50 Photographs From Behind The Scenes That Show A Lesser-Known Side Of Fame (New Pics)

While the younger generation might be completely unfamiliar with this, film DVDs, generally, come with a lot more than just the film. There will be language options, subtitles, and quite often deleted scenes. For superfans of a particular movie, and if you already bought the DVD, it’s a safe guess, a major selling point was access to behind-the-scenes (BTS) footage.

Behind-the-scenes footage, naturally, can’t just be created later as an extra, all through the filming process people have to be documenting the work, then spend many hours editing, cutting, and stitching the entire thing together. 

“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, for example, had over six hours of BTS footage, going all the way back to drawing boards to sets and costumes. This would create comical moments on set, where one camera would be filming another camera, which, in turn, would be focused on the actors on the set. 

One of the producers of the “making of” content for “The Lord of the Rings” stated that, in total, over twenty hours of footage was gathered, dwarfing the actual length of the three films combined by a few hours. This raw footage was then cut into the aforementioned six-hour documentary, although unused parts still made their way into the DVDs and supplementary content online. 

While it varies from production to production, certain crews even set out to create a film about the creation of the film, which is normally treated in a lighthearted manner. Technically, it’s a documentary, but film crews often see it as a means to let off steam and joke around, instead of actually developing a story about the film being made. 

This footage and other images taken from movie sets provide interesting insight into a lot of the technology employed in modern filmmaking. For example, Benedict Cumberbatch, who voices the dragon Smaug, in “The Hobbit,” also provided some motion capture footage with his own body. If it wasn’t for BTS footage, we would not be able to enjoy seeing this professional actor writhe around on the ground for a role. 

It’s also a good way to document the crew that puts countless hours of hard, sometimes dangerous work into bringing a film to fruition. The people in front of the cameras have an important role, but they also get the lion's share of fame. It also helps humanize the cast, whom many people might accidentally associate too much with the role individual actors play.