“On Monday the 21st of September, the revolutionary production company ‘Bottle Rocket,’ held auditions and for that day, were casting directors for the new classic TV show, ‘TRAMS, RENTALS AND INSTRUMENTALS.”

And thats what newspapers will one day say about our auditions we held on Monday. I’m quite thankful that they omitted the part where I allegedly showed up an hour late because of railroad upgrades and delays. Anyway, from what I did get out of this process was something that was really interesting.

After indeed getting there late, I found that it was pretty cool hearing a professional delivering lines that were thought up by somebody in our group. It’s going to be even cooler when I am I get to see it on screen, but even though it wasn’t my script, it was nice to see that people were relating with what was being said on page, showing that our scripts are fairly well written. Something that was pointed out to me afterwards, but something that I haven’t really seen in person before, is that the actors tended to want to know about their character, they wanted to know their motivations, their attitudes, and how they would fit within the mockumentary genre. These actors won’t be paid, yet in retrospect I still found it pretty cool that they were dedicated to the character and were very professional.

The first actress who read for Valentina and Kerry, a woman on an ill-fated date with Liam, I can’t say I saw much of, again, because I was late, seemed to be really professional and have an interest with the characters. That was enough to say that she was pretty professional. The second actress, who I saw a lot more of, had a contrasting style and tone within her portrayal of the characters, and she too, was pretty professional also and agian, had a real sense of interest in these characters and the motivations they had. She’d also memorised all of her lines, which in a short amount of time is pretty darn cool and another show of professionalism.

And that’s something that is really quite interesting in the casting process. There are performances that are unique to each person casting, but you really have to be insightful in who you end up choosing for the role. Both actresses eventually fit within the parts of Valentina, and Kerry respectively, but both had different strengths and ways of interpreting what they saw in the characters within the script. I’m not saying thats a bad thing, I just found it a pretty interesting process in seeing varying performances and having to evaluate which part suits each actress more.

Overall however, I feel like it was a valuable experience, in finding out what individual actresses or actors bring to the character, and as was seen on Monday, often they’re things which you hadn’t really considered before.

SO in our consultation on Monday the 14th of September, it was discovered that we may find it difficult to film on a tram, or around a tram stop. Basically, anything tram related is going to be difficult. And that’s kind of bad news. One of our characters, Liam, is a Myki Ticket inspector. Nonetheless, I think the main thing to take away from this is that we have to be very open minded and have a way to work around these kind of issues.

Another key part of the consult, was the title sequence. Again, with the need for having filming be safe, and also regulated, we’ll need to find a way to have our concept of having all the characters introduced and somehow connected, be done in a way in which we can easily film it, without the hassle of waiting for weeks for a permit from Melbourne City Council.

But our idea for the intro of our characters is a fairly cool one, by Ashton. All the characters, who on the show don’t have anything to do with one another, are to be introduced in a title sequence and perhaps doing something that would be specific to their character. For instance, Valentina, who is one of our 3 mains, is a real estate agent, and a part of her character would be hammering in an open for inspection sign into the ground.

We also discussed ideas of how we could film such an action. Would she be filmed walking out of the car and then going to her boot and then get the sign and then hammer it in the ground? I think the key part of chatting about with with Paul, was finding a creative solution to shooting something like that. It may be quite difficult in shooting a one take of this type of action, so we were advised by Paul (whose exact words or thought I can’t remember) to pretty much keep our minds and options open as to finding the best way of shooting something.

And that pretty much sums up the consult, that we needed to keep our minds open. I think thats a pretty important thing, especially with a prototype based assignment such as this, that we need to worry about learning the process of writing, directing and editing, casting, scoring etc. instead of making the absolutely perfect and polished pilot which we would be pitching.

SO, this post involves both David and my little filming tests for both our drafts, I did mine, he did his. I’ll let you decide whose is whose.

So for this test of David playing Martin, I quite like the camera angle that we used. Having the slightly low angle gives it a really handheld, and slightly informal feel to this production, which works seeing as its a documentary. Also, slight zoom of the camera really played out nicely when Martin is saying something clueless, which I really feel ads to the comedy. It’s a pretty established move in the mockumentary genre, e.g. within The Office (U.S. version), the characters often are zoomed in upon when something funny, or significant happens. Like the Office, this makes the Camera almost a character within the setting of the interview. I really quite like it.

This video, which has an actor who looks uncannily like myself, happened to be the first test footage we shot. I really feel like we captured the feel of an interview, however I think we should learn from David’s test footage and try to figure out when the best time would be to perhaps use the camera to zoom in and out for comedic effect. Also, in a scene of this length, it would almost definately be essential to have some sort of intercutting between the interview, and other footage as it helps to keep the audience that bit more engaged and perhaps can give them insight to the true story. What I mean by that is, we discussed that whilst Martin is being interviewed here, it could be pretty funny to show footage of Martin  busking and doing something in contradiction to what he’s saying happened. I think these kind of interviews allow for intercutting and a level of irony through the voice over of one thing being described, yet through the footage being played under the interview, it’s shown to be false.

Anyway, I think this was a successful test of the character. I really hope others find him to be funny too.

Also, shout out to David Delmenico for having these uploaded on his Vimeo. I may or may not have, but definitely did, take these videos straight from his Vimeo… So thank you, David.

SO. Its been slightly too long, internet. Heres a scene within the script I developed for our ‘Martin’ character within our Bottle Rocket production. So many withins in that sentence. Too many. Anyway, here it is:

I feel as if we told our story quite well. The idea as portraying the different personalities and diverse culture, in my opinion, came off quite well. However, I feel as if there could have been a few more advancements to our presentation as whole.

Firstly, I think it may have been more engaging, not that it wasn’t already, if we had a slide show which portrayed some visuals of the ideas we’re all having. For instance, when I was talking about the idea of a Mockumentary, it may have been helpful to show a trailer for Summer Heights High, or The Office (probably the US version, sorry UK…) Anyway, I feel as if audiences react a bit better when they have visual aid, so thats something to consider for next time. Also, this could have really supplemented Ashton’s idea for a title sequence reminiscent of Game of Thrones, or Flight of the Conchords in again, helping the audience to conceptualise things.

Secondly, I think it may have been a benefit to me if I talked slightly more about how we’re planning on creating the show. I could have aluded to the fact that despite us having an inspiration from Summer Heights High in having seperate story arcs, we could have the same group of interviewers perhaps in each story arc, which could act as another way of linking the characters together as interviewers are key characters within Mockumentaries. I think I successfully talked about how we’re thinking of conveying our idea however, I think people understood our concept. I could have definitely elaborated more upon our mockumentary style that we’re currently proposing.

Finally, this isn’t an improvement, but I’m happy with the feedback we got towards the end. I liked the idea that even though in real life Melbourne has been voted as one of the most liveable cities on the planet, that through our mockumentary we could show an opposition to that and through our characters, perhaps play upon that idea. One suggestion in particular, which was in relation to Ashton’s title sequence which through audio, would link our three main characters together. I liked Brian’s idea to perhaps use the audio of a song playing on the street transition into the car radio or headphones to link the characters together. That has some cool potential and we should consider that. Finally, I think we should consider as well, how we can make Melbourne a character. WE should try to convey a personality of some sort. We’ll figure out how in due course.

However though, it seems like thats it. I feel like we presented our progress and our proposal well.

BIO: He’s a very talented musician but thats about it. He thinks he’s charming. His and his group’s slight success over only a few weeks has gotten to his head. He’s young, around 20. His ambition is not to succeed. In his mind he already has.

I really feel like this Martin character can really reflect Melbourne’s music culture, and perhaps to an extend towards the hipster culture that is quite prominent with the Melbournian youths. At this point, I’ve only written some of his character, as the idea for a group only arose this week. The story will also change to incorporate this group, perhaps into the idea that, over a season, Martin finds himself getting recognition even to the point of a record deal, but he’s torn between leaving his beloved group or signing himself onto a record deal. However, I’ll give you an idea of how his character speaks for now:

” Martin: (to interviewer) So whose going to be playing me when you adapt this into a film?

Interviewer: (after a few seconds) You are…

Martin: (with an insightful smile and not) Right, right. Can you tell me when you find out?

Hopefully that gives you an idea about this character. I’m hoping him and his group will be basically a bunch of nice people who are kind of oblivious to the fact that only one of their members is talented, they all see themselves as great. They take themselves too seriously.

“introduction:

David, we thought you could start us off, and talk about our original idea/meeting about the trio of shorts for a ‘Melbourne type festival’, and how we have adapted it now to all of the above, basically.
genre:
Matthew, like you said in your email yesterday, you can investigate the whole genre of a mockumentary, and talk about creating a Chris Lilley-esque mockumentary style with the group of characters. you could touch on how it could be shot as well?
screenwriting:
Jess is covering the writing process, say no more smile emoticon.
character choices and synopsis:
I’ll be talking about our characters in more detail and WHY we chose them.”

-Steph McCarthy on the Facebook Group we made for ourselves.

I’m thinking it’ll be a really chilled presentation of the idea I think will turn into something pretty cool

For Tomorrow, I’m going to be alluding to our use of the mockumentary, and how this is going to be significant for our production.

Basically, the same with a Chris Lilley show, you’ve got a group of unrelated characters, all of whom have seperate story arcs, yet are all apart of what makes Melbourne the culturally diverse place we all call home. [insert tear and standing ovation] I think this genre reflects a big part of Melbourne, in that often Mockumentaries or the subjects within them, take themselves so seriously that it becomes hilarious. And I feel like everybody knows at least one person who happens to live in Melbourne who could personify this extreme seriousness. I’ll breifly say, that we’re hoping we can show the extremes of these Melbournian characters without giving anything away for later in the presentation. I’m also going to talk about the unique challenges this type of genre has, such as the camera and interviewers often are key characters as well, and that’s a writing challenge none of us have really tried before, but something we’re willing to do.

On that note, that should hopefully end my part of the presentation. Fin.

Summer Heights High was a critical smash and was successful upon it’s release. So much so, was that Chris Lilley ultimately revisited these characters, but in my opinion, had a different outcome. Why?

Well. Summer Heights High had all of the characters together within the one TV show. They never interacted with one another but that was part of the fun. You got to have an idea of the entire school from these 3 characters, of Jonah the rebellious trouble maker, Mr. G, the dramatic drama teacher and Ja’mie the spoilt private school girl. All 3 of these characters were all situated within the same school, and all of them had their own separate story arcs.

However, when Chris Lilley created seperate TV shows for Ja’mie and Jonah, they lacked the diversity. When you focus you’re whole attention on one character, they must have some sort of variety to keep them fresh and interesting. These characters really lack the diversity to have this, which in saying that makes them humorous, however on their own within a mockumentary style TV show can become repetitive and bland. Again, this is all my opinion, no scientists were involved in calculating this post. Here’s a trailer for Ja’mie:

The reason why the combination works, as opposed to the solo story, is that it gives a contrast in tone. Summer Heights High’s intercutting between 3 different dysfunctional characters created more comedy due to the fact that you’re just seeing the school day differently from different perspectives. It’s the blend of the troubled school boy and the upper classed school girl that creates a more diverse TV show as they’re both disrupting the world around them in different ways. When all the focus is on just the private school girl and her own little world, it began to annoy. When I watched Ja’mie, I wanted to have Mr G change the tone and show the funny world he lives in.

The results speak for themselves, as according to Wikipedia, Ja’mie’s viewership went from 0.92 million viewers in it’s first week to 0.62 million for it’s finale. That’s in contrast to Summer Heights High: it had 1.2 million viewers for it’s first episode and finished with around 1.5 million. This is quite a small analysis, but audiences tend to enjoy variety of characters, as opposed to just those characters.

That’s something that I know would be cool to have within our own mockumentary. Different characters who all have their own silly situations and stories, yet all have one thing in common; Melbourne.

REFERENCES:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Summerheightsratings.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%27mie:_Private_School_Girl

-youtube videos above…

So. From the few consultations we’ve (Jess, Ashton, David, Steph and Myself) had, I think we may be on to something cool. So, what we’ve decided so far, is that we will be working towards creating a Mockumentary style TV pilot, and hopefully by the end of the semester, be able to present segments and elements of this final product. So basically I’m hoping we’ll be able to either present some separate scenes, a table read out, perhaps story boards of some kind or something else along those lines.

And at this point I realise I haven’t elaborated about what idea we’ve considered. That might help.

It’s a mockumentary about Melbournians. And we’re hoping to incorporate multiple characters, all of whom have seperate stories arcs together in a pilot. I think they’d work together like A Chris Lilley show, in that the characters have the same setting but have seperate stories. That way we can have multiple characters and they don’t necessity need to be directly linked to one another.

I really think that there are so many possibilities in this type of concept. Firstly, you can cram heaps of different types of characters into the show. They may not relate at all, one may be a business man, another a bogan footy fan, yet they’re both a big part of what makes Melbourne, Melbourne.

Another thing is that it calls for different way of production. In a mockumentary, both the interviewer and the camera itself can act as characters. For instance in the US version of The Office, the fourth wall is often broken, which in many ways gives the show a more realistic feel, as well as supplementing the comedy. The camera often has characters glancing into it, which may seem spontaneous, yet the writers of The Office have stated that they’re intentional, which helps to give the camera a somewhat personification. It’s suddenly the reasonable character within a world of dysfunctional or weird ones like Dwight. K. Schrute, or Michael Scott.

Anyway, I know I haven’t had to write for this type of genre before, and I feel like it’ll be interesting in doing so. I’m happy with the idea that we can combine different characters in the same setting, but still be able to have diverse characters who will bring humour and comedy, (which I think will be the style of our prototype,) in their own way.

This style definately allows for more freedom in writing, however I still think we’ll need to collaborate closely when we’re editing as with each character, you’ll be getting a different tone. For instance, Jonah and Mr. G in Summer Heights High, which I’ll talk about in a different post for sure.