Burbank post house AlphaDogs provided post services for the Werner Herzog movie Encounters at the End of the World, which is distributed by Discovery Films and THINKFilm and is currently in theaters.

Written, directed and narrated by Herzog for the National Science Foundation, Encounters is a never-before-seen glance at a hidden South Pole society. It documents the lives of 1,000 men and women living in close quarters in physically and psychologically challenging circumstances to further the goals of cutting-edge science. The film exposes the psyches of this diverse clan while capturing the treacherous beauty of the Antarctic landscape and below water world.

	Werner Herzog at the rim of Erebus Click for Large Image

In keeping with the ruggedly individualistic nature of McMurdo Station, where the film takes place, Herzog's entire crew on the film consisted of two men: himself (also serving as sound man) and Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger.

CEO and founder of AlphaDogs Terence Curren says of the post process, “We provided all online editing and color timing for this project in our Burbank facility. Our colorist, Brian Hutchings, was able to achieve exactly the look the client wanted in our newest color-correction suite.”

AlphaDogs colorist Brian Hutchings adds, “Color correction for Encounters at the End of the World was all done in-house at AlphaDogs using the Apple Final Cut Studio Color package. AlphaDogs installed Color along with the optional Tangent operator panels, which really gives the feel of the da Vinci system I’m used to. Color worked throughout the sessions without fault and allowed us to achieve the exact look required.”

	A diver under the ice Click for Large Image

Film Synopsis
Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) confirms his standing as poet laureate of men in extreme situations with Encounters at the End of the World. In this visually stunning exploration, Herzog travels to the Antarctic community of McMurdo Station, headquarters of the National Science Foundation and home to 1,100 people during the austral summer (Oct-Feb). Over the course of his journey, Herzog examines human nature and Mother nature, juxtaposing breathtaking locations with the profound, surreal and sometimes absurd experiences of the marine biologists, physicists, plumbers and truck drivers who choose to form a society as far away from society as one can get.

About the Production
With Encounters at the End of the World, Director Werner Herzog becomes the first filmmaker to shoot a feature on each one of the seven continents. Long known and admired for his love of adventurers, explorers and visionaries, Herzog is himself all three, and he has consistently gone where no filmmaker has gone before—esthetically, dramatically and geographically. Throughout his career, which spans more than four decades and includes more than 40 films, he tells stories about men who, like him, are drawn to uncharted territory of all kinds. Yet, despite the wide variety of his locations and protagonists, Herzog has an unerring ability to find the common threads that unite these disparate people and places with one another—and with us.

	(L to R) Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger at Cape Royds Click for Large Image

Set in Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World is chiefly about McMurdo Station, the U.S.-run hub of all activity for the continent, and deals with the roughly 1,000 inhabitants who call this remote, unwelcoming and unique place home. Invited by the National Science Foundation to make the film, Herzog agreed after seeing some breathtaking underwater—or, rather, under-ice—home-video footage taken by an arctic diving enthusiast (who was later engaged to compose Encounters’ score), Herzog not only deals with the resident population and the extraordinary physical environment in which they live; he also deals with his own experiences on the journey, casting himself as narrator, commentator and character in his own film. To be sure, of the people Herzog encounters, a high percentage (many of them scientists and researchers) could be considered oddballs, eccentrics, misanthropes and even madmen. Many are gripped by personal obsessions, some are following a dream, others are merely escaping the conventions of ordinary middle-class life. All of these are traits commonly found among artists, and Herzog, who has famously filmed in the most extreme of conditions (including—literally—at the edge of an active volcano), never lets us forget that he, too, has chosen to come to “the end of the world.” He may be visiting his subjects in Antarctica, but in many significant ways he is also one of them.

	McMurdo Station Click for Large Image

At McMurdo Station, Herzog finds nothing but such characters. Among his subjects are a former banker from Colorado, who now drives a giant vehicle he calls “Ivan the terra Bus”; a plumber who claims to be descended from Aztec royalty; and a female researcher who boasts that she has traveled from London to Kenya in the back of a garbage truck and whose specialty, on McMurdo talent night, is to fold her body up into a small, carry-on suitcase. Amid such unusual folk are such usual artifacts—though they are unusual for Antarctica—as an ATM machine, a yoga studio, and a soft-serve ice cream machine that has become an object of worship for the locals. Though sometimes offended and distanced from what he sees (he calls the ATM machine “an abomination”), Herzog is more often amused, and never less than engaged. And, in keeping with the ruggedly individualistic nature of McMurdo, his entire crew on the film consisted of two men: himself (also serving as sound man) and Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger.

After decades of filming in the world’s most remote locations, Antarctica may represent Herzog’s final frontier, but Encounters at the End of the World proves that his thirst for new experiences remains unquenched. It also reconfirms his unparalleled ability to photograph sights no one has ever before seen without sacrificing either their majesty or mystery. There are images in Encounters that are as wondrous as any ever captured and, more importantly, they succeed in conveying to even the most jaded moviegoer the sense of awe that Herzog must have felt when seeing these places for the first time. To be sure, other camera crews have gone to Antarctica, but with Werner Herzog guiding us, what might have been mere tourism achieves the level of art.

Further Reading
IFC Film Interview with Werner Herzog about Encounters at the End of the World