Big leap of faith pays off

DYNAMO: IDEA CANDY FOUNDER FINDS A VOICE WITH HIS UNFORGETTABLE DOCCIES

- Hein Kaiser

Life is not a roulette table. Yet making decisions is a calculated risk. Other times, U-turning from a career you thought you'd settle into and following your heart instead, a leap of faith.

Television producer Wim Steyn runs Idea Candy, a local production company that's become synonymous with telling stories and making unforgettable documentaries.

Think Helderberg, Devil's Dorp and a slate of successes that's built on a career path of hard work. Steyn's got a standing desk in his office and there's not a moment in a day that the showrunner is not busy with someone or other. The coffee's really good at Idea Candy's Cresta offices and that's important for a team that often burns the midnight oil to realise ideas and ideals.

But, initially, he was not going to do television at all. Instead, Steyn initially enrolled in varsity for optics of a different kind.

He studied optometry. Yet he said it was not long before he found his calling. “At the end of my second year, I switched and studied audiovisual production and advertising,” he said.

“Like everyone, I thought I'd be a hotshot the moment I finished my studies,” he said. It didn’t work out that way.

After handing out 60 CVs without a single response, Steyn got a call from a production manager who had scribbled his number on a cigarette box and then misplaced it for some time.

“He said he needed someone for the next day. That’s how I started as a runner on Idols season one,” he said.

That’s basically the gopher job on set, the bottom rung of the production ladder. But he never let an opportunity slip.

“One of the directors on