Behind the Scenes of September 5: How the Acclaimed Film Re-Creates ABC Sports’ Historic Live Coverage of the Munich Massacre

Original footage, vintage gear help tell the story from control-room and studio perspective

September 5, the new historical drama from Paramount Pictures, chronicles the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news coverage today. Set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, the Golden Globe–nominated film — which arrives in limited theaters today and expands nationwide on Jan. 17 — follows the ABC Sports production team, who quickly shifted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage.

In addition to offering an important perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by millions of people, September 5 provides one of the most realistic behind-the-scenes depictions of a live-TV control room ever put on film. SVG had the opportunity to chat with director Tim Fehlbaum, the cast, and co-producer Geoffrey Mason to delve into the film’s development and production.

The film presents the events of Sept. 5, 1972, purely from the perspective of the ABC Sports production team, shining a light on what Fehlbaum calls “a watershed moment in journalism and its influential legacy.”

At the heart of the story are three Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famers — Geoff Mason (played by John Magaro), then a young and ambitious producer; his boss, legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard); and his mentor, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) — along with their German interpreter Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch). The film juxtaposes the high-tech broadcast capabilities of the time against the many lives at stake and explores the moral decisions that needed to be made in real time.

“The live broadcasts marked a turning point in media reporting, bringing a new dimension to how such incidents are seen and understood by the public,” says Fehlbaum. “When the attack begins, a team of American sports reporters are suddenly responsible for the subsequent 22 hours of live coverage, switching their responsibilities from sporting events to geopolitics. I was interested in the unprecedented situation that the media faced: this was the first time an event of this nature was covered by a live broadcast.”

Watch SVG’s extended interview with Geoffrey Mason recounting his experience in 1972 and his work on the film:

 On Tuesday, Dec. 17, The SVG Summit will feature a session titled “The Munich Massacre: When Sports Became News,” featuring Magaro, Mason, and Sean McManus and moderated by Lesley Visser. CLICK HERE for more information.

The Mission: Re-Create a ‘Turning Point in Media Reporting’

Fehlbaum and his team spoke extensively with ABC Sports crew members who were on the ground in Munich, extracting details about their experience in that control room. As a result of the research, the director decided early on to narrate the film purely from the viewpoint of the control room.

“We are constantly in the TV studio, almost like in a chamber play, the cameras the only eyes cast on the tragic events unfolding before us,” he says. “The spatial limitation of the narrative world to the ABC Sports TV studio means that we are confronted with the moral, ethical, professional, and, ultimately, psychological dilemmas of journalists who become aware of their responsibility only when switching from sports to crisis news.”

When Israeli athletes were suddenly taken hostage, the ABC Sports broadcast team had to shift from sports reporting to live news coverage. Besides the horrors of witnessing and airing a terrorist attack live to millions of people, they also faced the possibility of inadvertently sharing law enforcement’s plans and movements with the terrorists themselves — who were thought to be able to watch the coverage within the Olympic Village — and potentially derailing the rescue mission.

“As a filmmaker,” says Fehlbaum, “I felt an affinity with the complexity of the situation. On the one hand, I was critical of tragic events being processed as sensations. But, on the other, I was fascinated by the ambitions and dilemmas of the journalists to tell the story accurately.”

Script Development: A Story for the Big Screen

Steven Spielberg’s Munich recounts the aftermath of the event, but September 5’s Munich-based producers — Thomas Wöbke and Philipp Trauer of film-production company BerghausWöbke — believed that there was more to this story and it was ripe to be told for the big screen. Writer/director Moritz Binder and Fehlbaum were enlisted to write the screenplay, along with co-writer Alex David.

The producers soon discovered an article written by Jimmy Schaeffler, a production runner on that day, who spoke highly of Mason. They met with Mason, a Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer, who described in vivid detail the experience of producing that 22 hours of live coverage.

Mason, who came on board as a co-producer of the film, was impressed by the depth of the research and the power of the script. “After I read early versions, I was impressed by how deeply personal the experience was, not only to those of us involved in that production but in telling the story of what transpired. This is a story about the people in that control room and how we all reacted to what was happening in front of us. I am blessed to be one of the very few people still around to help tell that story.”

The filmmakers also drew on biographies of Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famers Roone Arledge and Jim McKay and other ABC executives and crew. In addition, Schaeffler — the runner, who, disguised as an athlete, had smuggled film footage past the police cordons — offered first-hand insights, along with longtime CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus, who sat in the control room while his father, Jim McKay, was presenting the Olympics in the studio next door.

ABC Sports, which paid handsomely for the rights to broadcast the 1972 Games live in the U.S., had built a production facility next to the Olympic Village. The massive technical apparatus set new industry standards with innovative technologies — slow motion, handheld cameras — coupled with sensational title designs. The filmmakers drew heavily from the memoir of broadcasting engineer Joe Maltz, who described the massive technical effort necessary for the first live broadcast of the Olympic Games and how the ABC crew improvised when the hostages were taken.

On the storytelling side, Arledge set a precedent by focusing coverage on the athletes’ background stories in an effort to get viewers more invested — a strategy that’s now a staple of Olympics coverage.

Throughout development, Mason ensured that the script captured the tone and tenor of that fateful day. Among key decisions was to have the entire plot unfold inside the studio complex. The only outside footage would be clips on the many monitors inside the control room.

‘A Total Game-Changer’: Working With Real ABC Sports Footage

The filmmakers considered it absolutely necessary to incorporate the original ABC broadcast footage. However, accessing the archives and licensing the footage was a major challenge. Wöbke credits Mason and his relationship with ABC for the production’s access to the material.

That access proved invaluable. “Viewing the broadcast footage made it possible to re-create the events within the control room,” says Fehlbaum. “We structured the screenplay accordingly. This led to a visual strategy: we planned the set in such a way that the original material from 1972 could run on the monitors, [blending] in with our directed scenes.”

From left: Jacques Lesgardes (Zinedine Soualem), Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch), Geoff Mason (John Magaro), Carter (Marcus Rutherford) in the ABC Sports control room in September 5

Watching the footage, Fehlbaum concluded that Jim McKay would be played not by an actor but through the original broadcast footage: “It seemed impossible to me to reproduce this performance with an actor. To convey the urgency of the moment, we knew we would also have to incorporate the original material of Jim into our film.”

Except for one or two shots, no blue screens were deployed, allowing the actors to react to the actual footage on the monitors in real time.

“Working with the real footage was a total game-changer,” says Magaro. “We didn’t know how we were going to tell this story without it. For me, the show was like another cast member. The language of the script changed as we got the footage. Going back to the research we had done, it was easy to pivot and change to calling the live footage, which was a unique challenge.”

An additional editing challenge was incorporation of the archival material and selection of the clips — including the re-created sequences — for the monitor wall. “We knew very early on,” notes producer John Ira Palmer, “that the archival footage was going to deliver an emotional wallop that none of us could ever hope to re-create. Because we were also intercutting original footage with re-created footage, along with the story we were telling inside that newsroom, we knew it all needed to blend seamlessly.”

Casting: Matching the ‘Unique Dynamic and Solidarity’ of the ABC Crew

When it came to casting the film, Fehlbaum says, “Geoffrey Mason had told us about a unique dynamic and the solidarity among the ABC crew. This feeling had to be reflected in the casting.”

Although authenticity was a priority, some dramaturgical liberties were taken, including making some featured characters a composite of people present. Most notably, Mason represents the director of the coverage, and Gebhardt is a blend of several people who were in the control room in Munich.

Preparing to portray Arledge, Sarsgaard read various materials about the sports executive and also spoke at length with a friend who works in a similar environment and has covered NHL hockey and the Olympics.

“Learning how the system works, how the organism works, was interesting,” he says. “He told me about how Roone had changed things, in what ways he had changed things, and why he was a pioneer. A lot of that was about storytelling and Roone’s way of telling a story that emphasizes its being a satisfying story. That’s okay with sports, but it gets more complicated with journalism.”

Magaro connected with Mason early in the process, mining his memory for details and inspiration. During shooting, Mason was sent dailies to review and, says Magaro, “was very encouraging as he was seeing footage roll out.

“It was very important to me to capture Geoff’s situation,” Magaro continues, “the struggle of being a good producer, being a good broadcaster, and struggling with the moral dilemma of what’s right and what’s wrong in this situation.”

In preparing for the role of Bader, Chaplin read everything he could on the longtime ABC Sports VP of Olympics operations, noting certain quotes from people who knew him. He found this quote from Bader’s Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame profile to be especially touching: “I’m sorry I retired. I had the best job in the world. There is no better job.”

Says Chaplin, “[Bader] was a legendary specialist in live [coverage] and live reporting, and his love, enthusiasm, and excitement for the job was tangible. I hope audiences come away from the film thinking about someone like Marvin Bader, a thoroughly decent man who spent his life working hard behind the scenes bringing pleasure to millions, doing the very best he could.”

For the character of Gebhard, who must manage working in an environment rife with power imbalances, Fehlbaum and Benesch decided that the best approach would be to place the actor into a situation like her character’s: without benefit of newsroom experience. However, Benesch did spend time with a translator in Berlin, asking “loads and loads of questions regarding the nature of her profession.

“Everyone did the best they could,” she continues, speaking of the ABC Sports crew in 1972. “I think their intentions were good. I feel like our film might be able to make people feel what it’s like to be a journalist during breaking news.”

Control-Room Experience: Replicating the ‘Dynamics and Atmosphere of Sports Broadcasts’

Through Mason’s industry connections, the director and cast were able to sit in on production-control rooms, notably for NFL on CBS and NBA on ESPN, to see what live TV is really like. “We studied the specific movements and gestures and the dynamics and atmosphere of sports broadcasts,” says Fehlbaum. “We were able to transport those to our set. We wanted to ensure that all the technical equipment on set was as authentic as possible and functional for the actors.”

Magaro learned the language of calling a show —camera angles, graphics, music, transitions — becoming familiar with the sportscaster, director, and producer roles. “Anyone who steps into those control rooms knows that it is unlike anything else,” he notes. “If there was a false note, it wouldn’t have worked. Especially, people who have been in those situations would have seen it and immediately dismissed it as phony. Because of the time I spent in those control rooms and doing the research, I think we were able to capture what it was like to call a live broadcast in the 1970s.”

Shooting in Munich: ‘Following the Story as if We Had Only This One Opportunity’

The main shoot for September 5 took place over 33 days: 29 days at Bavaria Studios in Munich, one day in Penzing, and three in the Olympic Village, which looks virtually the same as it did in 1972, to re-create a few scenes from the original footage.

From left: Geoff Mason (John Magaro), Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) in September 5

Cinematographer Markus Förderer and Fehlbaum aimed to “tell the story as if we were a team of reporters covering the events of the day, making a documentary about the ABC crew,” Fehlbaum says. “We wanted the camera to react spontaneously to what was happening so we tried to feel the camera movements in the moment instead of planning everything out in advance.”

Digital cameras were predominantly deployed for the control-room scenes. For any re-creations of archival footage, Förderer and his team often filmed in both 16mm and digital, sometimes side-by-side. They shot with several cameras to get different angles and had a film camera on set for every scene to have a reference for the color grade and to make sure that everything blended and looked filmic.

“We never wanted it to feel dated,” Förderer says. “We wanted the audience to forget they’re watching a movie and believe they’re in the period. Our digital camera was 8K, very high resolution, but we added vintage lenses from the time. When I did research into the lenses used to film the Olympics, I found detailed descriptions of the gear because it was such a technological feat and a milestone in broadcasting.”

Förderer even found one of the original Zoomar lenses on eBay — the first-ever zoom lenses were made in Munich — and converted it to match the modern camera. He and his team mixed lenses and switched between a 16mm sensor crop to a 35mm and also used anamorphic lenses.

He operated the A camera throughout the shoot to be as unobtrusive and quick-moving as possible. The handheld aesthetic, along with the claustrophobic setting of the control room, fully immerses the audience and adds to the tension.

(courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

To create the sensation of a real-time broadcast, two cameras were used. Even though scenes were cut and tightened in the editing room, the goal was the movement and energy of one continuous shot. “We mastered the entire scene and captured the actors’ performances by following the story as if we had only this one opportunity,” Förderer explains. “We wanted to embrace the energy, the imperfections, and the chaos of that day.”

The style of shooting resulted in a large amount of footage, complicating the editing process in postproduction. Fehlbaum credits editor Hansjörg Weißbrich with bringing it all together: “Hansjörg [has] a fantastic sense of how to sift through the material, organize it, and find what was truly important for our film and what we didn’t need. He shaped the film significantly. It was important to us that the film be fast-paced because, as Geoffrey Mason told us, time was like a whirlwind. We wanted to convey that feeling.”

Production Design: ‘Everything Had To Be Real’

Production designer Julian R. Wagner started his work on September 5 by poring over historical footage, photos (and personal recollections) from Mason, and witness interviews in police reports. Then he and his team did the technological research to connect it all.

Wagner used original blueprints of the Olympic complex to reproduce the 1972 ABC Sports studio, which is no longer standing. Also, all props were created to the last detail. “Every button, every screen, absolutely everything you can see,” he says, “was a perfect copy of the control room, even down to the glued-on memos we saw in old images.”

Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), Hank Hanson (Corey Johnson), Jacques Lesgardes (Zinedine Soualem), Geoff Mason (John Magaro), Carter (Marcus Rutherford), Gladys Deist (Georgina Rich), Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), and Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch) in September 5

Old machines were sourced from all over the world, borrowed from collectors and found in museums and television-studio storage rooms. The equipment was meticulously cleaned, polished, and rewired to restore every item. “It was very important,” notes Fehlbaum, “to give today’s audience a feeling for the analog technology that prevailed at the time. Some of these devices were even made functional again for the shoot so that the actors could interact with them.”

Wagner acknowledges that, after re-creating the ABC Studio space, the art department’s greatest challenge was to source the vintage technology and get it working: “Everything had to be real. For example, the screens in the ’70s looked different [from today’s], and we wanted to have the real screens. It was a gigantic puzzle. We collected all the individual parts and started to refurbish the old technology.”

Filming of the studio set took place entirely on one stage at Bavaria Studios. The production filled the stage, with eight interconnecting spaces allowing continuous camera movements through corridors and into other rooms. In addition to the main studio spaces, Wagner and his team designed several small sets used in re-creations of original footage and generally visible only on monitors in the control room.

Then and Now: ‘Being Honest, Truthful, and Thorough in Our Coverage’

The impact of the events of September 5, 1972, continues to this day.

“We began to understand that the responsibility for being honest, truthful, and thorough in our coverage was more than any of us had imagined,” says Mason of how that day affected the way he views his work. “Going into every production I’m involved with, I think about the quality of our work and storytelling in a much more meaningful way.”

The film also raises questions that are more important to address than ever, notes Fehlbaum. “Beside telling a fast-paced, thrilling story, the film sheds light on this historical event from a very specific perspective. I believe that the combination of these elements will create an exciting and simultaneously thought-provoking experience for audiences.”

September 5 arrives in limited theaters today before expanding nationwide on Jan. 17. CLICK HERE for showtimes.

Editor’s note: Portions of this article were derived from official production notes courtesy of Paramount Pictures.