There’s something quite meta about watching a filmmaking documentaries. We watch because we are fans of a certain movie or director. We watch for the juiciest morsels of onset gossip. And we watch in awe at the human foibles and mounting obstacles almost threatening to shut a project down. And sometimes, we just watch to learn. We want to learn how to do one thing or how not to do that one thing. We want to absorb the insights of a master technician.
Watching filmmaking documentaries will give you a glimpse into the process of what it took to make that movie, an experience that could only be surpassed by actually having been there on that set. Watching a director plan a shot, talk to actors, understanding how they took words on a page and translated them into this visual art form will help you better appreciate the craft. You’ll notice mastery and the massive amount of work from many skilled technicians that goes into making a movie.
If you are a filmmaker, this is even more useful as you can see the dynamic of the different roles on a film set. The films normally focus heavily on the director, since they are the head of the production and responsible for the end product. Seeing how directors manage the controlled chaos that is a film set and how they keep the end product in mind when there are a million tiny decisions to make along the way is truly inspiring.
And so, here are 10 great filmmaking documentaries exploring the work and process of some of our favorite filmmakers.
Great Filmmaking Documentaries for Behind-the-Scenes Insight
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead
![They'll Love Me When I'm Dead | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H_kOsnGzfYY/0.jpg)
Orson Welles is one of the great directors of all time, making it to the top of many critics’ lists. Another movie in the “what could have been” filmmaking documentaries category They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead takes a look at The Other Side of the Wind”, a film that was released in 2018 more than 40 years after it was begun!
This film holds the record as the movie with the longest time in production. It was finally released after Peter Bogdanovich and producer Frank Marshall joined. They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a documentary look at the incredibly long production and the man who started the film — the late, great, Orson Welles. The director of this documentary, Morgan Neville, does a great job chronicling the making of the film.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
![WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? - Official Trailer [HD] - In Select Theaters June 8](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FhwktRDG_aQ/0.jpg)
One of the most beloved children’s entertainers of all time, Mr. Rogers, played a massive role in shaping the minds of several generations of children. He promoted inclusivity and kindness on a daily basis. He had a true passion to help children make sense of the world and their emotions.
This amazing documentary will leave you with a warm glow. Won’t You Be My Neighbor examines the philosophy of Fred Rogers, the host of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
When you go to a movie, you see and recognize the visuals. But more often than not, you may not even notice the impact that the sound has on you. From the sounds of someone walking with high heels on a wooden floor, the voices and their timbre, and the music that gives a scene its emotional weight, sounds impact you to your core and help build the world of the film. Sounds give film a richness that isn’t easily understood, but more felt.
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound examines the people who work to make this happen. The film also interviews great directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Barbra Streisand, Ang Lee, Sofia Coppola and Ryan Coogler, who talk about the impact that sound has on their films. They describe how they work with sound professionals such as Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom, and others to create the soundscapes of films.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
This is the first of two filmmaking documentaries chronicling the hubris of American directors who reached their peak in the late 1970s. What was intended to be a low-budget, vérité style take on the Vietnam War gradually spiraled into a massively over-budgeted cinematic spectacle. George Lucas of Star Wars fame was originally going to direct Apocalypse Now, a contemporized version of Joseph Conrad’s novella The Heart of Darkness.
But then, producer Francis Ford Coppola (hot off of the success of his Godfather movies) wound up taking over. The result is one of the most ambitiously conceived, error-fraught almost disasters ever made. Second only to another subject featured in another documentary on this list, Apocalypse Now could have (and should have) ended Coppola’s career.
Working from a screenplay written by the larger-than-life John Milius (the topic of another great documentary you should seek out titled, simply enough, Milius), Coppola was forced to overcome numerous obstacles. For example, there was the recasting of the lead protagonist, how his replacement experienced a near fatal heart attack during the course of the shoot, how inclement weather and various mishaps almost prevented the completion of the film. And who could forget the bad behavior of a supposedly difficult-to-control Marlon Brando?
Coppola’s wife Eleanor had contributed reels of rare, behind-the-scenes footage while George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr picked up the slack with present-day interviews featuring the stars of the film and Coppola himself. Thankfully, Apocalypse Now was a box office success, a critical darling and now considered one of the best war movies ever made. But Hearts of Darkness is a fascinating, if not a sometimes jaw-dropping, view into the consequences of excessive filmmaking.
Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate
Final Cut is the second documentary on this filmmaking documentaries list focusing on the hubristic behavior of an American director. But while Coppola enjoyed adoration immediately after Apocalypse Now, iconoclastic auteur Michael Cimino was not so lucky. His film Heaven’s Gate is now referenced whenever a critic, industry professional, or historian touches on the issue of cinematic bloat and the need to reign in the behavior of an ego-driven director.
Based on an equally interesting best-selling book by Steven Bach, documentarian Michael Epstein takes us through the entire history from how Heaven’s Gate was inspired by the Jackson County War of 1869 to 1871 to Cimino’s overly compulsive-obsessive need to get the best possible shot in every frame. Although the film performed poorly with audiences and critics, history has been a wee more kind as Heaven’s Gate is now generally better regarded than it was during its initial release. However, it did represent the final nail in the coffin of an era where directors had unprecedented creative control over their work.
American Movie
If one end of the spectrum represents the massive, way over-budget disasters of Heaven’s Gate, the other documents the struggle and will (to often amusing degrees) to get a film made at all. American Movie is about the wish fulfillment desires of Mark Borchardt, a blue-collar dude who attempts to make his dream project Northwestern with limited means and resources.
His plan is to raise the money by directing, then distributing the even lower-budgeted horror film, Coven. Chris Smith points his revealing camera at the personal and professional road bumps Borchardt experiences along the way. And the result is quite endearing, funny, and ultimately touching. This is a must-see for any low-budget filmmaker. Yes, while Mark Borchardt does come off as generally non-self-aware when it comes to understanding the limitations of his talents, you can’t help but want to root for the guy. If anything, you will never pronounce the word “coven” the same way again.
Lost in La Mancha
Terry Gilliam might be the patron saint of put upon film directors. His struggles with the great Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen are now the stuff of legends. Yet, nothing had prepared Gilliam for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
Ostensibly an adaptation of the Cervantes classic, this is one of those “great films that never were” projects; a movie that seemed forever cursed by any attempt to get it made. And Gilliam had to bear the burden every time.
Plagued with cost overruns, misguided locations and really bad weather, Lost in La Mancha shows us how sometimes over extension and bloat is not the fault of the filmmaker alone. Gilliam is very self-deprecating throughout the documentary directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. And it reveals how even the most visionary directors are at the whim of uncontrollable forces at work.
Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner
This epic documentary was included with both the two-disc, four-disc, and five-disc collector’s editions of Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi flick. Far more revealing than the usual supplemental material one watches on a DVD or BluRay release, Dangerous Days is candid about the process involved in bringing Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to the big screen.
Not everyone got along. Least of all Scott and the film’s star Harrison Ford. And it’s impressive how the roster of talking heads do not hold back as they recount their experiences working on the film. Although Dangerous Days is over three hours long, there is not one single boring moment. Viewers are treated to original production sketches (giving us some indication as to what Blade Runner could have been) and how the conceptual approach changed from writer to writer. For fans of Blade Runner, Dangerous Days is the gift that keeps on giving.
Burden of Dreams
The granddaddy of meltdowns captured on camera, Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams follows Werner Herzog, his cast, and crew as he films his production Fitzcarraldo in the wilds of the South American jungle. What happens behind the scenes parallel events presented on film. And maybe more so than Hearts of Darkness, it depicts the madness that ensues from mounting something on such an ambitious scale.
Fitzcarraldo is about an Irishman who dreams of setting up an opera house in Peru. This involves dragging an old steamship over a steep, muddy hill. In depicting this, Herzog had his extras (made up of local natives) physically pull a 320-ton steamer over a hill. So life resembles art. Tensions boil over. Exhaustion sets in. Herzog was rumored to have pulled a gun on his temperamental star Klaus Kinski. Even Blank is quoted as saying, “I’m tired of it all and I couldn’t care less if they move the stupid ship or finish the (expletive) film.”
Unfortunately, most of the filmmaking documentaries featured on this list err on the side of revealing travesty rather than triumph. Therefore, a certain amount of schadenfreude is required to appreciate what’s being documented on film. And Burden of Dreams is certainly no exception. As a companion piece, check out Herzog’s My Best Fiend, which chronicles his tempestuous relationship with Kinski.
7. Jodorowsky’s Dune
Now let’s get to the triumph that could’ve been. Eccentric Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky was this close to adapting Frank Herbert’s epic space opera Dune. And man oh man what an amazing movie this might have been! Conceived almost a decade before David Lynch’s underwhelming attempt, Jodorowsky’s Dune pieces together a theoretical film through story boards, animation, talking head interviews, and more. If anything, this is a testament to the unbridled imagination of a true visionary. Director Frank Pavich gets up close and personal with Jodorowsky and the team of imagineers he collected to bring Dune to life.
Visions of Light
So far we’ve focused on the making of a specific film. Visions of Light is all about the art of cinematography. This is an absolute must-see for fans of great photography. Legendary lens masters like Conrad Hall, Vilmos Zsigmond, Vittorio Storaro, Gordon Willis and so much more give their two cents on the craft of creating paintings with light. Directed by the team of Arnold Glassman, Stuart Samuels and film critic Todd McCarthy, Visions of Light is a love letter to shooting film.
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
This three-part documentary produced by the British Film Institute is an opportunity to see what makes a master tick through the films he loves. Academy Award-winner Martin Scorsese basically provides the best film theory course ever by taking us through the titles influencing his own work. He breaks down the filmmaker into three types: the Storyteller, the Illusionist, and the Smuggler. And in the process, he treats us to clips from movies that range from the well-respected, the big-budgeted, the independent and the best of the “Bs.”
10. Overnight
Destruction by ego is not limited to the high-profile, established auteurs presented in Hearts of Darkness, Final Cut, and Burden of Dreams. It can hit an independent filmmaker just as bad as well. Troy Duffy was given the opportunity of a lifetime: Miramax hired an untested Duffy to direct his own script The Boondock Saints and handed him the keys to his own bar while acquiring a recording contract in the process. Duffy then hired Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith to manage his band and document the making of Boondock at the same time. But just like the story of the guy who got too close to the sun, Duffy’s inflated opinion of his artistry enabled a crash-and-burn that wound up alienating himself from friends and colleagues. Oh, and he loses his recording contract as well.
If anything, Overnight is about how not to approach potential success. And how to avoid burning bridges. So budding filmmakers take note. Granted, this documentary is like watching the proverbial train wreck. But it is a fascinating train wreck nonetheless, and makes for one of the best filmmaking documentaries of all time.
