Mark Stokmans

Mark likes to differentiate between building a story, and telling the story. It needs a keen eye & ear and a creative mind, craft and courage. You need to be able to recognize how a story wants to be told. You need to feel what is there and find the rhythm.  

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‘Like many people, I have been looking for my own story since I was very young. Writing, drawing, photography, music and film have been parts of my life ever since. I am trained at none of these crafts but am self taught in the school of hard knocks. 

 

Writing has taught me that the power of words, although great, is finite; photography showed me how to look at the world in an unexpected way; music made me realize that there is a rhythm to everything, and film how you can be a composer using all of the above.

 

What runs through all these crafts, these arts, is being able to look and listen closely. To find the concept, the ember of the story you feel needs to be told. To add kindling to that ember, to build a story from that insight is what I love to do. The medium you choose to express that story in is a personal choice, and every medium has it’s own unique qualities with which you can tailor your expression. 

 

I strongly believe in the power of real stories, they are always better than perfect stories. It takes courage to not “over-engineer” a story, to consider a script or storyboard as starting point rather than the end-result.’ 

 

See, feel, understand, consider, analyze, conceptualize, plan and then let go while you trust your craft, courage and the power of your story.