Interview of Wolfgang Held

Wolfgang Held

I find it exciting to shoot documentaries right now. There’s so much reality TV over the last 10 years, and that gave vérité type filmmaking — where you try to follow people and capture stories as opposed to doing interviews and setting it up — it gave that a lot more play. People accept the style because of reality TV, they accept that you can run around and capture people live. And a lot of that stuff that used to be good in narrative storytelling now looks very set-up.


On single camera vs. multi-camera:


I’m not a multi-cam guy, I like single camera approach, this is the different between vérité shooting and reality TV where you capture everything from every angle. To me the movement, the way one camera captures a scene is where the cinematographic style comes in.

Wolfgang talks about the ethics of vérité:

I’m not of the belief that the camera is ever invisible, I feel like it’s more like a catalyst, I feel like I’m there and it’s more about the relationship I build with people, at least with non-stars. With celebrities it works the other way around because they get so overexposed by cameras I think you have to work in making yourself more of the fly on the wall.


I still am interested in the subject of the voyeur and the persons involved. This is the same problem the cameraman is always faced with: whether you are going to photograph and make a fantastic shot of someone who has just been shot and is dying, or whether you put your camera down and help the guy. I have done vérité documentary where someone is terribly upset and crying, just utterly a helpless, hopeless human being. So you’re faced with the idea that you can get this terrific scene, it’s going to make your documentary; or again whether you put your camera down, put your arm around that person and say, “Look, please don’t cry.”