Because I have never shot a documentary or mockumentary in the past I though it would be a useful exercise to watch (or in some cases rewatch) some of the more renowned ones to try and discern what it was that they did well so that I can try to emulate this in the production of My Name is John so that it can get a real life documentary feel but still be fictitious and scripted. So in doing this research I pulled out some key elements that need to be addressed and implemented I feel to get the best out of this film and its genre. These in some cases relate to the film as a whole or specific aspects of films, but without further ado, my first film is What We Do In The Shadows (2014), this is Taika Waititi's vampire mockumentary which follows a group of vampires who share a house and try to go about daily life. The scene I picked out to highlight the style and theme of the film is its opening scene.
This scene serves as a very good introduction because it leads you one way with the text about paranormal activities and then crushes this instantly with comedy, this change in tone catches the viewer off guard early on and as a result of this they laugh harder because it is unexpected, I'm not sure My Name is John has the same effect currently in the script, though it could be argued that it does and the punchline is at the end when he owns up to being a magician at the films climax, this is a conflict in expectation that may lead to a similar laugh at this point, but I do feel that this is definitely something the film needs to be a successful mockumentary, though it is not vital I do feel the film will greatly benefit if it is in there. The other thing I think is very important in this scene is that the actors are playing characters who know they are being filmed, this is vital because people act differently when they know that they are being filmed, you only have to watch any reality tv to see that and to see how people exaggerate and play up their emotion or put on a certain persona. This is evident in what we do in the shadows as our lead is clearly trying to put across a nice neat individual who is in charge and organised, whether this is how the character is when the camera is off we wouldn't know because the character only exists to be filmed in his own world. I think that My Name is John has this in the script the "is this your card" line comes to mind particularly from our script, he acknowledges the camera and also puts on a facade of a funny man that he wants the audience of the documentary about him to perceive. There is more that can be taken from this film but it is also evident in other examples I use later on and as such I will mention it when we get there. The second example I drew upon is 1984s This Is Spinal Tap, by Rob Reiner. Considered by many to be the best mockumentary ever made, it would be stupid of me to not visit this film for an example of how to get the genre right.
The above scene that I picked out specifically from a long list of iconic scenes was the famous Stonehenge scene whereby they are performing a gig and because of a mix up between feet and inches they have ended up with a tiny replica of Stonehenge, instead of the life-size one they really wanted and then to top it off, to try and make it look big they get dwarfs to dance around it. This really doesn't sound that funny when written down but the scene itself is comedy gold and is iconic in its own right. The key and beauty of this scene is that we feel like a fly on the wall, this is what documentaries that follow bands are meant to be like as they follow a band and get a behind the stage look at what their lives are like, it is this look that Spinal Tap mimics perfectly and as such the advice I take from this is that you need to find a genre of documentary to mimic in order to successfully mock it in a mockumentary, in all honesty, I don't feel the script is currently mocking any style of documentary in particular and needs to be more refined so that it is. That being said this wisdom is not simply for a blog post, I will pass it on to the writer and see if this can be amended. The other key thing in this scene we can take and implement into My Name is John, is the performance aspect followed by the backstage reaction. My Name is John has this but it is the other way around, we have his pre-show interview followed by the performance, then we get a bit of a post-show reaction similar to Spinal Tap though it is more interview like so isn't exactly the same, but had it been a real documentary it would be a side of John that fans wouldn't usually see and thats what is important when mimicking documentary.
Probably the weakest of the three pieces I have pulled out is Trailer Park Boys, in terms of similarity to My Name is John, because it follows multiple convicts and is a much different comedic style as it features lots of stoner humour and American gags. However, it is from this piece that the most important part of a mockumentary became evident to me, more so than in the other two. Make the camera a character. Honestly, if you look at any mockumentary piece you will realise they all do it (or at least all the successful ones do). Now this can be as simple as what I talked about previously in that the characters act differently when being recorded or it can be as explicit as in this piece where Ricky fights a cameraman, it doesn't matter, either way the camera and camera man have an affect on the characters in front of the camera and as such they play off of them. This then by extension means that when shooting a mockumentary you must think about the motive of the camera, are we meant to be seeing what is happening or should the camera man be hidden. So to take an example from My Name is John, the alleyway deal, in this scene, presumably the dealer wouldn't want to be filmed so he should therefore be uneasy at the presence of the camera, or the camera should be hidden from him, I would even suggest going one better and saying that potentially his face should be blurred as if to say he didnt give filming consent. Any of these minor changes to shooting style have a big impact on selling the effect that we are filming a real documentary about a real character. To conclude, I feel that the main aspect is the last one I talked about, if you start to make it too filmic then you lose the documentary feel and it just becomes a film not a documentary, in this there is great freedom though in that shots can be shaky or out of focus because thats how they may be in a real documentary when you only have one chance to shoot something.
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