Marthinus Van Rhyn

I was born in the same city as J. R. R. Tolkien (my claim to fame) and got my education in the two capitals of South Africa, Pretoria and Johannesburg. During my Journalism degree at the University of Pretoria I fell in love with documentary filmmaking when we had to produce a short doc in third year (2011). I had always had an interest in the arts though. In school I was a Drama geek and I filmed myself doing stupid skits with my dad's old video camera (you know, the ones with those big beta tapes). But making that short doc in my third year was the watershed moment for me when I realised that I wanted to do this "filmmaking" thing for a living.

So I enrolled at the South African School for Motion Picture Medium in Johannesburg where I completed my degree in 2014. After that I worked as a videographer/editor for a Cape Town start up creating social media content, then as a video director in Joburg (Johannesburg) and back to Cape Town to edit on a local 48 minute crime drama.

I'm currently working as an offline editor for television on a local telenovela (independent contract) while I write/direct (everyone wants to direct, amiright?) and edit my own shorts for digital distribution (to be shared here as soon as possible). My true passion, however, has remained non-fiction narrative storytelling and I would love to both edit and direct documentary projects as the next step in my professional filmmaking career. I think everyone will agree that the world is only going to get more interesting in the next five, 10, 20 years and, at the risk of sounding clichéd, the truth is stranger than fiction.

I'm an avid Avid editor (bad joke, I know), which is the NLE I use daily. I am also a Blackmagic Design certified DaVinci Resolve editor and currently completing training on DaVinci's Fairlight (Audio), Colour and Fusion (VFX) suites as well. Expect updates with official certifications soon.

I'm fully set up to work on projects from home, with high speed fibre internet and new and powerful editing machine.