MasterClass: Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking

I do not use a story board.

I think it's an instrument of the cowards.

You need it when you're do a film with digital effects

and part of the screen has to be live action

and the other part of the screen has

to be ancient Rome, for example.

And yes, you have to know exactly about positioning

and moving.

Then it's fine.

If I had, let's say, story boards for most of my films,

it would have been lifeless days of shooting.

And allowing real intense life, pura vida, as Mexicans say.

Not purity of life, but the full scope

of life, the exuberance of life, into the day of shooting.

Into also the day of editing.

Your films will become stale very quickly.

And I'll be completely unprepared on the set.

I come with the actors in makeup, or costume, or not.

And I start to stage the scene with them

and do the basic choreography.

And with a cinematographer I decide-- normally

I try to do it in one single shot.

Of course, and continuity always comes to me

and they ask me, in how many shots are you going

to dissolve this sequence?

And I say, how do I know?

I cannot tell you.

I work myself into it.

And I work myself into a sort of high intensity sort of vision

and working in poetic frenzy.

Although I'm very calm.

And I say, at least it will be one shot.

And sometimes I try to do one single shot, where

the camera actually weaves and then goes to some detail.

It moves back and the camera is somehow

doing a choreography in the middle of everyone.

Of course and I see, no you cannot.

It's too long a way until I reach this point.

And I look at the wristwatch of someone.

You better cut the fastest movement or the fastest pan

is a cut in such a case.

And I start to organize cuts.

But I come unprepared and it keeps the team on edge.

And it keeps the actors on edge.

They don't know exactly what's coming at them.

Yes, they know, let's try to do it in one single shot.

You better know your dialogue.

You better know your movements.

You better know what we are doing here.

And that has been very, very helpful for me.

Do not shoot much coverage.

I do not shoot coverage.

That's one of the things on my set-- one camera

and I shoot a scene 3, 4, or 5 times.

And that's it.

If it doesn't function after 5 times,

there's something wrong with the dialogue or with a scene

and you better quickly rewrite something.

And it happened in New Orleans with Nicolas Cage.

My crew was nervous after the first day of shooting, which

ended at 3:30 PM instead of 6:00 or 7:00

without going into overtime.

And somebody said in the crew, yeah, but coverage, coverage.

Aren't you shooting coverage?

And I ignored it.

And next day again, coverage.

Where's coverage?

I finished at 2:00 PM.

I had it all in the can.

And I didn't know what coverage meant.

I know what coverage means in my car policy, my insurance

policy.

So and I took my assistant director to the side

and I asked, coverage?

What do they mean?

I know what coverage is in my insurance policy.

And he said, no.

There's a shot from this angle.

And a ultra close shot, only the eyes.

And a shot from above.

There is actually a camera up here, which

I think is pretty useless.

And you shouldn't shoot with too many different angles anyway.

So this would be coverage, for example.

And on the third day, coverage, coverage all over the set

again.

Nicolas Cage says, give me an apple box crew together.

He stepped on an apple box and he said,

everybody, listen for a moment.

He said, Werner it's not shooting coverage.

Finally!

I am working with a director who knows what he's doing.

So that was a wonderful moment for me.

And I must say I do shoot coverage, but very little.

Yes I do.

In particular, in dialogue scenes, I have a reverse shot.

And I do things like that.

But not all the craze that you see on a Hollywood set,

where they have the sequence in the can in four or five hours.

And then the next eight hours.

And another three hours overtime.

Overtime they spend in coverage that will never

end up on the screen.

So you have to learn what do you need for the screen.

My very last feature film, "Salt and Fire" in Bolivia,

had an extremely condensed shooting schedule.

It had to do with availability of the actors

and some other elements.

And it had to o-- the leading actress was

days late on the set, because only, I think,

two days before shooting commenced

her father passed away.

And I said to her, no matter what

there are much more important things than cinema.

Filmmaking sometimes has to step back.

There are big other things.

You stay, you meet your family.

And only after your father is buried then you fly.

So I had only 16 days of shooting an entire feature

film.

And I would really push the camera and the actors

along from sequence to sequence to sequence.

And try, in order to save time, shoot the whole sequence

in one single shot.

Move with them, do it.

And it gives the film a certain urgency and a certain cohesion.

Of course, there are cuts.

And of course, there are different camera angles and so,

but the tendency was shoot it condensed.

Leave everything that's not important left and right away.

The same way I write a screenplay.

If I can, I try to keep the lighting equipment small

when I do a documentary.