Kennemer Dunes national park and beach, "muddy" today. Every step requires effort [ effort transcends motivation ]

Min/max temperature: -2°C/0°C; humidity: 92%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1028 hPa; wind from East 19.3 km/h; visibility: 5.0 kilometres; Clouds overcast 304 m.

"I like my screen well used, with every corner filled, but no arty theories clamping the action down. Nowadays I want the cutting [ film-editing ] and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible, and all I am concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told without any directorial idiosyncrasies. [W]e are making Motion Pictures. Too many forget that. A film has got to be ocularly interesting and above all it is the picture which is the thing. I try to tell my story so much so in pictures that if by any chance the sound apparatus broke down in the cinema, the audience would not fret and get restless because the pictorial action would still hold them! Sound is all right in its place, but it is a silent picture training which counts today. Naval men have a theory that the finest navigators nowadays are the men who learnt their craft in the out-of-date sailing ships […] I am told that the talking picture has a bigger range of subjects, I argue that it also lessens the field of appeal. What appeals to the eye is universal; what appeals to the ear is local. […] I like to keep the public guessing [… I built up my interest gradually and surely and, in thrillers, bring it to a crescendo. […] it is […] knowing your script by heart. […] I have to remember that, whereas I know the story backwards, the audience has got to absorb it gradually. […] My artists, too, must behave as human beings. [ Glamour ] has nothing to do with reality and I maintain that reality is the most important factor in making a successful film. […] Next to reality, I put […] comedy [ it ] makes a film more dramatic. […] A stage play gives you intermissions for reflections on each act. These intermissions have to be supplied in a film by contrast and, if a film is dramatic or tragic, the obvious contrast is comedy. [ I ] try to supply a definite contrast. I take a dramatic situation up and to its peak of excitement and then, before it has time to start the downward curve, I introduce comedy to relieve the tension. […] I am out to give the public good, healthy, mental shake-ups. Civilisation has become so screening and sheltering that we cannot experience sufficient thrills at first hand. Therefore, to prevent our becoming sluggish and jellied, we have to experience them artificially […] But it must be pictures first and last. A little sound certainly, but only when the story offers a perfectly natural opportunity for it."

Alfred Hitchcock in 'Close Your Eyes and Visualize!', originally published in 'The Stage', July 1936, reprinted in 'Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Selected Writings and Interviews', page 247, 249, edited by Sidney Gottlieb, first published by Faber and Faber in Great Britain in 1995

"The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."

Ernest Hemingway as quoted by Arnold Samuelson, page 11 in'A Year in Key West and Cuba', published in October 1984 by Random House Inc. 

"Flowers growing on a hill
Dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much
Look at us but do not touch"

'Some Velvet Morning', performed by Primal Scream & Kate Moss, first released in November 2003 trough Columbia Records in the UK, music video directed by Dawn Shadforth

Haarlem. Today, I met with Ruud Wielart, after having been able to observe him for some time while being at the Haarlem 'Pim Mulier' athletics track. 'Weather or no weather', he always is present -- with his characteristic, deep, friendly and no-nonsense respect gaining voice, with an occasional touch of shyness --  as the sun can pierce trough leaves, deep in a forest. Commanding the training, of -- among other people -- his son Jurgen. Ruud Wielart is a former high-jumping-athelete, champion and record-holder. And has managed to transform his personal experiences into a training career. The topic of our conversation: how to make your personal experiences available trough training to others? We talked about his sports-career and how sport can be part of education. About training and dealing with injuries. His experiences in observing people, especially children. It will need some more time to work it out before publication, a crucial, labour-intensive process that just can't be left to somebody doing a transcript, no matter how well intended. Or, in the words of Army Air and Signal Corps combat photographer Arnold E. Samuelson, quoting Ernest Hemingway (on page eleven in 'A Year in Key West and Cuba'): "Don't get discouraged because there is a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can't get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Armsat least fifty times. You've got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself." 

Presented here are a brief, short quote, though, and a photo from the meeting. It seems interviews at least lead to an opportunity to get close to people and make a good portrait. This is a recurring experience. The interview leads to an 'up-and-close' photo moment. The interview combusts artificial distance and clears the space between camera and subject, revealing true nature. At least, that is my humble experience. As Michael Rabiger points out in his book 'Directing the Documentary': "The strength of a documentary lies in the relationship between subject and filmmaker." In that sense the interview testifies of that experience: the decomposition of distance. Very similar to what we know about the proces of breathing in oxygen, breathing out carbon dioxide. 

Min/max temperature: 13°C/18°C; humidity: 81%; precipitation: 0.3 mm; sea level pressure: 1010.57 hPa; wind: SE 13 km/h; visibility: 11.0 kilometres; Clouds: Mostly Cloudy 914 m .; Moon: Waning Gibbous, 56% visible

"Sport has developed from peaceful circumstances. The first athletes, well, call them athletes, the people who were involved in sports, were people who trained under conditions similar to soldiers in the army -- though more comfortable. They trained in camps, with everything included, according to core principles and methods coming from preceeding times, coming from the army. As we athletes do, the army also periodizes. It comes from the Greeks, the ancient Greeks; they trained according to periodization principles: building up gradually, according to the 'law of diminishing returns'. 'Building up, building up, building up' and doing more and more and then bringing it down quietly and gradually. Building up intensity but reducing the overall work-load. And then they had the games. That is how sport originated. In every country that enjoys peace, there is sport. Football coach Rinus Michels talked about 'Football is war', it sounds a bit awkward, we can see that in the behaviour of some of the extremities of football, hooligans, the extreme fanatics, and [ football ] calls upon that more readily. Teams represent -- and this I always found a disadvantage of team-sports -- its call upon 'we against those over there'."

Ruud Wielart, personal communication during interview, Haarlem, May 17 2017