Have we lost something?

Peter Jackson has been doing something interesting with his production of King Kong. During the filming and now into post-production, the staff at the Kong is King website having been putting together a series of "production diaries." These are short clips of different people explaining the movie making process as the film is created. It's sort of a "making of..." that is published during the making of the movie.

This almost begs the question -- do we really want to know? Although I love learning about the process of filmmaking and gaining insight into how filmmakers think, what happens to the story? I wonder what my initial response to the movie will be when I see the sets that I have witnessed being built or see the final versions of special effects shots. I think it's all going to pull me out of the reality of the story. It's going to be much harder to suspend my disbelief when I am constantly thinking about the process. As a consumer of the story, do I really want to know about the details of creation?

We used to talk about "movie magic," but it doesn't seem that magical anymore. It's much more technical. I wonder if this is the down side of the special features on DVDs. Don't get me wrong, I love special features -- but I think I've lost something along the way.