What are your Must-See "Making of" Featurettes?

[Meryem Ersoz]

so, i just watched "The New World" starring colin farrell, christian bale, christopher plummer, etc.

amazing cinematography, but a bit of a stinker of a storyline. too much hushed, whispered, faux-intense dialogue drove me to open numerous beers to survive the experience without cracking up. and it was long enough (epic! historical! romance!) that i did manage to read a few magazines while it unspooled at its glacial pace.

still, i found myself wondering, "how'd they get that shot" quite often.

so it turns out that "The Making of" featurette far exceeded the film itself for interest. they worked those steadicam operators till they bled! and did all sorts of crazy things to infuse the film with authenticity.

so i thought it would be fun to pick the collective DVinfo mind for "Making of" featurettes which define/exceed the genre, since the age of DVD has really brought this genre into full flower. again, my preference for these featurettes has no bearing whatsoever on whether the movie was any good. but it's great fun to watch short movies about making movies....

Favorite "Making of" Featurettes:

"The New World"
"Grizzly Man"
"Winged Migration"
"Open Water"
"You, Me, and Everybody We Know"

i'm sure there's others. anyone else have recommendations?

[Cole McDonald]

Panic room boxed set - 3 dvds...phenomenal BTS
Dead Poets Society (just re-released) - Master class on cinematography
Pearl Harbor BTS was good
King Kong production and post prod diaries.
Lord of the Rings - BTS...information overload!
The Sundance "Anatomy of a scene" series is quite good.

I generally find the "Making of Featurette" kind of trite and information lite. I prefer the segmented looks at specific parts of production where they give a little more detail, otherwise, it's just watching the directors/producers talk about the project.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

12 Monkey documentary (84 minutes), very good, an eye-opener, to me it's better then Lost in La Mancha, which was pretty good too.

Video diary of Old Boy that's on the R2 3disc dvd in Belgium, about 3.5 hours... Reallly great!

Star Wars (old trilogy) and the Indiana Jones Trilogy had a good making of too, considering their age.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind also had a 70 minute documentary that was very interesting, albeit a bit slow.

Jaws, the 30th aniversary edition has a 2 hour documentary too, also interesting, but again, a bit slow.

There's a new 3disc edition from the Frighteners which people say has a good making off too, also about 4 hours or so.

ps: I myself completely LOVE Making off's. I always want a dvd to have extras, and unless the movie is very good and/or is very well priced, I won't pay much for an edition without extras.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I'll also vote for the original Star Wars trilogy. But a few of my other favorites would have to be Animal House, The Blues Brothers and Dr. Strangelove.

[Tim Goldman]

Tron. Simple reason is it'll show you what crazy people will do for an effect. Man all thoese hand cut mat shots. sheesh!

Theres usualy a good hitchcokc docmentry with ech disc...or at least htere was for the few I've seen.

Theres some good stuff on the metropolis 2 disc set.

And actually the passion of joan of arc (original version) had some good stuff on it.

The one I really want to see is actually a documentry on "The searchers" , it's about the making of and stuff called "A turning of the earth" or something close to that.

[Meryem Ersoz]

cole is correct, most of these are trite and uninformative, that's exactly why i started this thread, to ferret out some good ones!

the passion of joan of arc, projected on film on the big screen only, i can't bear to watch it stripped of its aura in any other format) is pretty much my favorite film ever. its one of the films that moved me to try to make moving images (on video, of course, after my purists' rant about film-only....). its one of the few films to bring real transcendance to a film screen, what a remarkable achievement. i'll be sure to check out the "making of"--it's so great when a new medium actually brings something substantial to the old....

[Tim Goldman]

yeah, I'd love to see that on the big screen, but I don't think that's goign to happen anytime soon. So I'd rather at least see it, then not see it (lawrence of arabia needs a big screen, but hey, better to see then not see.)

I to am about to make images on video, once I clear up the old credit card a bit:P

check out tron makeing of, you'll love computers from then on

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

The new Batman (from Tim Burton) special edition 2disc dvd had some good documentaries too.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

"You, Me, and Everybody We Know"

Saw the movie but not the making-of. What's in it that struck you?

[Meryem Ersoz]

hi robert: the making of "you, me, and everybody we know" seemed like such a "making of" for this age (unknown, inexperienced person manages to somehow get her screenplay brought to life--not only that, but then proceeds to direct and star in the dang thing as well...and wins a boatload of prizes for her first effort, to boot).

--my own first effort was no prize winner, that's a fact! i can barely bring myself to view it!--

i mean, have we seen any individual pull off this many roles in a single film since orson welles?? regardless of one's opinion about the movie itself, it's a prodigious feat and a parable of the state of modern filmmaking.

the digital age has opened the indie niche wide enough so that somehow this sort of thing can happen once again....whenever a technology or a zeitgeist creates a new space for innovation, i'm interested. (in a previous career, i wrote a dissertation on 19th-century film, so these sorts of moments of dislocation have always drawn me....)

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Meryem, I saw ME and you and everyone we know twice at the arthouse theatres, really great movie indeed! very honest and enjoyable!

And a nice showcase for HD!!

[Meryem Ersoz]

hi mathieu: thanks for the correction...i hate it when i get titles skewed. it's like running around calling a guy named "steve" something like "frank." speaking of the name "frank," how come no one names their kid that anymore??

anyway, i was really prepared to dislike this film, feeling prejudiced against it before i even saw it, expecting it to be pretentious or else that kind deliberately quirky, hipper-than-thou, overwrought type of indie film, and instead it was the exact opposite of that. it was weirdly infused with a lot of love and gentleness and generosity of spirit towards its characters...

[Yi Fong Yu]

i've watched a lot of BTS like many of you but only "The Beginning" from ep1 really makes me rewatch it. i've seen it at least 5 or 6 times. all the other BTS i've seen only once and i don't wanna' rewatch it.

the other one that makes me wanna' rewatch is 1138's BTS American Zoetrope story. those are awesome because it really made you feel like it's the beginning of somn new, unique.

[Zach Mull]

I don't know if it truly counts in this thread, but Hearts of Darkness is the greatest making of documentary I've ever seen with no close second.

I also love the color grading demonstration on the Seven two-disc special edition and all the making-of features on A History of Violence - they discuss everything from acting styles to makeup.

[Jay Kavi]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

hi mathieu: thanks for the correction...i hate it when i get titles skewed. it's like running around calling a guy named "steve" something like "frank." speaking of the name "frank," how come no one names their kid that anymore??

anyway, i was really prepared to dislike this film, feeling prejudiced against it before i even saw it, expecting it to be pretentious or else that kind deliberately quirky, hipper-than-thou, overwrought type of indie film, and instead it was the exact opposite of that. it was weirdly infused with a lot of love and gentleness and generosity of spirit towards its characters...

Meryem, I felt the same way. It seems like that movie had somehow changed the life of every lame hipster i know, but i watched it and was pleasantly surprised, save the obligitory slow motion shot at the beginning :)