If you want the class, pay up. Herzog is the real thing, and $90 is a bargain. My question is, why is Herzog teaching instead of making films? I suspect that he can't get funding based on the traditional Big model, where every shot requires 35 people on set. He could, though, get with today's tech and make a salable film based on the Small model - DP, sound guy, and PA, with everyone, including the actors pitching in with the physical work. Imagine the press he could get from that.

@jleo - well, when it comes to Hollywood and truth, anything goes. Still, I will quote Martel Cullen, "Cynicism is not a successful way of life".

Books by famous guys and about life of famous guys have negative value. As they waste your time. Courses are worse.

So ... about a hundred people paid for a very uncomfortable five hour sleep & headache!

Many people are too shy. Especially in large audiences.

Always remember "The Emperor's New Clothes".

DOV Simens has the 2 day film school where he teaches the bare basics. One year he had the 1 day film school for UCLA. I don't think he's made many films but among his notable students are Will Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Chris Nolan, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, John Cleese, etc. Many testimonials say that it was enough to get them started with their first film. Many of these type of courses are just lectures in a crowded room, very little interaction with the students who are just scribbling notes all the time.

Independent Features Project always has very useful workshops. Raindance has a lot of valuable free info

http://www.raindance.org

In the meantime, heres some free Herzog!

Why the antagonism for self taught filmmakers. I'll name a few, Kubrick, Woody Allen, Richard Linklater and Ben Wheatley....all self taught and actually among my favourite directors.

Will most directors come from rich families, connected to the business already absolutely BUT with the price of equipment coming down and internet making distribution more and more possible we should expect more and more unique filmmakers having self taught themselves.

@Kurth why do you think lectures....and books.....and experience are mutually exclusive? Its not logical. Self taught means you read, you listen, you practice you meet like minded people.....actually thats how anyone learns anything.

Some people need moral/psychological/intellectual incentive and may have a satori while listening to the guys, some other people would fall asleep 'cause they're more need to get my hands dirty. It also depends on the phase one's living; something you may welcome and nurture/expand your mind say when you're a teenager can enormously bore you twenty years later 'cause you're more prone to - in @kurth words - doing (praxis); and vice-versa.

I like Carlile's concept of "enough bullshit" ... to keep the show running ,-)

About Herzog, well my personal view is that since WH went USA he lost his... spell. Only docu style Grizzly and The Wild Blue Yonder (I don't care if they say it's fiction) are sprinkled with former glory .. and maybe My Best Fiend, but that was almost all archival footage and has the bizarre figure of Kinski. When I watched Cave of Forgotten Dreams I got so disappointed and sad, because one could tell Herzog was repeating an easy pattern (of thought and manipulation {all construction's manipulative}) and that's no good. The flick was pretty boring and suddenly amidst a lot of mediocre stuff was this insane sequence in the cave, wow; so the magic may still be there but probably buried under many layers of... (?)

Anyhow long are the days of Fata Morgana (72) - the first thing I saw from him and that profoundly impacted me - and his wonderfully personal 70's and 80's documentary work; not to mention the inescapable massive golden decade (1972-1982) with Aguirre, Kaspar, Stroszek (looking back, the irony in this film...) and Fitzcarraldo. If you ask me before Cobra it's all good.

The following is completelly plausible :P If one could kidnap Herzog and take him to a soul-lost-desert and spend a month of conviviality, of hiking, surviving and some peyoting... probably it would be a lifechanging masterclass, ja ja

He-hey @jleo =)

@kurth I'll talk to the wixárika's marakame and you put Werner in the van, @jleo can bring the medicine, he has plenty in the garden XD

Regarding Herzog's docus... for me they're seminal work, not so much 'cause the amount of semen but because at the time they certainly were a clear poetic departure from mainstream standards - honestly the pure cinema verité and nothing else dogma is too tight, too inflexible. Herzog "spiced" and manipulated the content a bit, both while filming and at the cutting room; hey! but who can stick a flag onto something and call it real? If you're not working news and the (nutritious) layers are there, I personally don't care.

Me too, liked better early Wenders, 70s specially. Kubrik Lolita to Shinning yep; being Clockwork my fav.
But neither of them are saints of my devotion, Herzog kinda is

who can continue to fly in the higher altitudes in old age

... reckon that's not easy at all, maybe desert trips help :P

Not Herzog, but FREE ! Lots of film ed content on this website:

The Martin Scorsese Film School

https://www.indiefilmhustle.com/martin-scorsese-film-school/

All 14 videos here:

Vilmos Zsigmond: Cinematography Masterclass

https://www.indiefilmhustle.com/vilmos-zsigmond-cinematography-masterclass/

@jleo you've got your discount ,-) but accounting for boozze, medicines, play toys, whores, little boys, opium flutes, aligators, saunas, freshest exotic food, books (oh oh oh blasphemy!!!) and acolytes, seems just logic that we check transliner's option, je je. Already checked on Akin, Alonso, Almodovar, Anderson (PT of course), Angelopoulos, Altman, Audiard, Baumbach, Bajo Ulloa, Bielinsky, Bong, Campanella, Camus, Carpenter, Carruth and a couple GH2s, Ceylan, Chandor, Chan-wook Park, the Coesns ($$$), Coppola, Cronenberg, 1 of the Dardennes and champagne, de la Iglesia, De Palma (so he redeems), Erice, Farhadi, Ferrara, Fellini’s ashes, Forman, Frears, Gay, Gondry, Greenaway, Haynes, Hineken I mean Haneke, Hartley, James, Jarmusch and Jean-Luc with one of those little rouge ball mouth-strap, Jia, Jodorowsky, Jonze, Jordan , Kar-wai (if he behaves), Kaufman, Kiarostami and his cousin Kaurismäki, Kieslowski, Konchalovsky (?), K. Kurosawa, Kusturica and his band, Lanthimos, Larraín, Lee (angry), Leigh, Lynch (to tell dirty jokes), Loach, Lumet (we have to hurry though), Marshall, Martel, Medem, Meirelles to grow maconha, Moretti (to cook pizza), McDonagh, McQueen, Ming Liang, Miike, Miyazaki, Moverman, Murnau (just kidding), Oshii, Östlund, Panahi, Payne, Pawlikowski, Piñeyro, Reygadas, Reichardt, Reitman, Romero, Ross Perry, Serreau, despite all also Sodabergh, Sokurov, Strickland, Tarr, Turpin (he can double as DP), Vinterberg, Villaronga, Villeneuve, Von Trier (all circus need a clown), Winterbottom (just to torture him), Zvyagintsev and of course all living Flying Circus' motherlords

PS
We could also grab Malick, just to throw him away to the natural light sharks at the last minute

hey hey I'm in' I'm in... that's a big cobra you've manage with the food, the landscape and the all-importamt funky crew we might even get infected with grandiloquent ideas and shoot some Leone-Keaton sexy low core action docu-drama on the tracks... but has to have cats and an anarchist, I mean antichrist but just one :P

Buying the sombreros online and washing my underwear... it may get a bit crammed in there
Hopefully that thing run on AA batteries, otherwise timber! timber! TIMBER!!!!!!

While great I think there is a difference between an hour or so interview which is directed largely by the person interviewing and a 6 hour planned and prepared series of lessons from Herzog.