Werner Herzog, born 5th September 1942 in Munich, is a filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, actor and narrator primarily known for his various documentary films. He grew up to Austrian and German parents and lived poorly for the majority of his childhood. His father had abandoned him and his mother when Herzog was just 12. Despite this, Herzog retained his father’s as he thought it sounded like a more impressive filmmaker’s name.
Later years of his youth saw Herzog gain interest in learning to be a filmmaker, even to the extent of stealing a film camera which he believed to have been his right to take for his own purposes. He had trouble getting people interested his attempts at filmmaking and thus had to work hard in manual labour as a young adult to enable funding for his first few projects. He later started to earn extra money while working on a documentary for NASA but soon fled to Mexico due to legal problems.
He learnt to speak English after graduating from school and buying a house in Manchester, UK. By 1962, at 20 years of age, he had made his first short film entitled ‘Heracles’, portraying bodybuilders doing mundane tasks. Herzog has stated that he was glad that this was the first film he’d made because he could look back on mistakes made when making this film due to fact he felt unhappy with the finished result
Werner Herzog is known for leading the West German Cinema movement which were low budget films greatly influenced by French New Wave Cinema. His films have received many nominations and many awards such as best director at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and best producing for a film for his film Cobra Verde in 1987 which has a collaboration between him and his half brother.
Although not related to the subject matter of which we are looking at, 'Grizzly Man' is a perfect example as to how Herzog would create a documentary. We could use certain techniques which Herzog uses in these films.
'Grizzly Man' follows the life of a man named Timothy Treadwell who goes out each summer to an island inhabited by bears and proceeds to try and document his interactions with the bears through his own recordings. He tragically died in the early 2000s after a bear attacked him and his girlfriend during one of these expeditions. The main basis of the documentary primarily involves stock footage captured by Timothy Treadwell himself during the expeditions over several years, even just before the time of his death, and interviews with the people who knew him while he was alive and experts in the fields of animals and medical care.
All of the sets in which the interviews take place are dressed to suit the person that is being interviewed. For example, an interview of an expert in the field of animals and bears in particular is surrounded by pictures of bears and even a stuffed bear is beside him. This sort of set dressing can greatly help our own interviews as the setting which surrounds the interviewees would allow viewers to immediately deduce which field the interviewee works in.
Another thing that stands out about the interviews is that the interviews feel very staged and scripted. Sometimes an interviewee's reaction, in particularly Treadwell's previous partner, feels noticeably fake with emotions changing every few seconds. In fact, the entire documentary has a scripted feel to its as if Herzog is telling a chronological story through teh stock footage and what the interviewees would have to say about events which would have taken place during the footage viewers have just seen. Treadwell is treated more like a fictional character during some of the documentary, documenting his life through deep descriptions of his personality and through other people describing who he is. This story-like narrative that runs through the documentary can help our own documentary as we are following the band and can document a scripted narrative of the band's process of getting ready for the eventual gig.
Werner Herzog can be a great reference point for our own documentary as we can use the footage that we capture as well as stock footage of other bands playing to construct a more scripted narrative. While the interviews we capture include the genuine reactions from interviewees, they can be meticulously placed so that they fit into the narrative and add to a certain point in the story.
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