You’ve been in the film industry for a long time – please tell us something about the changes you’ve seen.
Wim: The other day I realized I’ve been making movies for seven decades – can this be true? It’s a very long time.
It was a different ball game back when I started. For a while, I had my own 16mm camera, but the aspiration was to shoot for reel – which was in 35mm. There was no other option for shooting on film. Video only came along 10 or 20 years later, and digital wasn’t even in the dictionary. So you needed film and a lab to develop it in, all of which was very expensive.
Only as a film student – with the equipment provided to you by a film school – could you make movies. This was a good reason to go to film school!
Everything was different: the procedure, the equipment, the business, and what you could achieve. Even the language of storytelling was different to that of today. Everything was slower. Our brains were working slower, and you even edited slower.
We’re still storytelling as film makers, but everything around it is light years away from how it was before. If I think about it, the lens is the only element that you needed in the 60s and 70s that you still need today. Everything else is different.