Werner Herzog Q&A: Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans

Filmmaker Werner Herzog, who is coming out with 3 movies, is asked "How long he spends in post-production and how does he know a movie is complete."

He responds that "a scene is done after four takes, it will not get any better. Editing goes fast because nowadays with digital editing, I can edit almost as fast as I am thinking. A film like Grizzly Man was edited in 9 days, including writing and speaking the commentary. The feature film I did, in Japan, in Japanese, I shot a grand total of 360 minutes of footage. Not 360 hours. 360 minutes. Because I know what I need for the screen. So things go pretty fast and I'm never hectic. In a film like Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans with Nicolas Cage, our shooting days were normally over at 3:30. Maybe 4. I called it quits because I had everything in the can. The crew got nervous. We hadn't shot coverage. I didn't even know what "coverage" meant. I had to ask my assistant what they meant, because I know what coverage means with my car insurance. And he said no it's shots from down here and up here and on a drone. One day on the set, Nicolas Cage made a speech from an apple box, and said, "finally, I'm working for a director who knows what he's doing. It's by far Nicolas Cage's best performance. And maybe the second best performance is the one that one him the big award, Leaving Las Vegas."

Shot and edited by Viva Videography.