It can be incredibly difficult to tell an expansive story while restricting yourself to a single location. However, with September 5, the restriction actually enhanced the storytelling for the filmmakers and craftspeople, once they realized they found themselves in a very similar position to that ABC Sports team in 1972.
Told through the perspective of the ABC Sports team, September 5 takes place during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Israeli athletes were being held hostage by a terrorist group. “As someone who’s working in the media myself, I thought that I could say something that is especially relevant in today’s world about our complex media environment,” says director Tim Fehlbaum.
John Magaro in ‘September 5.’
Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection
Deadline spoke with writer-director Tim Fehlbaum, writer Moritz Binder, cinematographer Markus Förderer, production designer Julian Wagner, editor Hansjörg Weißbrich and composer Lorenz Dangel to discuss how the team told an expansive story from a small location.
As he was researching the subject of the film, it wasn’t until he met with Geoffrey Mason, played by John Magaro in the film, that Fehlbaum realized this was how he wanted to tell the story. “Listening to his story of what he experienced on that day during this 22-hour marathon of broadcasting was so interesting,” says Fehlbaum. “Even after the first conversation, we thought, ‘Maybe we could tell the tragic story of what happened that day in Munich entirely through that perspective.’”
When he began working on the script with writer Moritz Binder, the two started to see the difficulty of telling the story from a newsroom. “You start thinking of about the problems, like you can’t be at the scene, you can’t be with the police, you can’t be outside the complex,” says Binder. “But the problems that we had in writing were the problems of our characters in a way, so then it became this different kind of thriller, which was really interesting to us.”
“As a filmmaker, I found it an interesting challenge to tell a story entirely from one location,” adds Fehlbaum. “I admire movies that draw their strength from a certain limitation of space and time.”
To deal with that limitation, the set itself needed to be something unique and special. “We had to design and create this tiny space, but we still had to tell a huge story through this small room and screens, through their eyes,” says production designer Julian Wagner. “We had so many discussions about the size of hallways, the heights… what is realistic, what is authentic and where can we take a bit of creative license to heighten and push the feelings to support all of these emotions.”
Peter Sarsgaard in ‘September 5’
Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
“The set that Julian designed was so unique, everything was connected,” says cinematographer Markus Förderer. “Traditionally in big movies, we set up a wide shot and you cut and change your angle to close up. We didn’t do that here. We captured as much as we could in single long takes with the intention to be tightened up in editing.”
“The approach of the camera work gave us the opportunity to dig deep into a lot of footage and create the pacing from long takes in a kind of documentary style,” says editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. “We try to find the right balance between this nail-biting tension and the tragic beats of the story, the moral conflicts of the journalists discussing how far they can go, what they can actually show on live television… and all of these questions I think are very timely.”
“It was an interesting situation from my point of view,” adds composer Lorenz Dangel, “in that we had the luxury to use music as a tool to draw certain dramaturgic arcs or to really decide what to emphasize.” Dangel says he used a lot of restraint in the score, using very little music in the beginning before it starts to become tense. “That really pays off in the second half because the audience isn’t tired of having tension music all the time.”
While the design of the set used some creative liberties in areas for narrative reasons, there was one area that needed to be perfect. “The control room is a very precise kind of replica,” says Wagner. “We changed just a few things to make the tension more tangible and to have this claustrophobic feeling… Here the journalists are telling the story and we wanted to have that be real, and we wanted to make this tension feel tangible.”
Even the television screens were functional, which benefitted the actors as well. “Tim always pushed that we have all the content our characters are watching live on set so they could really interact with the screens,” says Förderer. “You see the monitors reflecting in the actors’ eyes or glasses, so you feel the presence of the images.”
Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Television screens are not usually to go-to source for lighting on sets, due to the flickering light that can be seen on film. While that’s something most would strive to remove, Förderer decided to add an extra row of movie lights to ramp up the frequency. “I see documentaries where there’s no perfect sync and you see them strobing, and it’s such an interesting storytelling tool that’s not usually explored,” he says. “Whenever it gets more tense, for example when you see the masked man on the screen for the first time, we ramp up the flicker frequency and it really does something to your heart rate.”
Beyond the television screens, it was important that all of the devices used in the newsroom were functional to a certain degree. “The machines were all functional, but we had to refurbish them and rewire them because these original analog machines are pure monsters when it comes to sound,” says Wagner. “We wanted to have them alive and everything should work in a way, but you couldn’t just plug them in.”
“They have such great sounds, these old switches, most of the time it’s a sort of double click thing,” adds Dangel. “I went on set during a shooting break and recorded all this stuff.”
For Weißbrich, refurbishing those machines was actually a bit of a blast from the past since he used some of them when he began as an editor. “I was very familiar with everything,” he says. “The rolls would come in every morning, the monitors, all the stuff we put in there. That was 30 years ago, not that long ago but things have completely changed…”
“Interestingly enough, the ethical and moral questions are still the same,” says Moritz.
“Even more present today,” agrees Wagner.
