Production
Coppola was working on The Rain People as a small, intimate film about real-life people, and Lucas decided to make a small, intimate cinema-verite documentary about the making of Coppola's film. Lucas pitched the idea of a documentary to Coppola, who gave Lucas the go-ahead, with the film paid for from Rain People's still photography budget.
The budget of the documentary was $12,000. Lucas filmed and recorded sound for the documentary himself, using an otherwise unutilised 16mm production camera and a Nagra tape recorder. Mona Skager, an associate on Rain People, often saw Lucas on the floor, shooting up through glass-topped tables. "It was basically because the camera was too heavy," she recalled. Ron Colby, producer on The Rain People, described Lucas's work habits: "George was around in a very quiet way. You'd look around and suddenly there'd be George in a corner with his camera. He'd just kind of drift around. But he shot the camera, did his own sound. He was very much a one-man band." Lucas would spend nearly every day shooting the documentary, while working on the script for THX 1138 at night.
Coppola was tolerant of the documentary's production process, although occasionally appeared unhappy when the camera invaded his privacy. Lucas filmed some confrontations between Coppola and actress Shirley Knight, but ultimately rejected most of the footage. "I decided to be discreet, I didn't want to destroy anyone's career," Lucas said later.
Lucas and his then-girlfriend, Marcia Griffin, edited Filmmaker. Lucas described the documentary as "more therapy than anything else… I hadn't shot film for a long time."
The closing shot says the film was made at "Transamerica Sprocket Works", a fictitious company name that Lucas liked the sound of. The film was copyrighted by American Zoetrope/Lucasfilm Ltd.—the first film credit for the unofficial, then-new names of Coppola's and Lucas's respective companies.
Read more about this topic: The Making Of The Rain People
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