Bottle Rocket: Mockumentary

After a consult with Jasmine, our group has shifted our initial idea for a mini Melbourne-themed short film festival into a pilot for a mockumentary, following three different characters. I thought I might look at a couple of similar formats, albeit ones that approach their subjects in different ways.

Modern Family

Modern Family is an incredibly successful television sitcom, presented in a mockumentary format. I think that it’s unusual in this, because it occupies a space in the televisual and cultural zeitgeist that is generally taken by multi-cam sitcoms: How I Met Your Mother, Friends and Seinfeld. Modern Family’s format is reminiscent of the US version of The Office, with characters generally ignoring the existence of the omnipresent camera crew except when delivering a reaction to the audience (for comedic effect) or engaging in the specific talking head segments that litter each episode. Interestingly, the initial premise for the show involved the families being filmed by a documentary crew headed by a young Dutch student – he was to be a character himself, and weave into the family’s story-lines. This premise was obviously dropped, and upon reflection, there aren’t many popular mockumentary TV shows that work the camera into the actual storyline. Why is this? For me, it would feel too cluttered. I want to watch a show about these families, I don’t want constant interjections from a presence that I can’t see.

Steven Levitan, series creator, claims that the show’s format is “crucial” to its success. He points out that having characters share their inner feelings with the camera allows the writers to “jump through” a lot of the show’s exposition without it being clunky and jarring. It helps them with editing too, he contends, saying that a slow scene can be livened up by “popping in an interview”. It’s true that these interview segments do add a lot of humour to the show – often a character’s candid feelings to camera are juxtaposed with a lie in ‘reality’, which … is funny. It just is. It’s something that I’d never thought of – that the faux documentary style allows you a lot of freedom to craft a scene.

Summer Heights High

Summer Heights High was a popular Australian mockumentary series that followed three characters in an Australian public school. Pretty similar to how we want to go about our pilot, really. As opposed to Modern Family, the show does introduce the idea of a camera crew, providing a brief description of their objective (to follow the daily lives of students/teachers) before never really being mentioned again. Summer Height High is actually a fairly realistic example of a documentary, the show clearly makes an effort to stay true to the format. Unlike Modern Family, the characters never really break the fourth wall for comedic effect, instead, the camera is a fly-on-the-wall, quietly observing these characters’ lives and providing an outlet for candid feelings and exposition.

However, it’s a bit deceptive, because while there are plenty of nice ‘doco style’ touches, like the shifting and quick panning/zooming of the camera within a scene, it’s also clearly contrived when the show cuts to several different angles within one scene. For instance, while Doug Peterson berates Jonah for his behaviour, we initially see the boys from outside the room, through the glass. We then cut to a reverse angle of Doug, before a comedic cut to Jonah’s victim, a small boy sitting in the corridor. While the scene still has the aesthetic of an authentic documentary, it’s been shot like a single-camera comedy. I actually think that this is pretty clever, and would like to use the same style for our pilot. We can ‘lift’ the aesthetic while still following the generic conventions of a single-cam comedy.