Hans Glassmann
Here we go! My name is Hans Glassman, and I am here with the illustrious and indomitable Wendy Womack, my friend and colleague.
Wendy Womack
Gosh, well, I am Wendy Womack. I'm here with the spectacular and spontaneous Hans Glassman.
Hans Glassmann
How did you get into the field of journalism and communication?
Wendy Womack
I got into film really young, at like age 11, and ended up studying that in university. But when I graduated from college, I bought a one way ticket and just traveled through Europe. I was trying to do it as cheaply as possible. And one of the things I brought a camera with me, and so I would offer to make videos for people in exchange for staying places. One of the places I went to was Albania. It was this mountain community. I grew up in Kansas. I had never seen a hill. It was kind of like a time capsule. People lived in huts, and their main occupation was herding sheep and goats up the mountain. And so this area was reconciling with this new technology coming in, and how do we keep all of our kids from leaving? And so I ended up making this short documentary about this one woman who was teaching the kids how to mark trails.
But for you, I mean, you did you go to college for specifically film and conservation, or what was your degree?
Hans Glassmann
So I got my degree in science and natural history filmmaking. I didn't have that natural moment like you did, where I was just sitting there watching people, thinking, "I need to make a movie about this." I've deliberately targeted all the stories that I've wanted to tell.
I took this Earth Systems class, and in that class, she showed a film. It wasn't a very good movie, but it was a very direct, pragmatic film. It didn't do all the narrative stuff, it didn't do all the bells and whistles. It was just like, "right now, this is the temperature of Earth, and if we go this much further, we will all die. And if we do these actions, we may be able to fix it, but the chances of that are getting slim." And in my mind, I was thinking, "There's got to be a better way to communicate."
Wendy Womack
Yeah.
Hans Glassmann
My way of learning is to observe and then process it. And filming helps me with that.
But then in doing so, I feel like I miss out on some of the experience. Just this last weekend, I'm at a music festival, and I'm trying to decide, "do I pull my camera out, or do I just live in this moment?" The first night I don't have my camera looks like a mad house. You know, people dress like Jesus. There's an alien there. There's a woman with blue hair and little antennae sticking out of it, just there to have fun at a festival, and I'm just immersed in it. Day two, I pull my camera out, and instantly I'm separate of it. Maybe that person who was earlier eating mushrooms is no longer doing that. It just changes the situation. And to that point, I think that sometimes we go too far, like there's a film I watched this guy was trying to show the world, "hey, we're destroying our ice caps." And it works. It's a great movie. But then he's like, too much in the film. You know what I mean? Like he's the focus of it. There's always that perspective issue.
Wendy Womack
Yeah, but when it comes to things like climate change, you know, it's like, we're all contributing.
Hans Glassmann
It's terrifying. No one has an answer. I think that it's the greater good to keep making films, keep bringing up, keep talking about it, because the moment you stop, it's over, right?
Wendy Womack
Totally, yeah.
