmaker. My passion for short form filmmaking probably comes from my love of magic as a kid. Like magic, short form films appear to you suddenly, make their impact on you, and then move on! I find this ability to make a statement quickly a very appealing thing about short form work."
"For most of my life, I have loved European Cinema. Directors like Jean-Pierre Jeunet have this amazing ability to be able to create both a narrative and a surreal world, and they work together beautifully. I love this side to filmmaking. I guess that explains why I love Fellini and Buñuel so much. I would see their work and this would start me thinking about how I can incorporate those aspects into my own projects."
"I remember whenever I would get a DVD of a film as a kid, I would go straight to the 'making of' before I even watched the movie. I have always loved illusionism, especially the way it is incorporated into filmmaking."
"While I was at NYU, I entered my first short film competition and surprisingly won! Being a finalist in a film competition gave me the confidence to start dreaming of directing. I then started to think about VFX and green screens and the more complex forms of direction – aways thinking about how to manipulate / create an illusion."
"Suddenly I found that my Photoshop experience made things easier. Little by little, I started to put together a portfolio of work that I created in After Effects. What I had learned in Photoshop seamlessly transferred across to VFX."
"While I was at college, I was also able to continue to study architecture as a minor. Doing architecture at NYU I soon found complimented my filmmaking skills. Although we weren't working on CAD, I found that having to draw everything by hand really helped me to visualize things."
"I found that all of the architectural training influenced my storyboards and shot lists. Thinking about the environment you were shooting in had some parallels with the way we were working in my architecture classes. Being able to think in this three dimensional way continues to feed back into my style as a filmmaker."
"Soon after I graduated from NYU, I started to help everyone I knew with producing and visual effects supervising. At one point, I was working simultaneously on eleven projects, and found that there was lots of experience to be gained from helping out."
"When Marabigo was first founded, I was able to start working as a director and producer at the creative studio. Coming up with it’s branding was one of my first tasks!"
"We are all pretty fresh minds here at Marabigo, but what we do have is great talent and passion. That is what we can guarantee all of our clients - the most innovative talent and ideas. One of the most rewarding things for me has been my freedom to bring my friends and collaborators on board in the company - it’s incredibly cool to continue to grow into professionals and artists with the talented people I have been surrounded with in New York."