21st-century wildlife films promote authenticity through the extensive use of making-of-documentaries (MODs), showcasing filmmaker trustworthiness and innovations in filmmaking practices and equipment. MODs have a long and understudied history, evolving in parallel with feature films. Enjoying recent prominence as promotional trailers, bonus features on DVD releases and websites, and televised segments within wildlife broadcasts, MODs work to make public the practical and technical conditions of wildlife film production to an unprecedented degree. This talk explores MODs’ contribution to a transformed public representation of natural history, and how the digital media landscape affords filmmakers new modes of performed transparency which contrast with previous MODs' stance of "claimed artificiality" as described by Gouyon (2016).
