For my eighth reflection I have decided to investigate the coverage style of the mockumentary sitcom (although this eventually devolves into a more general reflection on filmmaking practice).

I’ve been watching a lot of sitcoms in the past few months, largely due to the fact that they’re easy to watch with family and at any pace. This week I’ve started rewatching Parks and Recreation, which is a sitcom created by The Office writers Michael Schur and Greg Daniels. The show is created in a mockumentary style, in this reflection I will explore what this implies for the show’s coverage. Here’s some bullet points to get started:

• The genre is defined by pairing fictional characters and situations with documentary style storytelling (often observational).
• The use of documentary conventions allows the show to regularly utilise dramatic irony in its jokes, with the viewer often being a ‘fly on the wall’.
• With the camera/audience being given the position of ‘outside observer’, the show is freed from being tied to a particular “main” character. The narrative is shown from a third person view.
• The camera should feel unprepared for the action occurring in any given scene, it is “reacting” to the unfolding events.
• The camera should feel ‘hidden’ from the actors, utilising telephoto lenses, dirtying the frame wherever possible.
• Cut the interviewer out of any interviews. This can be done to allow a joke, but also prevents establishing an ‘investigator’ character through which the show is seen (documentarian).

This ‘reactive’ camera work taken up by the show has a few trademarks, this includes the frequent use of zooming, re-framing, and re-focusing of the lens, handheld operation, and a certain ‘unpreparedness’ for the unexpected movement of characters (e.g: the camera may take a split second to follow a character who suddenly stands up).
This style allows plenty of room for errors, and it fact may be intentionally creating ‘blemishes’ in the coverage to benefit its ‘authenticity’. I would be interested to see what kind of techniques are in used in shows like Nathan for You (or the many works of Sacha Baron Cohen), where mockumentary characters are put in real world situations with social actors.

During one of my studios last year, I worked on a documentary short with a topic so “unbelievable” that most people assumed it was a mockumentary. This got me intrigued as to what we could’ve done differently to avoid that impression (short of putting a disclaimer at the beginning of the film), I still haven’t come up with anything.

Of course, we could continue refining the film and testing it out to see what parts are confusing people, but maybe it’s better to put it on the shelf and get to work on bigger and better things? It seems like it’s not worth the amount of time it would take to improve the film even just marginally. Its purpose was to teach us more about the filmmaking process, and even though its far from perfect it did that job. From now on I will have that question in my mind, “how will I make sure people know this is real?”, when dealing with ‘ridiculous’ subject matters.

This thought leads me to wonder whether I am better off spending ages making a film that I consider to be ‘great’, or, should I spend more of my time making cheap, quick, and rough films, in order to get more useful experience. If I try to make something ‘great’, then it’s likely that I won’t complete it, due to the fact I don’t currently have the tools, framework, or knowledge to tackle a grand project. But on the other hand, I don’t see the point in being unambitious with what I make. If I am going to put a lot of time into creating something, I want it to be original, and I want it to be better than all of my work preceding it, I’m aware this probably sounds a bit naive. If I don’t want to make something that pushes my limits as a filmmaker, wouldn’t I be better off spending my energy working on other peoples projects in order to learn practical skills and expand my network?

Surely there is a middle ground, where I am creating work that I am excited about and I feel brings something new to the table, while also not being so ambitious that I will inevitably fail to achieve my vision. From my experience, this point becomes clearer through proper awareness of your own abilities (which can only be achieved by testing the limits to find out how little you know). I’ve got a long ways to go, but I find that following every project I become more aware of what I am and am NOT capable of, both of these things are equally important.

Before I can take on any of the ambitious ideas I have, I first need to get experience through completing smaller projects, in order to build a framework with which to work on increasingly larger tasks. I wouldn’t dig a quarry with a spoon, so why should I try to make a ‘grand’ film with a lack of experience?