The Making of 'Ladder 49'

This is the longest of the two featurettes on the DVD of Ladder 49, and it is, indeed, a making of documentary. Or, rather, an On Location, a training short and an Anatomy of a Scene on the warehouse scene combined into that. It consists of clips of the film, behind the scenes footage and sitdown interviews with cast(reflecting on the experience of the faux firefighting they did on screen - and having to go through "the maze"!) and crew. This is well-paced, going through numerous topics in a lean 21 minute running time.

Covered is how epic it is, that it was made to look like a battle scene(they succeeded!), how passionate they were to create a tribute to the (real life) heroes it is about, the realism(that's not CGI fire) of both production and finished picture and thus the relative lack of visual effects and danger(culminating in thankfully minor injury) involved for even the stars, the freedom and craftsmanship of the set for the inside of skyscraper, how vital the sound is and the challenge of editing.

Ironically, without trying to, this does highlight several of the problems(let me be clear: this was made with the best of intentions, and a lot of it pays off), mostly through what isn't said. Little mention is made of the characters, outside of brief, well-deserved praise of the actors. The focus is on highlighting the, indeed vast, difficulty, importance and expertise that make up the job of firemen - not on a drama, a script memorable beyond it's accuracy, or in general anything that would have set this apart from, well, fitting more a simulation, either via, with all due respect, a carnival ride or a video-game(think America's Army).

I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the movie itself, and it's worth noting that this doesn't particularly contain spoilers. 7/10