What a making-of is, how it's made and why your brand should film one

What a making-of is and what the term means

A making-of is the video, or the series of photos, that tells how something was made: building the set, testing the lights, the director explaining a scene, the actor repeating a take, the laughter when something goes wrong.

It was born in cinema, with the documentaries that came with feature films, and today it's made for almost anything: music videos, ads, photo shoots, fashion campaigns, series and company shoots too.

The two questions that come up most on Google have short answers. First: it's spelled making of. Making off, with a double f, is a very common mistake, especially among non-native speakers; off is a different word, the one in voice-off. Second: in Spanish, the Fundéu, the body that advises on correct Spanish usage, suggests «cómo se hizo» or «así se hizo», meaning "how it was made", and also «tras las cámaras», "behind the cameras".

In practice, at a production company almost everyone says making-of or, more and more, BTS, short for behind the scenes. It's the same thing.

What it's for: what the final result doesn't tell

A thirty-second ad or a three-minute music video shows the result. The making-of shows the effort, and that changes how people look at it.

It does three jobs. First, it adds value to the work: when someone sees that the set was built by hand or that one scene took a whole morning, the final piece gains weight. Second, it puts faces to the name: for a company, the making-of is where the real team appears, unscripted, and that builds more trust than any line about values. Third, it extends the life of the project: before the release, glimpses of the shoot build anticipation; afterwards, the making-of gives people a second reason to talk about the same thing.

For social media it's close to a goldmine. A twenty-second vertical video of the crew setting up the lights often does better than another ad, because it doesn't look like an ad. That's why "company making-of" is searched so much: more and more brands film one during corporate shoots, events and product photo sessions.

What it isn't: a blooper reel. Mistakes can go in, but a good making-of tells a story, the one about how the result came to be.

How to make a good making-of: what to film so it's useful

The question "how do you make a making-of" has an answer hardly anyone wants to hear: you decide it before the shoot, not during it. If someone pulls out a phone on the day whenever they remember, you'll get four loose shots that tell nothing.

What works:

One dedicated person. Whoever operates the main camera can't also shoot the making-of. You need someone with their own kit, who knows how to move without getting in the way and knows the plan for the day.

A minimal script. Not a word-for-word script, but a list of moments you can't miss: arriving at the empty location, the set-up, the first take, the shot where everything clicks, the wrap. That contrast between the empty space and the result is what hooks people most.

Short interviews on the spot. Two or three questions to whoever is directing, whoever is in front of the camera or the client, filmed right there, with good sound. They're worth more than a voice-over.

Horizontal and vertical. If it's going to YouTube and social media, it pays to film with both formats in mind from the start.

Permissions. Everyone who appears has to know and agree, just as in the main video.

Three making-ofs from our shoots

The best way to understand it is to see cases. These three are Bostak shoots and they are on our website.

For the music video for «Backstage» by Capinàs, a band that blends Catalan rumba with contemporary production, we turned our stage into the set: we designed and built a complete custom scenography and created from scratch a puppet that plays the band's antagonist. We filmed the making-of with the same production quality as the music video, and it ended up as a piece in its own right, showing how the set and the puppet were made: two releases instead of one.

For «Coraje» by Carla Collado, we handled the whole visual project. The music video mixes live action, 3D and digital compositing, and alongside it we made a production making-of and a documentary of the album's listening session with her audience. Each piece told one part of the same story. We go into more detail in what visual content an artist needs to release an album.

With Azul Infarto, over a collaboration of four music videos, the making-of was photographic: images of the process that work for press and social media without relying on the video.

Three different formats for three different needs.

How we approach it and how to ask for one

If you're preparing a shoot, a music video, an ad or a photo session, the making-of has to be requested at the start, along with everything else. That way it fits in the same shooting plan, the same crew and the same day, and nothing has to be set up twice.

We treat it as one more piece of the project, with its own goal: is it to add value to the main piece, to show your team, to fill your social feeds during the launch weeks? Depending on the answer, you get a piece of a couple of minutes for YouTube and your website, several vertical cuts, a photo series or all of it together. It's the same logic we use to get a month of content out of a single shoot day: if the day is well planned, what happens behind the camera is material too.

For a company, it's also a simple way to show the people behind it without organising another shoot. And for an artist, it is material for the weeks before and after the release, which is when it is needed most.

If you have a project in mind, at Bostak Films we can look at it with you: book a free diagnosis and we'll tell you what making-of we'd get out of it. What we do as a video production company in Barcelona is on that page.

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