Your favourite 'Behind The Scenes' documentary

So lately I've been watching a lot of 'behind the scenes' documentaries of some of my favourite movies - The Hobbit, Finding Nemo, Alien, Jurassic Park, and so on - and I was wondering if you guys know of any great 'behind the scenes' documentaries? Because I'm starting to run out of material to watch :lol:

Here's a few online lists of some of the apparently 'best' of these documentaries, if anyone is interested:

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/10-best-making-of-documentaries-you-need-to-watch/

http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2jexyh/best_making_of_documentaries/

http://filmschoolrejects.com/featur...hat-show-both-sides-of-movie-making-dbell.php

http://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOf

http://www.sbs.com.au/blog/126193/t/Top-ten-making-of-documentaries

Also what do you like about these documentaries? And are you interested in them at all? What do you think could make them better? What interesting things have you learnt from any of them?

Discuss! :)
 
Last edited:
The best is "Lost in La Mancha" about Terry Gilliam's 'Who shot Don Quichot?'
A painfull look BTS of a production where everything goes wrong...
And it puts any of your own hurdles in perspective :)
 
Last edited:
Great thread, I added a few movies to my queue and I'm watching youtube vids from the reddit link.

I liked American Movie.
 
"Full Tilt Boogie" from "From Dusk Til Dawn" is excellent. "The Devils Rejects" has a two-hour making-of called "30 Days In Hell" which is pretty cool. Both of these are great, if horror is your thing.
 
I'll check out "Lost at La Mancha" then.

I was reading about American Movie and it caught my interest, especially because it shows the behind the scenes of a low budget film. I haven't watched it yet though, but I have a feeling I'll be up all night watching all of these.

On the topic of low budget, that 3rd link has a YouTube clip of Robert Rodriguez talking about the behind the scenes of his $7000 budget film "El Mariachi", where he primarily talks about his in camera editing, and how he edited the sequence, and so on. Was cool to watch.

Does anyone find these documentaries inspiring and motivational? Are there things in them that you can relate to and have a quiet chuckle to yourself?
 
I've seen that one, it was really cool actually. They really pump out those things fast.

I also added another link to my OP, it's a sub reddit dedicated to all things Behind The Scenes. (r/TheMakingOf)
 
Any BTS that teaches viewers about techniques and the film and TV industry. I learned a lot about trademarks for costumes, character rights, studio production meetings, greenscreen techniques, and how sets are reused from all the BHS on the Smallville box sets for the different seasons of the series.

The X-Men movies have excellent BHS on how cg, greenscreen, and cables and harness rigs are used in special effects in action scenes.

The Wonder Woman BHS from season one to season two explains the politics of a TV network and how the people in a TV series have to make changes when they are taken over by a new network to please the new network.

The list goes on and on.
 
Hm, I haven't watched much BTS of anything TV (apart from the previously mentioned South Park documentary), I might start looking at some now.

Thanks for the idea :)
 
Last edited:
Broken Heart Syndrome </3

To be honest though I have no idea, I was meant to type BTS but I seem to have picked up on the typos from Modern Day Myth. Editing now.

Unless he (or she?) did it on purpose? Because I have no idea what it might stand for apart from Be Hind Scenes which isn't exactly a practical acronym...
 
It's been a while, but a contender for the best must be Hearts of Darkness. Probably on one of those links; I haven't looked at them yet.

The behind the scenes stuff on the Predators video is actually pretty excellent.

Speaking of TV BTS stuff. If you liked Deadwood, check those out. Really excellent stuff too.
 
Take a look at the behind the scenes of The Maze Runner. Even if it's just for how he landed the directing gig only having done a single short before.
 
James Franco's "Saturday Night" is pretty cool...it's a week behind the scenes of a saturday night live episode that john malkovich hosted...really funny and good :)
 
I love the transformers BTS. The scale of that production is so impressive and the crew is on the top of their business. And to see Bay get the playground he gets is very interesting and entertaining. Say what you want about his films, but in terms of production quality its amazing.
 
Down At Fraggle Rock: Behind The Scenes

When I was a kid, my grandmother taped that off of HBO to go along with the episodes of the series she was taping for us and I don't even know how many times I watched it. I was fascinated to see how they did all the incredible things you saw on the show and yet, when you watch the show after seeing it, knowing how it was done doesn't diminish how amazing it is one bit.

Henson's Place: The Man Behind The Muppets is another great one.

So is Frank And Ollie, a documentary about Disney's two greatest animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

And if you want to go way back, check out The Reluctant Dragon. That one was made as a promotional piece to give a 1940s audience a basic, very simplified idea of what went on at the Disney studio and it's still interesting today.

I would also recommend the book Empire Building, which is a full biography of George Lucas but spends a lot of pages talking about how the original Star Wars was made and, seriously, it's nothing short of a miracle that that film was even finished and even more of a miracle that it turned out as good as it did.
 
Back
Top