information:highlighting, structural:scholar_edition, information:filtering
Filming

The film follows a similar design to The Victory of Faith, with the city of Nuremberg scenes, even to the shot of a cat, included in the city driving sequence in both films. Herbert Windt reused much of his musical score from Victory of Faith, in Triumph des Willens, which he also scored.

Riefenstahl staff had sixteen cameramen, who all had an assistant of their own, using thirty cameras and four complete sound-equipment trucks. 120 assistants worked on the film. Riefenstahl shot an estimated 61 hours of footage to create the two hour film.

Riefenstahl shot Triumph of the Will on a budget of roughly 280,000 RM (approximately US$110,000 in 1934, $1.54 m in 2015). Hans Saupert, chief of staff for Franz Xaver Schwarz, claimed that the film cost 1 million RM. Riefenstahl claimed that the film was financed by her own efforts and a distribution agreement with Ufa, but received a large amount of financial support from the Nazis directly and indirectly through construction projects for the rally. She admitted to having a Reich Party Account while being interrogated after World War II and she was reimbursed by the Nazis for all expenditures.

Extensive preparations were facilitated by the cooperation of party members, the military, and high-ranking Nazis like Goebbels. In 1975, Susan Sontag claimed that "The Rally was planned not only as a spectacular mass meeting, but as a spectacular propaganda film." Goebbels wanted film propaganda to be done using subtle methods, but Triumph of the Will, which was the opposite of this belief, was produced against Goebbels' wishes.

Albert Speer, Hitler's personal architect, designed the set in Nuremberg and did most of the coordination for the event. Pits were dug in front of the speakers' platform so Riefenstahl could get the camera angles she wanted, and tracks were laid so that her cameramen could get traveling shots of the crowd. When the audio from rough cuts was not up to par, major party leaders and high-ranking public officials reenacted their speeches in a studio for her.