A Century In Video - 1923

Probably one of the earliest (If not the earliest) examples of a "making of" featurette.

This short details some of the trials and tribulations of trying to film a feature film in Death Valley.

The film they were making was 1924 Erich Von Stroheim's movie Greed based on the book McTeague.

"The plot follows an honest dentist whose wife wins a lottery ticket, only to become obsessed with money. When her former lover betrays the dentist as a fraud, all of their lives are destroyed."
(From the Wikipedia entry)

Out of curiosity I also watched this bit from the end of the movie:



Now I have a few comments:

• Yellow?


• For crying out loud, cut the dead guy's hand off


• If the horse / mule is dead. So is the canary