American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 66

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Shooting on Location

Above, from left:
Soundman Paul
Paragon;
cinematographer
Peter Zeitlinger,
ASC, BVK; director
Werner Herzog; AC
Kaspar Kallas; and
professor Clive
Oppenheimer
(kneeling) on
location at the
Mount Yasur
volcano for the
documentary Into
the Inferno. Right:
Jack-of-all-trades
Ulrich Bergfelder
(left) and Zeitlinger
on location for
Queen of the
Desert.

late at night on a lonely stretch of Texas
highway. Tony's vehicle is run off the
road by two carloads of locals, who get
out of their cars and start taunting Tony,
Susan and their teenaged daughter. The
situation turns uglier.
"Finding the right road out in the
middle of the desert was vital," asserts
McGarvey, who captured the harrowing
scene alongside camera operator David
Emmerichs, with the XL2s on their
shoulders. Crossley and Valentino spent
66

March 2017

weeks driving through desert towns, but
couldn't find a suitable locale. "West
Texas roads have unique vegetation and
a very specific look," explains the location manager. "Finally, we found a highway in the Mojave Desert that
matched."
The sequence required a huge
lighting setup. "Lighting that mile-anda-half of road while making it feel essentially unlit was one of the toughest
challenges of my career," McGarvey
American Cinematographer

Fiends in Low Places
Lighting a feature can be stressful, but documentaries often have no
access at all to artificial illumination.
Peter Zeitlinger, ASC, BVK has shot
more than a dozen projects with director
Werner Herzog, starting with the 1995
documentary Gesualdo: Death for Five
Voices. Other collaborations include Into
the Inferno, Cave of Forgotten Dreams
and Encounters at the End of the World, as
well as the features Rescue Dawn (AC
July '07) and Queen of the Desert.
In an exchange of e-mails with
AC, Zeitlinger observes that Herzog's
films present an even greater challenge
than that of lighting: "Werner looks for
topics that are not filmable. His interest
lies in philosophical and narrative
topics, rather than cinematic ones. He
hates applied aesthetics, and whenever I
try to bring them to a film he slaps them
down. But from this friction comes
interesting and powerful films."
Ulrich Bergfelder has been location manager, production designer and
jack-of-all-trades on most of these
projects. According to Zeitlinger, "Uli
gets to know the region's habits and
rules, then sets up an infrastructure of
local people and support."
Bergfelder elaborates, also via email: "Whenever we shoot in exotic
countries, I try to find my crew from
among the locals. I do not care if they
are film people; the important thing is
that they are intelligent and creative. I
do not need assistants from Europe or
the U.S., who normally do not speak the
language and are helpless in these countries." Zeitlinger, Herzog and Bergfelder
each speak at least five languages, so
translators are seldom required.
Herzog and Bergfelder scout
locations many months - sometimes
even years - in advance. Before shooting commences, Bergfelder returns to
the site to prep it. "He organizes a crew,

Top photo by Rob Anderson, courtesy of Netflix. Bottom photo courtesy of Ulrich Bergfelder.

attests. "It doesn't look like it, but we had
four of the biggest lights available: three
Bebee Lights on cherry pickers, and a
configuration of Maxi Brutes on a huge
construction crane."

American Cinematographer - March 2017

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