45 Behind The Scenes Photos Showing Life Beyond Fame

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. 

One might have already noticed that many of the images here are taken from films shot in the early 2000s. The advent of CGI has, perhaps unfortunately, meant that directors often use greenscreen for nearly everything. While this does allow for more freedom and creativity, it does mean that most BTS images from a modern set look like a home where someone just loves green paint.

Other times, the BTS footage has specific goals in mind, for example, in the extra features for “Star Wars Episode 2: The Attack of the Clones,” there were featurettes focusing on costume design, the creation of the various aliens and segments focusing on the casting. While a very niche topic, this is invaluable for anyone wanting to pick the crew’s brains on why certain decisions ended up being made. 

It’s also a great way to immortalize all the work that went into smaller details that, perhaps, most viewers never even notice. Films like “Blade Runner,” or even, more recently, “Barbie” had hours and hours of work put into sets and costumes, some of which are only on screen for seconds. Without them, the film might seem less rich, but the sad truth is that most viewers hardly notice. 

So scroll through the rest of this list and perhaps see what stirs your interest up enough to warrant a rewatch. And if you find yourself wanting more, Bored Panda has got you covered, check out our previous collection of images from “Far Out Cinema,” or take a look at the pics gathered by “Behind the Clapperboard,” documenting all the bits and pieces that go on behind the scenes. 

You might also like: 44 celebrity friendships that go way back to the times none of them were famous yet