Episode 84
Douwe van der Werf, Creative Producer
From Amsterdam, we are joined by Douwe van der Werf: writer, filmmaker, creative director, and producer.
He uses creative storytelling to solve and create awareness of social issues.
Website: www.douwe.works
You can read a rough transcript of our interview attached here.
Transcript
Hello again, friends, welcome back to unlocking your world of creativity. This is the podcast where we talk to creative experts, literally all over the world about how they get inspired for their creative thinking and how they organize their ideas. And most of all, how they gain confidence and make the connections to get their work up and out into the world. And even in the last few episodes are around the world. Travels have taken us to places like San Antonio, Texas, to Bangkok, Thailand, to San Francisco, and to Johannesburg, South Africa. And we're glad today to be traveling to Amsterdam and the Netherlands to talk to our friend Douwe van der Werf. Good to be with you.
(:Thanks for having me.
(:Yeah. And Douwe is a writer. He's a filmmaker, a creative director, a producer, just an all-around great creative And Douwe I guess, in terms of the focus of all of those being the story, you know, at the very base of all of your work seems to be this idea of storytelling. Maybe we could begin there and how you look at a story.
(:Okay. I think I think I have a bit of a specific definition of what a story is. Often a story is seen as a yeah. Is it seen as fiction? Like the connotation is fiction? The way I define story is that it's the shape hierarchy and structure of a bunch of thoughts. So, so to create meaning. So, so basically lots of snippets of information that come into the census, they're like Lego, Lego bricks, and the story is what we build out of that.
(:Very good. And I guess your company Douwe works I love the double meaning you know, you create lots of work, but you also put the work in to really produce the creative. I was looking at some of the work in graphic design and animation and the scriptwriting. Where do you apply so many of these different creative, I guess, techniques and disciplines to your work?
(:What do you mean? Where do I apply them? Well,
(:I guess, you know, how do you bring together? These are different skills. So, I mean, are you, are you switching between them or are you blending them? I guess how, how do you decide, you know, what am I going to be today?
(:Ah, okay. I think I think my main the main thing that I do is research on the story that an organization wants me to wants to get across. And then writing a script out of that and then doing creative direction. So I am an animator by education and I've been into 3d animation and 2d animation. But then as time went by, I, I, yeah, now I hire people, I set up teams for projects. And that allows me to actually have more space for my creativity, even though I don't make a lot of the images myself, which sounds what felt counter-intuitive at first, but it's really yeah, really works well once you get used to it.
(:Yeah. And the breadth of project you've been able to work on, maybe you can describe a few of those projects.
(:Hi. Yeah. You mentioned earlier, like did a project called to Robin for the Dutch research council. And it's an interactive film where you are post with four dilemmas that come out of science and then each time the path splits. So you end up with 16 alternative endings. So we created like 19 minutes of animation for a 20-minute experience and you don't see half of it. And then I did a project for the, for Harvard university around to the book by Mark H. Moore creating public value. And then I basically explained very briefly what public value is all about, which is a very, very thick book, sort of a standard work that public administrators use in there when they at, at university, which was quite an honor and quite a challenge as well.
(:Yeah. There seems to be a thread that goes through some of this work about the human experience and really understanding and connecting with the individual. I'd be curious about why that's a inspiration for you.
(:Hm. Okay. So so I've always been extremely curious about everything basically. And then I, what I find a bit of a shame is that a lot of knowledge is not never really used or found because it's stored in a farm that is not at, it's not very natural to a lot of people like, like when we encode our thoughts into language, that is actually an incredible feat. It's very complicated it and, and, and, and yeah, I think there's so much scientific research. There's so much great ideas. There are so many philosophies and I, I, my, I, I basically see it as my work to make stuff that is hard accessible by making it visual. And by making it easy to understand.
(:Yes. And I read a great quote that you wrote a people and their needs are essential to any powerful story. How, how do you, in your research and in your creative development, try to get in touch with, you know, the individual, and as you say, walk in their shoes, you know, as you tell this story.
(:Hmm. I, I think first of all, first of all, I think a story always needs, it needs a character because it's incredibly difficult to relate to anything in that, that maybe that's a problem with a problem with climate change. It's hard to relate to it cause it's nowhere it doesn't have a face. And then basically you basically the perfect way, not every project allows that, but the perfect way to walk in the shoes of the person making the film for or making the film about to meet them and to have conversations with them. If, if the film is about young people, I might have conversations with, with some, with some young people, if, if, you know, if the film, so yeah. I'm, I'm empathizing, I think it's getting, yeah. Really getting in touch with them and not, not just from, from a text or secondhand information.
(:Yes. And it sounds like a lot of your work is meant to convey information, you know, they're meant to be educational, and yet you want to bring this emotional side into it as well. Don't you?
(:Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. It's, it's, I think it's a, it's, it's often a balance like, some clients want, want, want it to be incredibly emotional because they really want to get that thing across the day. And then I go like, Oh, maybe, maybe if, if, if it's, I think equanimity is a word that applies to a lot of the films that I do, there are emotional, but never very rarely very dramatic. And that's because yeah, it's just, I dunno, it feels like manipulation sometimes if you are too dramatic and especially if you're bringing across real really information, I think it's incredibly important to do it in an engaging way, but never too, not too boring, but not to overdramatize to either.
(:Yeah. And I'm curious about your, your personal creative process. You mentioned that you're very curious, you'll love this sort of observation, you know, of other things going on in the world, where do you tend to capture and, and how do you contain all this observation so that you might fuel your work later?
(:Woof that's a hard question.
(:We don't ask the easy questions on this program.
(:I think maybe I think one, maybe one thing that really helped me is that maybe like 25 years ago, I was reading about a fright and the subconscious and then I, and then I just, and I thought like, okay, so according to these people, the subconscious is sort of like a supercomputer that does the really hard stuff that, that, but it, but I don't have direct control over it. So I think that a very technique that I've been using for many, many years is to, and when, when something is really difficult for me, and especially when there are many variables involved, maybe it's a bit of an ambiguous thing to make a decision about. Then I will very clearly state my question and sort of throw it to the back and trust, just, you know, almost throw it into my subconscious, so to speak and, and, and let it do the work and trust that it, that the, that the, that the answer will come. I make it sound a little bit like there's an Oracle living in the back of my mind. I like to picture that it doesn't, yeah,
(:That somebody back there is doing the work.
(:Yeah. But it's, it's, it's but, but very applied, like, like I ha I will have a client and there is a certain something that they want to say, and their industry has a or, or, or their area of expertise has a certain culture with certain keywords. And then, you know, and then I'm thinking about how, how do I engage these people in the right way? And that is, that is, yeah, that is, I can often not really explain why I make a lot of the choices I make in the projects, but because I, but because I trust sort of trust, sort of the intuitive choices, I think it's, it's very easy. Some things about my job are incredibly easy, that are hard for other people and it sometimes, and vice versa.
(:Absolutely. Well, you know, you mentioned a word that I'd like to underscore a little bit and that's trust. I mean, we, creative people have to trust our ourselves, right. And our own creative I'll call it judgment. But let's also talk about clients and how they begin to trust you and begin to accept your inputting, your style, and your content and stories. How do you build that trust with your clients?
(:I think I take I go to great length to listen at first. So I, I like in a first conversation, I will rarely actually I will close to never post any idea, like, like in a, in, in a first meeting. I, and if, and it also, if clients ask us, no, no, sorry, I can't do that right now. Cause, cause this is the research phase. So really, really making sure that I only listen, listen, listen, in that first part allows me to write a very strong proposal in which I don't send them a script, but I, I generally describe this is what I've understood from what I've heard. And the way I feel this could be best presented is like this because that sort of seems to fit these properties. These traits of your, of the audience that you explained to me? So I would, I would say maybe, yeah, maybe giving back to them more than what they've told me, and then they recognize their own story and I, and they see that I've added other stuff. I've put, I put it in a larger context, maybe within certain big trends. And I'm, I might've done a little bit of research, so I think that's, that might be the thing I think,
(:Well Douwe, I mean, I really admire the discipline. First of all, that at the first meeting, you know, you anchor yourself in the listening. I know for me, I sometimes get so excited about the project. I began the brainstorming, I throw out some ideas and I can see from your point that that might be setting up, you know, expectations rather than simply take it in, then go back, do the work, do the thinking.
(:Yeah. And it took a lot of effort to get there because it definitely wasn't always like this. But I think that today, today I have the confidence the, the, I have the confidence in myself that, that I know that I know I can do it. And also that's some of the, the rules of engagement for the creative process that they make sense that they work. So another thing that I may be that's not relevant to your question.
(:No, go ahead.
(:Yeah. Maybe I, I'm not sure what the bridge is, but I think being very clear in communication is incredibly important. And so, so separate separating stuff, actually, that's the bridge separating the listening from the creating. And then, and then in the overall and the, in the overall creative process, I will always separate concept from production very strictly. So I will never, I will not go into production if the client doesn't 100% agree with the concept, which allows me to much more creative space in the production phase.
(:That's so interesting. Yes. So you're really segmenting these, you know, where I think and now that I am hearing, you're describe it, I can see how a lot of people blur those three. It's like, I have an idea. Here's how we're going to produce it. Or what's the idea, again, let's go back. It's like, no, let's lock in the idea first, and then we'll talk about how to produce it. It's a, it's a very interesting segmentation of thought that you approach things with. I really admire it actually
(:Thanks.
(:Yeah. And I guess I'm also thinking about then this trust with the clients you know, the sponsors of a project, certainly somewhere in those three, you know, how you translate their ideas or how you develop the story or third, how you produce it. There's going to be some I guess on one end, it could be called a conflict. You know, it could be called a misunderstanding. It could just be, a hard question. Like I don't get it. How do you tend to address those conflicts, those deadlocks, those walls that we often hit?
(:Well, I like I'll sometimes I'll work for someone who's an absolute expert in their field that they know the most about what they're going to tell me. So then I tell them, like, you know, I'm going to make a prediction and the prediction is that we're going to start out and you're going to love this process because you, you get to talk about the stuff that you love doing that you're really passionate about, that, you know, everything about. And, and then at some point, things are going to get a little bit uncomfortable because you, you want as an expert, you want to put all the nuance in, in the, in the, in the story, but I'm, I'm, I'm going to butcher. I'm going to butcher that thing that you know, everything about. And I'm, I'm not qualified as a scientist, but I'm definitely qualified as a storyteller. And by stripping away by, by, by, by throwing most stuff away from the stuff that you want to tell, the thing that you're then really going to like, again, it's the fact that at a conference you get to skip the first half-hour because you just played a video. People are like, Oh, okay. He's about this or that topic. And they could, can get straight into business.
(:I like it.
(:And it, and it always the prediction usually rings true.
(:Exactly. And I, and it's not just a natural, you know, we all go into a project with all this enthusiasm and then somewhere along the way, it's like, okay, this is real, you know, we're having these disagreements over content maybe, or over style or tone, like you say, Hey, we can't help it. We're going to butcher it. I love this visual imagery. We're just going to pound this because you know, we're going to translate it differently than maybe your inside sort of mind. Right.
(:Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(:Yeah. I'm also curious about, you know, you were also talking about different cultures and I there's company cultures, there's, you know, country cultures, there's all sorts of diverse approaches. How do you work to make sure that your stories and the production sort of cross those cultural lines and appeal to as many people as possible?
(:An important thing is that simple language is always a good thing. Eh, I don't, I don't, I don't, it doesn't really matter if the audience is kids or PhDs the simple language is just always a good thing. What I'll often do is what I'll often do as I'll sort of in, in a story I'll, I'll start out really big. So I made a film about groundwater for the united nation. And they have, like, I start out with water is essential as a, you know, second, most important needs. And then groundwater is stored deep below the surface. And then I start talking about the clients that in this case maintains a database of a groundwater. So, so, so go, you know, sort of not assume assuming a layperson, I think is also if, if only in the first 20 seconds or something, I think it's just also a sign of respect to let people immediately know what it's about so they can keep on watching or leave. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to trick anybody into watching a film. I did just, just be open with them from the first seconds.
(:And as you mentioned, the groundwater and United nations, a lot of your work is about causes, you know, or is about issues of the day. Why, what attracts you to these kinds of projects?
(:Well, actually the reason for me to get into this into this business was that I about 20 years ago, I was yeah, I was thinking a lot about the world problems and feeling like I was all alone in that and nobody really cared. And but I saw lots of advertising and then I thought like, wait, climate change is getting worse every year. And we've known since the 1960s, but we're selling sports shoes and car insurance and all this stuff. So then I studied to become a graphic designer. And then to realize a few years later that you cannot sell things like that. Like, you do a pair of sneakers because you, you need education to understand something like climate change or inequality, or, you know, these big issues. So then I thought, Oh, I better become a filmmaker. And here you go.
(:I love it. Well, let's continue that thought about your creative journey to where you are today. What, what were some of the steps along the way that brought you to your current career
(:Starting? Where what?
(:Go all the way back? What was your first trip? Where was your first creative muse?
(:So somehow, somehow that's a that's a bit of a difficult question because creating stuff and thinking about stuff has always been so normal for me. I maybe, Yeah, Maybe it's I used to read when I was 10, 11, I read Jules Verne, a very old book. They were old were really old back then already.
(:Oh, you're a young guy. So Jules Verne has been around.
(:And I remember, I remember these blue books with gold, with gold ink and these really yellow, brownish, smelly pages, like smelling, like, like, like I, I discovered some ancient secret stories or something, and then there would be about going to the moon and going to the, to the center of the earth and just incredible stories. And I was just fascinated by the fact that this guy had come up with all this stuff that didn't exist at all when, when he was writing about it, maybe that's maybe yeah. Jules Verne maybe the link a little bit.
(:I like it. I like it. And you were also mentioning, you know, building the team to help execute your work. Think about some of the people you've had a chance to work with who may be taught or mentored you, and some of the lessons learned that you had from those folks.
(:Aye. I've never in filmmaking, I've never, I've only hired people. I've, I've, I've worked independently for 15 years. Can you say, can you ask the question again?
(:Well, I think about, you know, Jules Verne as a influence in storytelling and imagination perhaps, but your influences in filmmaking or in your creative process, you know, certainly whether they literally supervised you or not, they might've influenced you.
(:Yeah. Yeah. It was a, I was absolutely in love with a video that was made for Lake sup, like sub I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's Swedish or Norwegian. And this was, this is like 15 years ago and it's, and, and it was and it was an incredible sequence of sort of technical tech, really well-made technical drawings that told a story. And I really liked, I really liked this unexpected application of this visual language applied to social commentary. So it looked like a manual from, it looked like it all looked like manuals and explanations, but it was actually really very highly critical of a lot of stuff. And they didn't, they didn't yeah, it's called reminds me from Reich's up. And it didn't use any words other than the singing, but, but the, the, the, the visual story, a completely different story, which was incredibly detailed and very precise actually, which was very, very inspiring to me.
(:That sounds great. And I guess then flipping it when you are building your team out, you know, what sort of, not just skills and capabilities, but what sort of sensibilities and emotional intelligence do you look for in the team that you're building for a project
(:You said, well, because I don't really care about diplomas at all. I think I think that maybe an important thing is that I don't like to work with people that say that are naysayers. And I don't like to work with people that are a naysayer because often what I found is that people that it's, it's, it's a bit of, a bit of an exaggeration, of course, because nobody is one or the other, but, but some people, if people say yes too quickly, then I, I have a feeling I have to make sure that I don't overload them or that they really can do the thing that I ask of them. And if people are, are, are more on the naysayer sides, then I feel I might have to defense a few extra hours here and there, or [inaudible] that they have to make or something, or maybe I have to explain my choices more than I than I'd want to. So I think that mix of, I think, I think basically an open, but, but critical mind, I think is incredibly important part and, and, and apart from visual quality, because that's, that's paramount, of course. But then these qualities are incredibly find them incredibly important. Also, when I talk about the film, the, just the way that, just the way that they response, if they, if they come up with any associations of themselves that make more or less sense that, that yeah. That's very, that those are green flags for me.
(:Yeah. I like that green flags. Yeah. We'll Douwe. What a terrific conversation before we conclude, I'd like to be sure that people know where to find you and connect with you and take a look at some of the projects that you've been working on. Where, where can we go to find you?
(:My website is Douwe. works. That's D O U WE.works. That's the URL extension. So www.douwe.works
(:Very good. Well, we'll be sure to go by and check it out? So what's next, what's on the horizon for you Douwe, as you look forward to some of your future projects, what are, what do you see yourself working on next?
(:I, had do you mean, you mean self-initiated work or upcoming projects? Well, you know, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
(:Where does your craft take you next?
(:Ah, okay. I I've had to request one from an organization that promotes wind energy on the, on the oceans in transport and the other one of a large environmental organization. And I'm not sure if either is going to happen, but I ‘d love it if both of them would. And I'm working on I'm working on of course for teenagers, very highly visual course around media wisdom, epistemological, and critical thinking skills and also presentation skills to, to, to craft your own stories, story, maybe the story of your future self.
(:Well, they sound fascinating, great topics. And is there an area or a topic that maybe you haven't had a chance to work on yet that you would like to, that you're hoping to attract?
(:Well, actually it's this, it's this these things that I just mentioned, this is a self-initiated project. I'm let's not go in into that rabbit hole but I‘m, I'm very worried about all the many conspiracy theories going around. And I'm just thinking about what is the cause of that? What can I do to get, to build, to build bridges of understanding between people that see the world incredibly differently different? And I think, yeah, I think there is a, there is a place for filmmaking in that.
(:Yeah. Very worthwhile pursuit. Well, and also Douwe, you're going to be presenting at an upcoming summit on playfulness and creative. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that and what your topic will be.
(:Actually, actually, when I think back about the interview, which is prerecorded, it was, I have a feeling it was very serious, like, like very, very much about about the power of stories and, you know, like, like the way that culture influences our, our, our choices and the way that we see stuff. Yeah, so I hope, I hope that's just going to be an inspiring, I, I, what I hope to get across with all my work is that, you know, the the story that you see might not necessarily be the story. You can maybe change it. You can maybe change it just for yourself, just so that you see it differently. Like, like, like in, in activism, I see a lot of people being angry at the way, things are and afraid of the future. I would say with exactly the same intentions with exactly the same knowledge and all the things that you have embraced the way things are right now. So you can, so you, so you are better equipped to work on a better future that you contribute to yourself.
(:And are you saying you feel like your interview in a playful creative summit, might've been a little too serious and heavy?
(:David David said that the way I talk is playful enough.
(:Okay. That's good. Yeah, because I do find you have all that you do have some lightness about you. It's not all serious.
(:Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've also for myself, I found lightness in very heavy themes. There's no use in yeah. In, in, in being worried and afraid.
(:Yes, exactly. Well, I can't thank you enough for a great conversation. I've learned a lot and you've really encouraged and inspired me to really segment the processes a little bit and relax during the listening and not try to ideate and then develop the core concept in stage two and in stage three, think about the production. So it's very helpful. And thanks for walking us through that,
(:I felt we went from the hack of the tuck, as we say, in Dutch from one subject to another. That's what we do. Great.
(:That's great. Well, friends, my guest has been Douwe van der Werf, and he's from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And Douwe .works is, is a website. So be sure to check it out. So just beautiful creative work there. Douwe can't thank you enough for the conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
(:Yeah, me too. Thanks very much for having me.
(:You too. And listeners come back again for our next episode. We'll continue our virtual around the world travels. As we talk to creative experts in all fields about how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas and how they gain the confidence and make the connections to get their creative work up and out into the world. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking the world of creativity. See you next time.
