The neighbourhood - Phase 2 - Stephan Warmenhoven

Introduction:
Stephan Warmenhoven is a professional filmmaker who is mostly known for his documentaries.
It was very nice to be able to talk to Stephan, since he has been actively working in the film industry for decades and has a lot of experience. I got to know him through Carel who gave me his contact details. Another reason I chose him was because I also want to make more films and not only pictures. The following text is from the interview I had with him over FaceTime.

Do you think the current situation will change your future work as a filmmaker?

Yes! It’ll be harder. I have quite a long history in making corporate films for companies and also the government or institutions and that already started diminishing. Simple because I’m 59 years old now so my time has come to do something else. And that’s not dramatic. But I’m still focusing on doing documentaries but it’s really difficult to get it financed. I think it’s getting worse and worse. Especially because of this crisis. Everyone is trying to make something right now. I had some meetings with TV stations last week to show them a project and they really liked it but they said that they have too much stuff on the table already.
During the years it got more difficult to make films since everybody can make a film nowadays. When I finished studying it was much easier for filmmakers since it was was harder to make a film for others. It’s still a great development but the downside of it is that everyone is trying to make something.

You told me that you are also teaching. I know that my own teachers had a lot of work with organising everything for online courses in that short time. How did you deal with that?

Well we are still dealing with it. I’m giving some online courses now to my students, but we had to start very sudden. The positive side is that a lot of things seem to be possible that weren’t possible a couple of months ago. Although on the other side we are thinking about the next school year and the plans right now are that about 50% of the classes will be online. I understand that but it’s a bad development when you give camera and editing lessons.
There’s just a lot of downsides. You have to have contact with each other to be in a room together to laugh and discuss together. You can’t do that online with a Teams meeting. I understand that we have to do that for the next 5-6 months perhaps but I’m not very positive about that development. It’s such a pity for your time at university. You loose some very expensive years in your study. You maybe work for 50 years after that but those are working years and I think to loose school years is worse, since you don’t have too many of them.

During the virus people started to change their behaviours according to the new rules. Was it difficult for you to think of always remaining distance, to stay at home etc.?

No, staying at home is not so difficult for me, because I’m used to that. I like to socialise sometimes but not every day. So that’s not such a big problem. Everyone just has learn to accompany themselves. But when I meet with friends it’s difficult sometimes to keep distance etc. - only when I meet my daughters I don’t keep distance.

The whole world changed how they greet, everyone communicates in a new way and that happened in a couple of weeks. Isn’t it interesting to see how people can change their behaviours in this short amount of time?

It’s interesting to see, but I expected that. People are much more flexible than they think they are. Especially in a time of crisis. If you are in a building which is on fire you will see how much energy there is to leave the building and to flee.

So it’s more the evolutionary instincts that get us to change so quick?

Yes and I’m much more pessimistic about the time after Corona, because you will still have different behaviours. No one knows who will pay the money that’s not there for a lot of people now. It seems that old rules apply again, that people negotiate or asking too much for things.

My last question is about how we feel about each other during the crisis. I feel way more connected to everyone because I know that there’s a problem we all have to face right now. Do you also feel that way and do you think this state of mind could stay even after the crisis?