Styrmir Sigurðsson

Styrmir Sigurdsson

First steps 

In my late teens I thought my best shot at eventually getting into filmmaking was by sneaking my way into a TV station. Experience in music somehow landed me a job at RUV (The National television station in Iceland) as a sound man, well, actually a sound teenager. There I also got the chance to edit the occasional news segment as well. A cameramen took a pity on me and taught me some camera basics. I had also been a still camera buff. I loved taking photos and had a tiny darkroom under the stairs in my parents home. Armed with this basic knowledge, a little later I landed a job as a cameraman at the newly formed Channel 2. There, I also got the opportunity to edit trailers. I Ioved it and soon learned that I had a knack for editing. I wrote down time codes while viewing one inch tapes and edited in my mind before fleshing it out with a technician. I learned that with some ambiguous music and clever editing I could, in some instances make trailers that suggested much better movies and it boosted my confidence. I remember a huge fight over a one frame adjustment with a technician. I thought, and still think that a one frame adjustment can make all the difference in editing. At the TV stations I also got the chance to play around with equipment. I made one music video for my band, Hunangstunglið. A pretty basic live performance video. Soon thereafter I went to Art Center Pasadena in California to study film.