Pre-Production: Mockumentary & Cinema Verieté

Introduction

As mentioned in my Project Outline post, our pre-production follows the Mocumentary/Fake Documentary genre. This means to learn more about the genre, I have decided to research the key and most popular mockumentaries to research the conventions and filming styles. Additionally, as my role for our pre-production is cinematographer and script writer, I will be specifying my research on the camera, editing and narrative filming style of each mocumentary.

So what is a Mockumentary?

As you may judge from it's name, a mockumentary is simply a fake documentary - one which shows what are meant to be fictional events in a documentary style(it is a combination of the words mock and documentary). This can lead into a sub categories such as docufiction which is a dramatic documentary. For example, This is Spinal Tap can be classed as a docufiction as people are led to believe that they are a real band whom are making a documentary, when in theory they are a
struggling metal band whom are struggling to get back into the charts.

Mockumentaries first originated in the 1960s however didn't start to become recongised until the 1980s after the release of This is Spinal Tap which alone helped to spark the genre of mockumentaries. Now, the genre has risen and has continued to since the late 2000s and has led to a creation of several successful comedies and dramas, such as The Office, Modern Family, Trailer Park Boys, including mockumentary films like Cloverfield and Borat. Thus, it is clear that mockumentaries can conventionally be either a comedy or a drama.

Cinema Verieté

To understand the way documentaries form in terms of their narratives, it is essential to research into the ideology behind Cinema Verieté. Cinema Verieté translates from French into English as "truth cinema" which first originated in the 1960s, showing people in everyday situations with real dialogue and naturalness of action. This is where the truth of documentaries firstly originated - this era was when actuality interviews with authentic dialogue was first created and was first originally criticised due to it seeming more of a report and lacking artistic expression.

The way Cinema Verieté was first created was partially down to the advancement in technology - cameras were becoming lightweight and portable and the pricing for them were reasonably inexpensive. It was becoming easier for a cinematographer to capture footage which has never been seen before due to the technologies convenience and was originally created to film people, events and locations without needing any camera rearrangements.

But what has this got to do with documentary? Cinema Verieté soon became a type of documentary shooting - as previously mentioned in the 1960s it was used to create unbiased films so that it follows this idea that it is the 'pure truth'. Nonetheless, despite documentaries arguably becoming more fictional and less truthful, cinema verieté still plays a vital role within documentaries and mockumentaries, so it is vital to understanding it's history and what it is. The key aspects of modern day Cinema Verieté revolve around synchronised sound and providing a dominant of actuality footage.

Thus, by researching cinema verieté, it has enabled me to understand that these two key points should be frequently conveyed within our production. Not only so that it remains realistic, but so that it enables the audience to believe that they are seeing "the truth" if this were to be a realistic documentary.

Reference: http://www.videomaker.com/article/f16/15216-cinéma-vérité-documentary

http://www.britannica.com/art/cinema-verite