Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/618780
34 dga quarterly SCREENPULLS: (TOP) WARNER HOME VIDEO; (BOTTOM) ANCHOR BAY ENT. Werner Herzog | Fitzcarraldo (1982) >Here, you have to see the entire ship moving. The crew understood that it had to be in one single shot. And if we failed to do that, the film was going to fail. There was no coverage, it's just what it is. And you are a wit- ness. In shots like this we would have a second camera next to the main position. Doing any closer shots would have meant losing a lot. What you see here is one shot, one chance to do it, and so you had better do it wide angle. You see, I'm not into this Hollywood mood or this film school mood where you cover in a close-up. How does a close-up help you here? "I wanted to give the audience the chance to see the boat really move and how monstrous this whole thing was. I wanted them to trust their eyes and realize this was no model." —WERNER HERZOG Arthur Penn | Bonnie and Clyde (1967) >It was a time where it seemed to me that if we were going to depict violence, then we would be obliged to really depict it accurately. It was not a documen- tary, so I got the idea to break the components of the massacre into some- thing romantic, even balletic. I didn't want it to be just a savage killing, which normal speed would have delivered. I wanted a residue of their romantic view of the world while they were being killed. So I rigged three high-speed cam- eras together at exactly the same vantage point but at different speeds with different lenses, to slow the action. Then there was our basic camera running at normal speed. The different speeds mitigated the savagery. For complete Shot to Remember stories, go to www.dga.org/ShotToRemember