"Making of" documentaries

[coolcatdaddy]

Recently I viewed the dvd of Anthony Mann's "Fall of the Roman Empire". As an extra on the disc was a 20 minute "making of" promotional documentary, "Rome in Madrid", narrated by James Mason.

I've noticed that the studios produced several of these promotional shorts in the 60s and 70s and you can see them pop up on dvds. I'm wondering, though, how they were distributed and used to promote the films at the time of release?

They're usually formatted and shot for 4x3, full frame, and run about 20 minutes - but really too short to fill a half-hour slot on television, even with commercials at that time. I was an avid tv addict in the early 70s, but never recall seeing one of these shorts on tv at the time.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I think they were provided to local stations on 16mm as filler material, typically running 10-20 minutes or so each, rarely longer. Presumably they were to promote current releases (which back then traveled from city to city for a year instead of opening everywhere the same weekend). I recall seeing them every now and then in the late 60s and 70s, usually to fill a gap after a movie that didn't have enough advertising time sold. It's possible a station might even set aside a half-hour of its schedule to make these featurettes into a regular series they could sell ads for (or use as a place to run the required daily quota of PSAs).

[Jack Theakston]

Interesting story about a lot of these that you see on DVD. The most popular series of these were made by a company called Robbins Nest Productions through Professional Films, Inc. Robbins Nest was a production company set up by broadcaster Fred Robbins (I think he just put up the money in order to get a syndication package out of it). The initial series was called "The Moviemakers," although they dropped this title by 1971.

Most of them were produced by Ronald Saland or Elliot Geisinger, and almost exclusively written by Jay Anson.

ROME IN MADRID was filmed by a company called Globe Video Films, which I will bet was a similar company, although they have no other credits that I can find.

A number of the studios also set up actual 35mm units for theatrical shorts to promote upcoming films, which were essentially long trailers.

[markfp]

I worked in the film department of a local TV station back then and we always got prints of those "making of..." shorts. The studios hoped they'd get some free publicity when a station used them as filler, but our station never did because management felt they were nothing but ten-minute commercials and weren't about to give away the time for free. I do remember that a couple of times a distributor actually did pay to have them run followed by a regular commercial for the film, so the station purposely scheduled a short feature to make room for it, but that was the exception.

[Spiny Norman]

Perhaps they were a bit like travelogues? I'm too young to have been exposed to those, but perhaps it was the same kind of thing?

[Christopher Jacobs]

I vaguely recall that in the early to mid 70s a few might have been shown theatrically by movie houses looking for cheap (free) material to make their programs stand out from most of the other theatres that just ran trailers and maybe a cartoon before the feature. We had a small regional chain with a couple of theatres, a large chain with a couple of theatres, and an independent, and throughout the 1970s, while not a regular or advertised attraction there were frequently some sort of documentary shorts included with the feature at certain theatres (often more or less promoting some product or the military, so obviously a freebie), a Walter Lanz or Pink Panther cartoon at others, and an old Looney Tune or two at another.

There was one I recall about stunt driving that promoted both a film and the car manufacturer.

[Mike Gebert]

I can remember them playing theatrically, not often, but once in a while.

[Richard M Roberts]

i don't know how a rabid TV Fan from the 70's could miss those "making of" documentaries because the number one place I used to see them was NBC SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES and other network movie showings. They would be used to fill out two-hour plus timeslots running 90 minute movies, and would come on after the movie. I well remember seeing ones for films like THE COMIC, LITTLE BIG MAN, WILD ROVERS, a lot of late 60's/early 70's films. I can remember this going on into certainly the mid-70's because I recall that was how I found out about THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING by seeing the "making of" Documentary about it after an ABC Movie of the Week.

They also showed up on our local TV stations as filler after baseball games on weekends as well.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[greta de groat]

They still show up as fillers sometimes. Surely i've seen some on TCM?

greta

[silentfilm]

Apparently not all of these documentaries were copyrighted, because my 16mm catalogs from the 1970s show that you could buy "Making of" production trailers for films like Funny Girl, Grand Prix and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Columbia's 8mm home version of MAJOR DUNDEE was actually the "making-of" documentary RIDING FOR A FALL, and I seem to recall that their 8mm versions of COWBOY and FIRST MEN IN THE MOON were also really making-of documentaries.

[momsne]

Infrequently, TCM shows a documentary "Van Gogh: Darkness Into Light" on the making of the 1955 movie "Lust For Life." The narrator is Dore Schary, then production chief at MGM. The quality of this studio-made 20 minute promotional short far exceeds the movie promos I have seen made by outside companies contracted to make these promo movie shorts after the major studios farmed out the making of these shorts in the sixties. You can see the "Lust For Life" promo at: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/3213 ... romo-.html" target="_blank

[Jim Reid]

I've got a 16mm tech print of the making of film of "The Comic".

[coolcatdaddy]

I may have missed them as "filler" at the end of "movies of the week" on the networks since I was a little young and couldn't stay up too late at the time. I never watched sports, so that might be why I didn't see them in the afternoons on weekends.