Mini Clapper Man would follow the story of George Twombly who has worked in Hollywood for the a number of years as a clapper loader. He became well known for his signature miniature clapperboard, which was the result of a number of clerical errors (potentially an error in imperial to metric conversion). Having grown up in Melbourne George is finally returning to crew on his first Australian short film. The mockumentary will explore the legend status attached to George whose only reason for his reputation is his clapperboard, which actually turns out to be a serious inconvenience. Throughout the film we watch as the film crew’s patience unravel as struggle to work with Twombly who is unbeknownst to the trouble he is causing them on their first short film set. The excitement they initially had to work with Twombly slowly dissipates.

In terms further my abilities I hope that this idea would allow to spend more time in composing and capturing interviews. However, interviews will be secondary to the production process and the hassles that Twombly causes the young filmmakers. Being in the mockumentary style I’ll hopefully have more control in setting up the interviews. During the interviews themselves I’ll have more freedom to cut off subjects, reshoot particular aspects and spend more time focusing on technical issues, due to the script nature of the interviews. When I say scripted I’m not yet certain if this script will be rigid but more of a framework for actors to then improvise around. All of the characters within the mockumentary would be film crew and actors of the fictional film they were shooting. Due to this the necessity to find semi-professional actors is minimised somewhat. On the other hand this would result in quite a complex shoot with a lot of the gear.

I’m hopefully that the mockumentary form isn’t too much of a cop out in terms of the complexity of the ideas we’re exploring in film III. I hope that it will provide me the closer exploration of documentary production with the script of a fiction film. Whilst also allow me to create a fictional film with documentary aesthetics and production choices.