MasterClass: Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking

We are entering into one of the real complicated questions

for young filmmakers, how do you get the finances for a film.

Rule of thumb, in my case is, if you

have an extraordinary project with incredible dynamic

and a very strong story, money will follow you

like the common cur in the street

with its tail between its legs.

And the quality of money is awful, it's abysmal.

It is cowardly.

It is stupid.

And money is also slow.

So how do you do it?

You have to have a project that has a real dynamic,

otherwise you will never get anywhere.

I'm somebody, and you should know that,

because its so bizarre.

I am somebody who made his first phone call at age 17.

That was actually to contact producers who were, in a way,

inclined to produce a feature film that I had scripted.

And they were not completely against me being the first time

director.

So I made phone calls, because I was still a school kid.

And looked like, I mean, like a boy.

I was not even fully grown up yet.

When they saw me, it was immediately clear this was not

going to happen.

They laughed, and I turned around.

Important in this encounter was that I got angry,

and I knew I would never become a filmmaker unless I

became a producer myself.

My advice is, do it as I did it at the beginning.

Nobody, when I was 15, when I was 16, 17, 18,

nobody wanted to produce or finance any of my films.

It made me angry, and it made me understand, ultimately, you

have to become your own producer, your own financier.

And it means I earned money in a steel factory

during the night shift as a welder.

And I earned enough, within two years of work,

I earned enough to do my first featurettes.

When it comes to balancing your own vision

and the cash, small amounts of it that you have available,

earned yourself, I think you have to be prudent, and choose

a subject that does not require extravaganzas of building sets

or extravaganzas of having a big name actor in it and all

these things.

And you have to do it like somebody

like, I think his name is Rodriguez,

who did his first feature film on celluloid for, I think,

under $10,000.

And he published his budget.

I struggle every single film to stay on budget.

I've never been over budget, not once, not a single time

over budget, but six times under budget.

Bad Lieutenant a good example.

And I was prudent enough to have in my contract,

if I were under budget, I would earn myself a bonus.

So I earned a very good bonus.

And I really looked, and I have to right in my contracts

to look into the daily cashflow with the accountant,

me the director.

I'm sitting with the accountant in the evening,

and I'm checking into cashflow.

And all of a sudden, I see where the money flows there,

you spot where the problems are emerging.

I see costumes, all of a sudden, 120%

in the first week of shooting.

What happened is that they had a second set of suit of dress

for everyone, somebody who walks through the frame for five

seconds.

I had two suits made.

And I stopped it.

No more duplicate or triplicates of a costume.

Only for leading characters, yes.

And so very often, you have to do things that are not really

your business.

But they have been my survival.

And what I have understood very early on

is, how can you long-term survive.

And one of the things is, understand

the demands of finances.

Stay on budget.

Try to stay under budget.

Be responsible with what you're doing,

with what you're spending.

Feature films, for very, very little money,

Aguirre, the Wrath of God, which looks like a huge production.

The production value on the screen is really enormous.

And it's a film that cost $360,000.

What makes a film expensive?

Number one, it's the time of shooting.

Reduce the time of shooting.

Celluloid, expensive.

Every second that's rattling through your magazine

costs you $4, $5, because it's not only raw stock,

it's the lab, it's the prints, it's the post-production,

all of this.

And you learn very quickly the value of every second ticking

by, and the value of every day, you have to rent a camera.

So you have to understand the items of budget.