'film-making' is a compound of 'film' and 'making'. 'film' in English was used for a thin skin or membrane and later for photographic celluloid used to record images; 'making' comes from the verb 'make' (Old English 'macian').

'film' originally meant a thin skin (Old English and Germanic roots), later applied to 'photographic film' in the 19th century; from that sense compounds like 'film-maker' and 'film-making' developed in modern English to describe motion-picture production.

Initially 'film' referred to a thin membrane and later to the physical medium for photographs; over time the compound came to mean the creative and industrial process of producing movies ('film-making').