Tag Archives: werner herzog

Media 1, Thoughts

Werner Herzog teaches filmmaking

The online education provider Masterclass has just announced that it has (somehow) convinced German filmmaker Werner Herzog to create a five-hour video seminar series on filmmaking. You can pre-enroll for the course now to get early access for US$90, which sounds pretty reasonable for five hours of listening to Herzog speak in his amazing German accent. I’ll definitely be signing up.

I can’t even imagine what he’ll be talking about, but if it’s anything like his list of advice for filmmakers it’s going to be amazing.

Werner Herzog’s Advice for Filmmakers

1. Always take the initiative.
2. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.
3. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey.
4. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
5. Learn to live with your mistakes.
6. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern.
7. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it.
8. There is never an excuse not to finish a film.
9. Carry bolt cutters everywhere.
10. Thwart institutional cowardice.
11. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
12. Take your fate into your own hands.
13. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape.
14. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory.
15. Walk straight ahead, never detour.
16. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver.
17. Don’t be fearful of rejection.
18. Develop your own voice.
19. Day one is the point of no return.
20. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class.
21. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema.
22. Guerrilla tactics are best.
23. Take revenge if need be.
24. Get used to the bear behind you.

 

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Cinema Studies

Documentary and Grizzly Man

The following is a blog post written for my Introduction to Cinema Studies class, re-published here so all my work is in one place.

Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005) presents itself as a documentary portrait of Timothy Treadwell, a nature filmmaker and self-styled friend of grizzly bears in Alaska’s Kodiak Island national park. Using Treadwell’s own material, which he recorded over many years camping in the wilderness, the film sets out to discover what made Treadwell tick and the circumstances leading to his death.

It is a synthetic documentary that blends many different types of documentary form: there is a framing narrative that occurs in “current” time (following Herzog as he talks to Treadwell’s friends and coworkers, watches Treadwell’s footage, etc.); talking heads interviews with people speaking generally about Treadwell’s life; and archival footage and images captured by Treadwell himself during his summers in Alaska. The story is not told in chronological order, nor is it governed by cause and effect, and it contains no fictional reenactments or recreations (with actors, staged lighting, etc.), but it does contain several sequences where real people explain to the filmmaker certain events in current time, such as an aeroplane pilot walking through the wilderness and pointing out the location where he discovered Treadwell’s body.

By manipulating Treadwell’s footage — deciding what to present, and how it is presented, as well as narrating the footage with his own words — Herzog articulates his own thesis about the nature of humanity using Treadwell’s life and work as supporting evidence. Though it presents itself as a portrait of Timothy Treadwell, Grizzly Man is actually a more nuanced and complicated essay film, with some similarities to the rhetorical form of documentary that sets out to convince the audience of a particular viewpoint.

This is a particularly subtle demonstration of the idea that documentaries are never true depictions of reality, no matter how convincingly they present themselves as such. Herzog manipulates the objective reality of Timothy Treadwell’s life and death, and uses it to craft and present his own worldview.

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