MasterClass: Werner Herzog Teaches Filmmaking

If you really want to make a film,

you should not say I want to be a filmmaker.

Be specific.

I want to make this very project.

So if you just want to have it for it's chic

and it's cool to be a filmmaker, no, it's not cool.

It's series of humiliation.

It's a series of banalities every single day on a shoot.

Many filmmakers are out there to gain inner growth.

I just can't hear it.

It's so stupid, so embarrassing.

Or they want to test their boundaries.

People quite often believe, yeah,

I'm out there in the jungle and moving a ship over a mountain

to test my boundaries.

No, not so.

It's stupid to think so.

I want to move a ship over a mountain

because it's a huge metaphor.

It's a metaphor for something dormant inside of us.

And there's images that I wake up-- I can wake them up,

as if it were the dreams that others share.

It's as if I had a dormant brother inside of me

with whom I get acquainted.

All of a sudden, there's a twin brother out there.

And I haven't met him until I made this film.

So there's something much bigger than your own quest

for perfection, or your own quest for inner growth,

and all these new age, crazed things that I just can't hear.

I'm a disciplined worker.

I'm a storyteller.

I'm a filmmaker, and that's that.

Long term survival.

It's a profession where you're normally lost, I would say,

12, 15 years.

And some of the strongest of the strong

have not survived longer.

David Wark Griffith, the greatest

of all filmmakers of the early era.

The Shakespeare of cinema.

He had the most fantastic successes

with Birth of a Nation, and some other films, and some failures,

and he was out.

And spent the rest of his days as a land surveyor.

Or let me name Orson Welles.

Strong like an animal.

Powerful in his imagination, in his craft,

in his acting, and everything.

And he spends budgets, the entire budget,

already halfway through pre-production traveling

lavishly, spending money, and the studio

would stop him in his tracks.

And they would stop the project.

So it hits the strongest of the strong.

And the survival of, I would say, those people

was fairly short lived.

And of course, long term survival.

How do you establish loyalties, loyalties of crews?

I do not just hire a cinematographer

for that project, and sound person, and costumes.

Of course, quite often, it's a motley mix

of people who have never seen each other before.

And they disperse, and they never see each other.

But I try to build up cinematographers, editors,

composers, and some of the key people, and enter with them

a long term relationship.

When I am working with a production company,

I'm not someone who wants to do just one film.

If I like the company, I would say let's try,

and let's develop a long term relationship.

Let's try and continue.

Think beyond what we are doing right now.

So that's all part of the profession that I do.

And it's not that it was their right from the beginning.

I'm a veteran in this profession.

However, very early on because Aguirre was a film

I made when I was 28 or so.

And everybody says to me, oh, I saw your first film.

And I ask, which one?

Oh, Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

And my answer is, it was may 11th film.

Some shorts, of course, before that.

But what I'm trying to say, I walked into a film

like Aguirre, the Wrath of God with a considerable amount

of knowledge, and experience, and defeats,

and mistakes that I made.

Yeah, that's how I learned it.

In things like this, you really do not learn in film schools.

You learn it when you do it.

And I've always been self-taught.

I have gone through all of this.

I have learned it all on my own.

All by trial and error and all the disasters that I've had.

But it's fine.

I'm still around.

Structure of daily life, it has never occurred to me

there is no such thing as daily life.

It's not predictable what is going to happen.

And for example, when I did the film on the internet, Lo

and behold, I just had finished my feature film Salt

in Fire, which I had shot in Bolivia.

I just finished editing.

And two days later, a call comes.

Oh, could you do something like texting and driving

but about the internet?

And it will be some small YouTube clips.

And I said, oh, this is fascinating.

Let's jump in it.

When can we start?

Can we start next week?

So it took a little bit longer, 10 days,

until we jumped into it.

So there's no structure.

You never know what's coming at you.

And I keep open to it.

But of course, at the same time, I

have to have a very, very clear idea.

This is what you are not gonna do.

You see, I have had, really, quite a few very big

offers from Hollywood, from major companies, from studios.

And I looked at the project.

And I had the feeling the screenplay is not really good.

It's, kind of, silly.

It's totally predictable.

And it's not for me.

And you have to know when in the onslaught of all that's

coming at you or the rare opportunities

that sometimes you have, you have to have a clear, sort of,

structure in your head saying, no, this is not for me.

I think it's very unhealthy to do movies all the time

because, ultimately, it's illusionists work.

If you're a cattle rancher, this is very solid, good,

daily work.

And your physical existence is, somehow,

involved with a cattle.

And it has a certain dignity.

Cinema, very often, has to do with silly things,

banal things.

It has to do with undignified sort of stuff.

And you have to do it.

And you better step out once in awhile.

And I do read.

I do not see many films.

I do read.

You see, I keep my curiosity completely awake all the time.

And I think it is important for somebody

who makes films to get into wildly other diverging, sort

of, subjects.