January 2012

Hemels van der Hart doesn’t do sponsoring; Hemels van der Hart does togethering. Pieter gives my number to Jori, Jori gives me a call and I again journey to the woods. In one of the many rooms with a round white table, Jori gives me his ins and outs and offers to be my Q&A. ‘But, Mundo,’ he adds, ‘you’re the director.’

I make a round of calls to gather a crew. One person leads to the next, and when I talk to a cameraman named Jelle, he wets his pants with enthusiasm. 

‘Filming people, for real? That’s exactly what I want to do—I’m in!’

Jelle connects me with a sound engineer plus an editor, so now there’s a crew. All we need to get started is someone to film. But I don’t need to think about that—Pieter already knows someone: Richard, the ‘guy who messes with trees around here’.

I’m as wet behind the ears as I am uneducated in filming and interviewing. Which is fine and dandy, because as I’ve discovered, being uneducated also means being free of a stifling ‘yeah, but this is how you’re supposed to do it’. But that doesn’t stop me from being nervous on the first day of filming. I want to do this really well, and I want to do it really well together. So what do I do? I give space, all of it, to everyone, all day. I’m constantly looking at others, asking what they would do, which is very sweet, but others are constantly looking back at me, asking what I would do.

I don’t speak up or dare to make decisions, and my uncertainty seeps into the post-production phase. Two months after our day of filming in the snow, we barely have a rough edit—a boring one.

Pieter and Barbara call me in—not to punish me, but to tell me they’re not going to release a ‘winter film’ in the spring.

‘I think this experiment is for the treasure chest,’ Pieter says. ‘Let’s start over. Will you send us an invoice for this first round?’

My ears don’t believe what they’re hearing and my hands clasp the armrests of my chair, as if to prevent myself from falling to pieces. Barbara and Pieter see it happening and assure me, ‘Mundo, it’s okay. This is called “learning money”. You won’t believe how many brilliant things we’ve already put in our treasure chest. Let’s learn from the experience.’

So, if I’m correct, I fall on my face, get to send an invoice for five thousand euros and receive a pat on the shoulder?

My hands clasp a little harder.

—‘Wha… What do you think I should do differently next time?’ I ask softly.

‘I think you know that already.’