Werner Herzog on IMAX, AI and 3D

The oldest paintings were painted more than 32,000 years ago and are the first forms of art and culture. It was not discovered until 1994, when cave explorers in France found Chauvet Cave. More than a decade later, director Werner Herzog was given rare access to the heavily guarded prehistoric site to film what would become the 3D documentary. Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It is a strange and moving film, in which Herzog convincingly argues, in his pronounced German accent, that these caves are the birthplace of “the modern human spirit.” Fifteen years after its premiere, the film has achieved cult-like status, and for a short time, you can now see it back in theaters as a 6K restoration on IMAX screens – housed in some of the largest and loudest cinemas in the world.

When I first saw Forgotten dreamsIt was at a small independent theater in Seattle. In 3D, the experience was intimate—limestone stalactites and stalagmites pressing into your face—and suitably claustrophobic. Rewatch it at a press screening at AMC Lincoln Center (The only “real” IMAX theater in New York City), the effect was, frankly, overwhelming. The clarity and detail of every grain of the limestone wall, suddenly magnified across a screen that the human eye can barely comprehend all at once, makes Chauvet feel even more alien. The walls are almost like skin, freckled with crystals, warped by time.

“This is what 3D is designed for” raved one critic. However, Herzog had no intention of making a 3D film. In fact, he doesn’t really like them. Even seeing James Cameron Avatarwhich was hailed as the defining 3D film of the century, Herzog was not impressed. ((Avatar “It can be two-dimensional in a big theater,” he says. Edge.) But when he was in pre-production, Herzog was allowed to visit the Chauvet Caves two months before filming and was blown away by the experience of seeing the cave paintings up close. “Suddenly I discovered that there were bulges, hollows, caves and rock overhangs – a world that only existed in 3D because painters 32,000 years ago used formations,” he says. Cave painters – arguably humanity’s first artists – did not work on flat surfaces; In fact, it was the look and feel of their canvas that determined how and what they painted. “The swollen rock is now the swollen neck of the bison attacking you,” Herzog says, for example. Herzog may not have been a fan of 3D films, but suddenly it made sense for him to paint a cave painting.

However, 3D imaging in such a specific environment had its own challenges. For one thing, there were no 3D cameras small enough to bring into Chauvet Cave, so they had to be created. “(The film) was shot in 3D using our own camera, our own data management, and our own ‘brain,’” Herzog says, crediting Estonian director Kaspar Kallas with building the equipment (“a very intense, wonderful guy”). But the settings, while custom, are also held together with tape and glue. (If you want more nitty-gritty details, there you have it.) A wonderful art write-up by the film’s director of photography, Peter Zeitlinger, is available on Mubi Notebook.) The film was shot in 2K using SI-2K cameras, GoPros, and Canon amateur cameras. But today the standard is 4K, and if you’re putting things on an IMAX-sized screen, you can get up to 6K or even 8K resolution.

(Another fun fact: a James Bond movie directed by Sam Mendes, Heavy rainis often credited as the first feature film to use drone footage — something you see everywhere today. but Cave of Forgotten Dreamswhich was released a year ago, is actually the first. The crew built a hand-held camera rig that can be attached to a drone.)

In 2010, James Stewart, a 3D producer, was brought in to help improve the film’s original 3D experience before an early version was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. A decade later, he began overseeing the team that would bring him back to IMAX, a process that began during the COVID-19 pandemic and will extend for another five years. But Stewart’s enthusiasm for the film never waned; In fact, this newer, more immersive theatrical experience has him even more excited. “In IMAX, it’s absolutely amazing,” he says. He estimates that he has watched the film more than a hundred times, and yet each viewing strikes him so much with its clarity that it makes him want to “lick the walls of the cave.”

The work of film restoration is not unlike the work of archeology depicted in the film: the process of preservation. Stuart led a small team of less than 10 people working over a five-year period. From the raw footage extracted at 2K resolution, the movie needed to be reconstructed frame by frame Forgotten dreamsBeing a 3D film, it was actually double work, since there was a separate stream for the left eye and the right eye. (Aside from the meticulous patience required, the team also needed new software to extract the old, oddly specific codecs from the original footage.) Finally, there’s the effort to get that footage from 2K to 6K, which took beta software and a lot of different hardware to “scale it up without just blowing it up,” Stewart says, explaining that no artificial intelligence was used. The team also reconstructed the sound for the film, a similarly laborious process that ranges from a 5.1 mix (six speakers) to a Dolby Atmos mix (up to 100 speakers).

According to Stewart, the first Avatar The “3D revolution” began, although in the years that followed, moviegoers’ interest in 3D technology seemed to wan. This interest has not translated into 3D TVs for home cinema, or even straight-up TVs Avatar The film, though still a multibillion-dollar behemoth, has become less profitable. From the way Stewart talks about the “larger 3D community” working on these projects, it sounds like a small group of people with specialized skills. He also criticizes the ways 3D technology is used in films, although he does not mention bad examples. However, he believes that for great filmmakers, it can become a powerful storytelling tool. He cites Martin Scorsese Hugofor me Life of Piand a pair of documentaries by William Wenders, Between us and Anselmas “masterful” examples of properly executed 3D graphics.

Stewart is proud of it Cave of Forgotten Dreams It regularly appears in second place on lists of the best 3D films of all time. (behind AvatarOf course.) But he still believes the strength of the film lies in Herzog himself — “the way he talks, the way he writes, the way he tells the story.” As amazing as the caves were, it was also impressive that Herzog and his small crew were able to take so many photos given the restrictions. The caves were dark. Their equipment was limited; For conservation reasons, they could only film for a few hours a day over the course of a week. “It’s like, ‘Go make a movie and then by the way, it has to be a transcendent visual experience.’ They’re like, ‘Well, you know, we’re lucky to have any footage at all.’

Herzog himself was not involved in the restoration. (“I don’t understand real digital work,” he admits.) But seeing his film for the first time in IMAX was “a very profound experience.”

I asked Herzog if he revisits his films often, as there are dozens of them, and many of them are considered classics. Aside from attending retrospective exhibitions, he rarely revisits his work. When he does, he’s happy with how they held up. “My films never seem to age,” Herzog says. “Cave of Forgotten DreamsYou can show it off 150 years from now and it will still be absolutely fresh. He’s grateful he doesn’t feel embarrassed when his grandchildren finally watch his films.

Herzog, now 83 years old, seems to live outside of time. last fall, On Conan O’Brien’s podcastHerzog told the story of not being able to get his car out of a parking garage in Dublin because he couldn’t download the parking garage app. But there is a misconception that Herzog is a kind of lathi. Granted, he still carries a non-smartphone, which he showed me over Zoom, but Herzog’s emails and video chats with his family around the world. He’s online enough to know The White House has turned into a scene from Encounters at the end of the world Its a terrible meme.

He’s not completely anti-AI either. He believes we have to be “vigilant”, but sees the way in which “enormous and glorious possibilities in pharmaceuticals, medicine and mathematics” can be created. As for the AI-generated film, Herzog is unimpressed: “Everything I’ve seen so far is dead on arrival. It’s sleek and well-made, but it’s completely dead. It doesn’t have the spirit of poetry.”

Many filmmakers – and anyone working in a creative field right now – are grappling with the encroachment of artificial intelligence, and there is little consensus on how this might disrupt the relationship between art-making, work and commerce. But these conversations are turbulent about the immediate future; Herzog, perhaps confident about encountering millennia-old human art in a limestone cave, remains undaunted.

“When you look at Cave of Forgotten DreamsThere is a deep sense of awe, wonder and mystery. It has a soul that is not just the director’s soul. “It is a strange spirit to the humans who painted these paintings 32,000 years ago, and artificial intelligence cannot create this.”