Director Tim Fehlbaum & team interview

It can be incredibly difficult to tell a rich story while limiting yourself to a single location. However, with September 5thThe restriction actually improved the storytelling for the filmmakers and craftsmen as they realized they were in a very similar situation to the ABC Sports team in 1972.

Told from the perspective of the ABC Sports team, September 5th is set during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Israeli athletes were held hostage by a terrorist group. “As someone who works in the media myself, I thought I could say something that is particularly relevant in today’s world, about our complex media environment,” says director Tim Fehlbaum.

Deadline spoke with writer-director Tim Fehlbaum, author Moritz Binder, cinematographer Markus Förderer, production designer Julian Wagner, editor Hansjörg Weißbrich and composer Lorenz Dangel to discuss how the team told a sprawling story from a small town .

When researching the film’s theme, it wasn’t until he met Geoffrey Mason, played by John Magaro, that Fehlbaum realized he wanted to tell the story this way. “It was so interesting to listen to his story, what he experienced that day during that 22-hour broadcast marathon,” Fehlbaum says. “After the first conversation we thought: ‘Perhaps we could tell the tragic story of what happened that day in Munich from this perspective.'”

When he began working on the script with author Moritz Binder, the two realized how difficult it was to tell the story from a newsroom. “You start thinking about the problems, for example, that you can’t be on site, that you can’t be with the police, that you can’t be outside the complex,” says Binder. “But the problems we had writing were, in a way, the problems of our characters, and so it became this different kind of thriller that was really interesting to us.”

“As a filmmaker, I found it an interesting challenge to tell a story entirely from one location,” Fehlbaum adds. “I admire films that derive their strength from a certain limitation of space and time.”

To meet this limitation, the set itself had to be something unique and special. “We had to design and create this tiny space, but we still had to tell a big story through that small space and the screens, through her eyes,” says production designer Julian Wagner. “We had so many discussions about the size of hallways, the heights… what’s realistic, what’s authentic, and where can we take a little creative license to heighten and amplify the feelings to support all of those emotions.”

“The set that Julian designed was so unique, everything was connected,” says cinematographer Markus Förderer. “Traditionally on big films we take a wide shot and you crop and change the angle to get a close-up. We didn’t do that here. We captured as much as we could in single long takes, with the intention of clarifying them in editing.”

“The camerawork approach gave us the opportunity to delve deeply into many shots and create the pace from long takes in a kind of documentary style,” says editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. “We’re trying to find the right balance between that exciting tension and the tragic moments of history, the moral conflicts of journalists debating how far they can go, what they can actually show on live television… and all those questions , which I have.” I think they are very contemporary.”

“From my perspective, it was an interesting situation,” adds composer Lorenz Dangel, “because we had the luxury of using music as a tool to draw certain dramaturgical arcs or really decide what we wanted to emphasize.” Dangel says, He said he was very reserved with the score and used very little music at the beginning before it started to get tense. “It really pays off in the second half because the audience doesn’t get tired of hearing suspense music all the time.”

While the design of the set allowed for some creative freedom in some areas for narrative reasons, there was one area that had to be perfect. “The control room is a very precise replica,” says Wagner. “We just changed a few things to make the tension more tangible and create that claustrophobic feeling… This is where the journalists are telling the story and we wanted it to be real and we wanted that tension to feel tangible.”

Even the television screens were functional, which also benefited the actors. “Tim always pushed for us to have all the content our characters see live on set so they could really interact with the screens,” Förderer says. “You see the monitors reflected in the actors’ eyes or glasses, so you feel the presence of the images.”

Due to the flickering light seen in films, television screens are usually not the right source of lighting on set. While most would like to eliminate this, Förderer decided to add an additional set of film lights to increase the frequency. “I see documentaries where there’s not perfect synchronization and you see them blinking, and it’s such an interesting storytelling tool that isn’t usually explored,” he says. “Whenever things get more tense, like when you see the masked man on screen for the first time, we increase the flicker rate and it really has something to do with the heart rate.”

Beyond the television screens, it was important that all equipment used in the newsroom was functional to some degree. “The machines were all functional, but we had to refurbish and rewire them because these original analog machines are sonically monsters,” says Wagner. “We wanted them to stay alive and for everything to work in some way, but you couldn’t just plug them in.”

“They have such great sounds, these old switches, most of the time it’s some kind of double-click thing,” Dangel adds. “I was on set during a break from filming and recorded all the stuff.”

For Weißbrich, refurbishing these machines was actually a bit of fun from the past, as he had already used some of them at the beginning of his editorial career. “I was very familiar with everything,” he says. “Every morning the rolls came, the monitors, all the stuff we put in there. That was 30 years ago, so not that long ago, but things have changed completely…”

“Interestingly, the ethical and moral questions are still the same,” says Moritz.

“Even more present today,” agrees Wagner.