What I do not like, the kind of high-resolution cameras, 4K, 6K, for shooting dialogue, for having faces and close-ups of actors, and you see every single pore in the skin.
For a film I shot on the most difficult mountain on God's wide earth in Patagonia for a sequence where there was high probability some digital effects were needed, somebody made storyboards and I quickly ignored them, after half an hour I ignored them and I never used any digital effect.
We are not accountants, We are not accountants who do number after number after number of storyboard images, a robot could do it ultimately, but what I'm doing a robot cannot do.
Because you're delegated to a cook book recipe and you slavishly and pedantically rely on it while you're shooting and you're not relying on your creative instincts and you're not relying on something which brings life into movies and excitement into it.
Otherwise [digital revolution] hasn't changed my way of filmmaking, I'm not nostalgic in postulating we should still make films on celluloid. I love celluloid but I don't need to continue on celluloid.
[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes. I can edit almost as fast as I'm thinking, editing with celluloid means always searching for this little reel of film, and number it, and scribble on it with some sort of pens, and gluing it together, and working on a flatbed. It's much, much slower.
It doesn't matter whether you shoot on celluloid or on digital, you better make a good film.
I must say, the people who started this whole Masterclass series have been very helpful and very intelligent to point out certain things and also give me some guidance, "isn't there something missing, shouldn't we address this or that?" so it's not completely alone out of the blue. It's very well thought through.
I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.
If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
By the way, today with digital cameras and editing on your laptop, and things like that, you can make a feature film, a narrative feature film easily for $10,000.
Robert Rodriguez, makes a feature film in 35mm celluloid one and a half hours long, and nobody believed him, I think he wrote a book about it and gave all the details of how he spent the money, even making a 35mm celluloid feature film was possible, at least for Rodriguez.
Of course subjects are changing, and since I started so early in filmmaking, I did my first film at age 19, of course you grow up with your films and you are not trotting the same path all the time.
When you look at any of my films you will immediately be able to tell this is a [Werner] Herzog film. Even if you didn't have any credits, in two minutes flat you would know.
I always loved celluloid cameras in the early days that were sturdy and reliable. Even under tropical conditions and downpour of rain, it would still work.
Similar thing until today, with digital cameras you look after something like that as robust as they can be.
I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a list of questions.
It's curiosity, and always a sense of poetry. You see it in particular in the chapter "Iceland" where I'm reciting ancient Icelandic poetry. It has this very beautiful gravitas in conjunction with the volcanoes.
I wouldn't make a connection between the daily news and volcanoes.
I don't dabble, I'm good at acting.
If the part is really good of course I would like to do it.
After "Jack Reacher" the parts I didn't like, most of it was silly.
There's a completely new culture out there. I'm not a participant of texting and driving - or texting at all - but I see there's something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us.
In private I'm not. You will have to ask my wife. She maintains I'm a fluffy husband.
I'm not a citizen of America, I cannot vote. But it is fascinating because there's a new kind of protagonist out there that we didn't expect. By the way, I'm not in any panic at all.
