Tuesday, November 24, 2015

What A Mockumentary Really Is

By Mattie Knight


In a nutshell, mockumentaries are actually fictional documentaries that would mock a certain issue or a certain event. A mockumentary is actually a parody that would make use of a fictional setting and characters to depict an existing issue. These types of shows are actually quite popular because they would offer viewers a fresh perspective on certain issues unlike what regular documentaries would usually show.

Now there are two types of mockumentaries that one can see on TV. The first one is known as the comedic type while the other one is known as the drama type. Obviously the comedic one lies under the genre of comedy while the drama type falls under the genre of drama, horror, action, or thriller types.

The most common would be the comedic one because the mockumentaries that would be shown on television would want to mock a certain issue in a very funny way so that it is light to the viewers. The nature of the comedic types would be that it would appear to be serious on the surface but there are dialogues and actions that are clearly for laughs. Also, unlike the sitcoms or the funny movies, there would be no laugh track at all to make it really seem like a real documentary.

Now the second type which is the drama type would usually have some kind of message that it would want to show to the viewers. Although it may seem real, everything in the film from the story line to the characters are purely fictional. There are a lot of drama elements that are being used in this particular type of documentary in order to capture the attention of the viewers.

Of course like in a real documentary, there would be some sort of time line or outline of events that these mockumentaries would show. The same thing would happen if this documentary is about a person and the past events that have happened in his life. There would be some sort of sequence that would tell the date of the event and the video depiction of what happened.

Now just to give a brief background, these types of films were only really popular during the year 1980 because of Rob Reiner. Now Rob Reiner was the director of the film This is Spinal Tap which he referred to as a mock documentary when he was interviewed. Due to this, the term stayed and then became an official term for parody documentaries.

In the comedy genre of mockumentaries, one of the most popular ones would be Borat, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Other than that, there would also be Bruno which is an extremely funny documentary about a gay man who is out of the closet. Of course there are still many more than one can find as well.

For the drama types, probably one of the most popular would be the Blair Witch Project. This is a horror documentary that paved way for many more to come like the Last Exorcism and Paranormal Activity. For thriller and action types, there would be the films like Into the Storm and Cloverfield.




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