RED's Gorgeous 4K Short On The World's Best Dance Festival Film Maker Is Beautiful

Last year I interviewed Stijn Verlinde, probably the best dance music festival filmmaker in the world right now. Last week, RED, makers of the camera equipment Stijn uses, recognized this and released a gorgeous 4K mini-profile that takes us deep into Stijn’s life, philosophy, shooting style and creative vision. If you're in need of a little inspiration today, take 4 minutes to check out this beautiful mini doc on one of the world's best.

All of us want to take the viewers of our photos or videos on a journey somewhere. Stijn Verlinde, who heads up Epic Cinema, has an incredible eye for beauty and photographic detail in his films that always amazes and inspires me. For several years now, he has been taking millions of people into the heart of the sights, sounds and emotional experiences of the electronic dance music festival.

These events attract millions of people each year, and competition is increasingly fierce, with promoters spending more and more to attract the best talent and put on the most insane, gargantuan events. This is one of the reasons Stijn has been so successful – his vision for his short films (or “after movies” as they are known) allow people to live the experience of the festival through his film showcases, even if they never attended the actual event.

Stijn takes his work very seriously and has invested almost $200,000 into his equipment. His hard work paid off, and last year he attracted the attention of RED, one of the leading manufacturers of cinema quality cameras out there today, the same brand of camera equipment Stijn uses for his work.

Stijn explained how the RED team had to work a little differently compared to the way they typically showcase one of their film makers through the Collective series:

The big difference they had compared to shooting the other Collective is that we can't stage a festival and have time to make shots. So they had to keep up with my pace on the festival, with nearly no time to put some time in special shot they wanted. As we were shooting the festival with only 2 camera guys, we had no time to lose. They were trying to get good shots, while I was rushing to get a festival covered of 160.000 visitors, so it wasn’t the easiest shoot for them - and during those days they told me how impressed they were with the amount of energy I take on these jobs!

As coverage of Stijn and his work grew, so did the production for the Collective of him.

A month later they flew a crew of 4 to my home to record a long interview. After that we shot some stuff in my edit room and in Brugge.

Stijn even played a role in his own Collective profile. As I watched it, I could immediately tell that the final segment had included his own editing work as it had his signature style stamped all over it. He mentioned he had a hand in this part of the process - hats off to RED here, as this Collective was truly as much about celebrating Stijn as well as collaborating with him.

During the edit process I heard that everyone at RED were really stoked about this Collective. After the first draft, I felt that the last part, that is a edit of some of my shots, could be better. So I've asked if I could edit that, and they loved that idea. 

Thanks to RED for the ongoing attention to quality and coverage in their Collective series, we hope to see more of these going forward as this 4K mini-profile on Stijn was beautiful.

I think we can all agree Stijn deserves all the positive attention he is receiving from the coverage of his Collective profile. Congrats Stijn looking forward to more of the same!