Writing, Arts & Entertainment
Teach Yourself Storytelling: Read
Lesson time 17:03 min
If you want to master storytelling, don't just watch movies. Werner explains why reading is key to becoming a great filmmaker and shares passages from his mandatory reading list.
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Topics include: Mandatory reading for filmmakers • Virgil • Icelandic poetry • Becoming your subject
Teaches Filmmaking
In 6 hours of video lessons, Werner Herzog teaches his uncompromising approach to documentary and feature filmmaking.
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Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read. You have to read because you develop a sense of storytelling. You develop a sense of flow of something. You develop a story, just even if it's completely remote from what you have read, all of a sudden, something sprouts out of it. Just very recently, I'll give you an example, I read about Winston Churchill in his early days when he's 19 or whatever. He was in Parliament and from the other side of the aisle, a woman-- I think the first female Member of Parliament, she had a very screechy unpleasant voice-- shouts across the aisle, Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee in the morning. And he, without missing a beat, shouts back, Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it. You see, it's so beautiful and it will linger. Maybe it will pop up as something similar as a dialogue. Maybe it will pop up as a sequence somewhere. And this is something completely overlooked. I see film students at very prestigious film schools and nobody of them is reading. They just don't read. And they will all be filmmakers, mediocre at very best. They will never make a great film. And you can tell some of the truly good, great filmmakers are people who read. Errol Morris, for example, he reads voraciously. Terrence Malick, he reads, reads, reads. Francis Ford Coppola, he has his own library. Recently, I've been in closer contact with Joshua Oppenheimer, who made The Act of Killing, one of the most important films that you've seen in the last 25 years. He reads, reads, reads. So it's my encouragement to everyone, just read. [MUSIC PLAYING] I was intrigued by Edda poetry, 1,000 year old Icelandic poetry and it's just unspeakably beautiful. There's a very, very beautiful translation of it by Lee Hollander. And when I was in Iceland, it was all snow and snow and my hosts said, ah, we can take you anywhere in Iceland. We have four wheel drives and I looked around. It looked boring and I said, no, I should do that in summer, going around. What else would you like to see? And I said, I would like to hold the Codex Regius, a crumpled little codex, a parchment, handwritten codex in my hand. And I actually had the privilege to be brought down into an atomic bomb safe, a bunker, under the central bank and I was shown it and I held it. And recently, I held it again. I even filmed it. And it was such an incredible experience. It's like the Dead Sea Scrolls for Israel. You hold it in your hand, you emerge, and the barber gives you a free haircut and the pastry baker gives you his best pastry and you have to taste it. It's that kind of thing and a physical approach to it. This awe to hold it in your hands, it's priceless. Some of it probably pre-dating the writing down, maybe something even 500, 600, 700 years earlier. And it begins with the ...
About the Instructor
When the legendary director Werner Herzog was 19, he stole a camera and made his first movie. 70 films and 50 awards later, Werner is teaching documentary and feature filmmaking. In this film class, you’ll learn storytelling, cinematography, location scouting, self-financing, documentary interview techniques, and how to bring your ideas to life. By the end, you’ll make uncompromising movies.
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Werner Herzog
In 6 hours of video lessons, Werner Herzog teaches his uncompromising approach to documentary and feature filmmaking.
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