These documentaries remind us that the CGI dragon is rendered by an exhausted contractor in Vancouver; the pop song was written by eight people in a room second-guessing a TikTok trend; and the laugh track hides a lonely actor. They humanize the gods of the screen.

By the 1970s and 80s, documentaries began focusing on the grueling reality of production. Notable examples include Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991), which chronicled the chaotic production of Apocalypse Now , and Burden of Dreams (1982), which followed Werner Herzog's obsessive struggle to film in the Amazon.