We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bea Cabrera. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bea below.
Hi Bea, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
When you’re getting lows are too low and highs are extraordinarily high, you may feel like life is a rollercoaster, but a positive in this is that springing from one side to the other happens instantly. Therefore, I am also unable to hold grudges or to negative thoughts for long. A small detail can ruin or make your day, but the silver lining is that those good days are The Best. I am able to start all over, reinvent myself and put myself back out there in record time. Being a freelancer, I’m always on the lookout for new projects and using this to my advantage I’m constantly redefining my route, redoing my plan, a new to-do list, and back on track.
Having said that, I do get derailed often, it’s recovering from the punches what I most like about resilience. I’ve had nice experiences in life, like earning the Fulbright scholarship. But nothing comes that easy and the small print reads that I did try on 4 or 5 different occasions. I guess I couldn’t give up because there really was no plan B.
And that’s also a big factor when it comes to resilience, I guess. Not having an alternative leaves you no other choice than to recover quickly from the setbacks and try again. In the end, when luck strikes, it’s important that it catches you on guard. It’s really not all about the luck, but the work and effort put into being ready.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I hold a Bachelor’s in Telecommunication Engineering, another in Graphic Design and a Master’s in Filmmaking. My work focus is on film production, but I do a myriad of different and diverse things. I write, direct, shoot and edit. I can tackle projects from inception to completion and have equipment to do so, and I recently set up Setlife Media to deliver these services. A film production company with the aim of bringing to life stories of my own and others that are interesting to me and meaningful for society,
As a Fulbright scholar, my aim is to bring cultures together, and cinema has all the right tools to achieve this. From psychology and writing to camera and postproduction, a film bears the potential to connect everything in arts & sciences. And this is what drew me in. Having grown up in the intersection of all STEAM areas of knowledge, I find in cinema the perfect mix of humanity and technology.
It was 1992. I was too young to hold a heavy camcorder on my own but I convinced my dad into letting me record our travels. This video is unwatchable, by the way, but this Sony handycam from the nineties served as my first close encounter with cinema. An upgraded version would later on fall into my hands, and I’d discover the wonders of star transitions. Two VHS recorders and a jack to my parents’ mini casette player were my dreamt living room studio.
I started out professionally as a motion graphics designer and producer in a small one-stop shop for commercials and brands in Berlin (Germany), and freelancing for designer jobs. A fascinating city that I love and I hold close to my heart. One day, a very lucky day, I was granted a Fulbright scholarship that took me across the pond, all the way to Los Angeles to take on a Master’s degree in Filmmaking. From Berlin to Los Angeles, and back to Valencia, my home city, my life is all about connecting. Moving on and moving around. I am passionate about people and I love when I see the thinking happen on camera.
Setlife Media recently produced “Anticlimax”, a shortfilm that is currently running for the Spanish GOYA Awards. A film on the complex process of not loving someone anymore and, therefore, realising that the person who once loved you has probably stopped loving you, too. How to say it? How to avoid it? Can we restore what was lost? This story was born to answer these questions… and since life does not always have an answer, perhaps dreams do. “Anticlimax” provides a space where our characters are capable of saying to each other in dreams what they can’t express while they’re awake, taking as reference the cinema of Julio Médem or interest in the dreams of Luis Buñuel.
“Anticlimax” stars Manolo Solo, Belén López, Jorge Clemente and Alicia Armenteros and in just 6 months it has already accumulated dozens of selections and awards, including the Silver Biznaga in Malaga and two awards at the Medina del Campo Film Week.
We are beyond excited about this, and I’m very grateful to see Setlife grow step by step.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the most important bet you make when you put yourself out there, is in yourself, so never try and be like anybody else. When talking in public, or applying for a job… we tend to fixate on those who we admire and how they do it. We tend to imitate what we think is good, and follow certain rules we read would work for us. Essentially, we’re assuming we’re not good enough and even convincing someone else to agree with us. And that is on every level a mistake. Even if you get past the door at first, you won’t be able to keep it up.
When I was preparing my Fulbright application, there would be times I’d think I wasn’t enough… not educated enough for this honor, not cool enough for a design degree, not deserving enough… And I’d prepare a project like I was somebody else, somebody that had a level of visual culture that I thought I was lacking, that could go on to do great things with this privilege. By the time I was applying on a 4th occasion, I was so tired of this I simply thought “hey, this is me, this is what I want, this is what I need, take ir or leave it”. This “last time desperation” led to a more sincere approach, more down to Earth and essentially more what they were looking for. For the last time around it finally felt effortless, and I was given the scholarship!
That and also having a clear plan in mind. I got rejected multiple times, but always tried once more. You were asked to explain your future project, what would you like to study, where and why. At first, I knew I wanted to live this experience, but I thought I’d leave it open to the selecting commitee to decide on where I’d ended up and doing what. I thought I would adapt to anything because restricting myself to a few possibilities would be detrimental. But the opposite is true. I would come back into the next application process with somewhat more clarity on the path I was aiming for. I chose colleges, I chose courses, I finally chose my specialty, and I finally argued why it should be this and not something else. This finally worked. I figured that others believe in you, when you believe in yourself, and that comes through when you have a clear path you know you want to follow.
Finally, don’t be afraid to make decisions. Make-the-call. In film directing as in producing, and managing anything really, decision making is one of those things that you’re clearly cut out for or not. In general terms, ADHDers with executive disfunction have it difficult here, but overcoming your mindset obstacles in order to clearly and effectively make the call, will declutter your path in ways you wouldn’t imagine. When a decision is made, one route is chosen and many others disregarded. Assuming that you can’t always do everything, that something’s gotta give, that something may be left behind and that’s ok… assuming certain loss in the sake of a clearer mind, a more focused approach and a healthier relationship with time is difficult but necessary to walk longer. The opposite is too exhausting to yourself and you aren’t able to give your best on the task at hand.
These are the three rules I’ve learnt in the course of my professional development, and I try to remind myself of them often. Be yourself, have a clear plan or course of action and just-do-it, do the work.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I am always open to collaborations. Film is a collaborative media. Regardless of how much of myself I can put out there for the project to happen, there is always a family and even a village of helpers needed behind. Being a very small production company, I know I can only take on so much but. Even though logistically and pragmatically I can tackle bigger projects, financially speaking I can’t get to move them. Capital will grow as the company flourishes, but at the moment it is necessary and beneficial to both, to partner up with other production companies and share the costs.
It kills me to see nice stories being stacked in drawers and I’d love to get them moving with the financial guarantees and responsibility they deserve, also contributing to the generation of a solid industry mesh of business tissue. So, if you’re looking for an investment opportunity, or you’re a production company (big or small) interested in partnering up strengths, I’m all ears. Please write to [email protected]
Contact Info:
- Website: https://beacabrera.com
- Instagram: @setlife.media
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beacabrera/
- Other: https://setlife-media.com
