Werner Herzog said something that resonated with me the other day, I was bouncing around the internet, and I came across a site spruiking a film school delivered by none other than Herzog himself. Now, as a man, Herzog understands implicitly the value of his own magic, mystery and mystique. He cultivates drama like I cultivate sneakers, and this brief video of his online film school was no different. He was typically Herzogian, and rambled about a few things. But one thing he said really resonated.

‘We are thieves, not filmmakers’.

This was a viewpoint I had never considered. He attached it to a dismissal of storyboards and industrial processes as well. Given the nature of this semester, it got my mind to spinning on this new viewpoint. Why am I trying to ‘make’ film, when I should be trying to ‘find’ film? Why am I trying to ‘tell’ stories, when I should be ‘stealing’ stories. Everyone steals and remixes to some degree, but approaching it, paradoxically, as an honest act of theft, might be the one thing I need to overturn industrial process. If I let it be, and let the artifact speak for itself, maybe that is what I need to help me break down and distort meaning.

Herzog also went on to ramble about preferring “people who have worked as bouncers in a sex club, or have been wardens in the lunatic asylum. You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that’s what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.”

As much as that both stings and resonates, attaching this viewpoint to the rest of my semesters work may be a little hard. I can’t quit my job to work in a mental asylum, I have already organised shooting days, and I’ve already decided my investigations for the rest of semester.

However, I might be able to remember this for the future, sink my teeth and steal moments of time when I film in the years to come.