PRODUCTION SEPTEMBER 5
Placing viewers inside the ABC Sports newsroom while the Munich Olympics terror attack unfolded, authenticity was key for the makers of September 5. DOP Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK tells us more “We kept that high-stakes, live-broadcast energy”
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T he 1972 Munich Olympics were meant to symbolise peace and unity, but instead became the stage for one of the most shocking terrorist attacks in modern history – unfolding live on television for the whole world to witness. In the era before 24-hour rolling news, nearly 900 million viewers watched in real time as members of the militant group Black September infiltrated the Olympic Village, taking Israeli athletes hostage and eventually murdering nine of them. A team from ABC Sports,
on site to cover the Games, made the unprecedented decision to broadcast the crisis as it happened. September 5 takes viewers inside the ABC Sports newsroom, where journalists scrambled to report on the tragedy with limited information and under immense pressure. For cinematographer Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK, the first task was figuring out how to capture the gravity of this world- changing moment from within the tight confines of the windowless control room. “This was our biggest challenge. The
director Tim Fehlbaum had this idea to keep it really contained and only show what the media saw,” explains Förderer. “The question was: how do we give it scale and scope while still staying true to the point of view?” WINDOWS TO THE WORLD One of the solutions was to make the TV monitors in the room ‘windows to the world,’ says Förderer – showing what was happening outside in the Olympic Village just as the journalists reporting would have seen it. It’s an effective trick,
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