Sjoerd Wess
“In terms of my interest in filmmaking, I guess the seed was planted when I was just 13yrs old. I discovered filmmaking through my love of skateboarding. Actually I was terrible at skateboarding, but to keep hanging with the guys, I would shoot their tricks on a Sony Handicam. It had a proper SD card and a screw on optical fisheye lens, which was super cool back then.”
“I guess it all started for me, when the guys I skated with got sponsor contracts from the local skateboard shop, but also brand deals with bigger globally known skateboard companies. Although I was only ever paid with skateboard wheels and the like, I did get to travel with them to skateparks all across Holland.”
“Because I had to do all of the editing as well, I was constantly learning how to shoot and edit through tutorials on Google Video, and then later YouTube. My dad is actually a master watchmaker and was also into building his own PCs at this time. So I quickly developed an interest in building computers as well. Not knowing at this early stage in life, that I was getting the best education I could get for my future career.”
“I would spend my days after school at the skatepark, and then after dinner, gaming, watching YouTube videos and editing my videos in Sony Vegas. And that was pretty much my life during my early years at school. I was completely distracted from my school work and so I left school with terrible grades.”
“Fortunately, the Dutch education system has a whole range of sports academies with minors in surfing, skiing, snowboarding, diving etc. So to become an instructor in snowboarding for example, I had to complete an internship for four months in the Austrian Alps. So it was a super fun course, but not much you can do with this sort of degree in terms of a career.”
“The coolest internship we ever did was into the mountains of Peru, teaching poor indigenous kids. Our program was teach them Western style sports, like Ultimate Frisbee. The village we were based at was one of the gateways to the Andes Mountains, and so the local village square was a great hangout for mountain climbers from all over the world.”
“The first thing you realize about Peru, is the scale of the nature there is huge. It is much bigger than anything I have ever seen in Europe. My friends and I decided to do a five day hike into the mountains. When your starting point is 4700 meters up the side of a mountain, everything is really hard to do at that altitude. I had a basic idea of what we were doing, having completed an Austrian degree in mountain navigation. But this was truly next level. It was the hardest thing we had ever done, and brought us all to tears in the end. That one trip, really changed us from boys to men. So it was an incredible rite of passage.”
“I kept telling myself I would do a bachelors degree in teaching, after I finished my sports program. And so I was all signed up to do my teaching degree, when a friend called me saying he was going to Spain for the summer holidays. We spent everyday surfing having the time of my life! Which made going back to studying as a teacher, seem pretty boring.”
“After deciding to not return for university, I spent my winters teaching snowboarding in Austria and surfing all summer in Spain and France. At some point, I picked up a job as an marketeer and surf camp manager for an international surf camp company, doing what I loved most. But after four years of living the dream, I found that I had become incredibly depressed living without a purpose.”
“Here I was 24yrs old, ‘too old’ to go back to school and with no idea of what to do next. I felt I had wasted my future. After two sessions with a therapist, I suddenly had this brilliant idea of travelling back to Peru to shoot a documentary! I already had a Dutch friend living in Huanchaco, so I figured I could shoot a ton of footage of the people over there. But in the end, I just spent most of my days surfing.”
“Even though I was in paradise meeting some really cool and interesting people, I still felt terrible about my future. Just as I was booking my flight home to Holland, my friend who I worked with in Spain called me to say he had an apartment in Amsterdam and was looking for a flat-mate. I had no job to come back to and with no money, as I has spent it all in Peru.”
“And so I went back to teaching snowboarding at indoor snow-domes, that were now being built all across Holland. After six months of being an instructor, I then landed my first job in media as a video editor. I had just started my own YouTube channel and was doing editing five days a week and then shooting my own content for YouTube every weekend.”
“Although I felt life was heading in the right direction, the workload was gruelling. Shortly after joining a Facebook group for media professionals in Holland, out of the blue I landed a PA job on a TV show for kids. Suddenly, I was working on all of these big TV jobs while still having fun doing my own YouTube Channel on the side!”
“I was in this amazing world learning all about managing film sets, lighting and cameras. I would literally stand next to the DP all day long, doing whatever they asked me to do. Learning everything I could by just watching and asking questions. Everything I was discovering, I then started to share across my YouTube Channel. This was the perfect life for me. Finally I was happy doing something that I truly loved.”
“And then one day, a good friend and fellow PA called me saying he had a crazy five day commercial shoot across Holland for an American production company. The problem was that I would need to quit my regular paid job with Dutch TV, to do this super short term gig with the Americans! And so, I decided to take the risk and do the five day gig.”
“For some unknown reason, after working with the Americans I suddenly got a ton of offers to work on TV commercials. And that’s pretty much how I got started, and all the while growing my audience numbers on YouTube. I just kept on learning with every production. And then I would take what I was learning and share it with the YouTube community. And that’s how I got to grow into cinematography in such a short period of time.”
“I can honestly say that being a filmmaker has completely changed my life. And because I felt so grateful, I was really motivated to keep sharing what I have learnt. However, I keep thinking about all those filmmakers just starting out. And so, I would do simple YouTube videos on the basics, such as making a ‘China Ball’ soft box light from an IKEA LED light and a Chinese paper lantern. I get a lot of joy out of making life easier for someone else wanting to get in to filmmaking, or doing their own YouTube Channel!”
“Having a YouTube Channel gives you a platform to shoot passion projects for and get immediate feedback from the audience. I find this really empowering as a filmmaker. And that’s why I love shooting short documentaries such as My Meditation and Through the Watchmaker’s Eyes.”
“With YouTube, I can make short films that really interest me and immediately share them with the world. Which is incredible when you think about it. In the past, a filmmaker could only do this by ‘four walling’ a cinema, or signing a distributor to share their projects with an audience. For my generation, creating content and getting feedback from an audience is almost immediate.”
“The more short documentaries I would share on YouTube, the more work I would get from brands wanting me to create content for them. Things then changed gears for me again, when a producer from Dutch TV called me, offering me a four part TV series. It was a massive project doing all of the production and post production in a month! This turned out to be one of the most important jobs of my career, helping to establish my reputation in TV.”
“This one project really paid off for me. Since then, they have called me to manage even more TV productions, including an eight part series I am finishing off right now. So it's crazy how suddenly, these things started rolling.They have a momentum of their own.”
“At this time in my career, I am doing a lot of TV productions, branded content and TV commercials, so I am truly living the dream. I am also putting a lot of effort into my YouTube Channel trying to inspire other people. So my dream going forward is to shoot more of my own content. I would love to make more of my own films for YouTube, where the income would enable me to assemble a bigger team of creative people to work with.”
“YouTube has become so much more than a commercial platform for posting videos, it has become a community of friends. Uploading every week is so intense. I mean the amount of time you spend making these videos never changes. It usually gets more and more, the bigger the idea. And so you really have to be committed to making the sort of content you love making, because it’s always about quality. You have a very deep responsibility to your community.”
“I think a lot of the people who follow me really like my lighting tutorials, and course, my personal experiences working with Blackmagic cameras and DaVinci Resolve. I was just thinking the other day, that each time I do a passion project, I should be more creative with the BTS videos. Because the BTS just happens from whatever you do during the shoot, they are just so much easier to have a ton of fun with. I would recommend doing these sorts of passion projects to everyone. They are the best way I know of, to learn the craft of filmmaking for yourself.”