FREE ESSAY ON MOCKUMENTARY

MOCKUMENTARY

Mockumentary: 
Questioning Reality and the Tenets of Documentary Film Itself
A mock documentary is successful when it is able to combine both the appearance of
historically accurate elements and present believable situations through a false lens,
leading the audience to question the reality of what they are seeing. The genre of false
documentary aims to present a convincing story through the use of credible documentary
tactics to portray a fictional documentary. Every mock documentary depends on its viewers
believing its premise. The illusion of believability is most often either confirmed or
destroyed by the credits. Frequently the audience first learns the people on the screen
were actors, and that they have fallen prey to the thick veil of believability that
documentary films are so able to portray. To capture the audiences trust directors of
mock documentary films apply many of the tactics and conventions Mock documentaries serve
to leave the audience questioning the reality and believability of what they view in the
theatre and at home. The mock documentary can be both real and fake, both shocking and
humorous, both projected and actual. 
The origin of the mockumentary ranges back to the very beginning of film. The mock
documentary as a genre owes a great deal to both fiction and nonfiction films. But, since
a mockumentary adopts the formal behavior of a documentary it asserts a sense of
believability. In the late twentieth century documentary films used an element of fakery
to add to the plausibility of the footage. War scenes were also depicted by cardboard
cutouts of boats and often staged in backyard lagoons. In Robert Flaherty's 1922 film,
Nanook of the North, Eskimo life was supposed to be shown as it existed without
influence. However, this film which was supposed to depict how Eskimos really lived was
heavily shaped by Flaherty, and wound up being a documentary of how Eskimos lived when a
camera was in their midst. These instances of falsity are the predecessors of the
mockumentary genre, though they serve very different purposes. The false images in the
early films were used to provide authenticity; fake scenes were used to include the
action and events that the camera was unable to capture to add to the credibility of
their footage. When the camera was unable to physically be there and obtain the actual
footage, or when the film didn't turn out the way the documentarians wanted they would
simply use false footage to make up for what was lost. The premise was if the audience
was able to see even a re-enactment, they would be more apt to believe that it actually
occurred. The goal of the mockumentary is not to enhance credibility but to explicitly
question the believability of what the audience is viewing. While many of these early
documentary films used fakery to add to the realism the directors were trying to portray,
mock documentaries are set up to look as realistic as possible both to trick the
audience, and also to challenge them to question what they accept as matter-of-fact.
For as long as documentaries have existed they have embellished the truth and taken
liberties with the documentary form to make the truth seem more believable. In the
beginning of documentary film the audience was not ready to question what was real and
what had been staged, film was new and people were not questioning the actuality of the
events they were accepting as real. Erik Barnouw, author of Documentary: A History of the
Non-Fiction Film, states that directors of mock documentaries start with a fictional
event or person, and embellish the fiction to make it seem more believable or convincing.
Often times the aim of mockumentaries is to satirize the documentary form. 
Still today, over a decade since the advent of film the relationship between images and
truth remains blurred. As sited in Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries, reality television,
programs like Cops and The Real World, today serve as further illustrations of biased
documentary work. These reality television programs skew the perspective of the audience
and manipulate the lens to blur reality. In Dirk Eitzen's When Is a Documentary?
Documentary as a Mode of Perception, he concludes; All documentaries-whether they are
deemed, in the end, to be reliable or not-revolve around the question of trust (92). Mock
documentaries test the viewer's abilities to distinguish between truth and fiction by
presenting them with a text that makes it difficult to decipher between the two.
Directors of mockumentaries are questioning: Do you believe your eyes, or do you believe
what I am telling you to believe? The audience is given the opportunity to decide whether
they will accept what they are shown. If they fail to pick up on the satire (though
mockumentaries are often riddled with hints) then they, too become an object of satire.
Perhaps the most perfect example of this is Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner's, This Is
Spinal Tap, a false ethnography of a mediocre Heavy Metal band in the early 1980's long
considered a cult classic. Reiner's directorial debut was shot without a working script
and largely improvised. Spinal Tap traces the steady demise of an aging English Heavy
Metal band desperate to make a comeback. When the actor's names are revealed in the
ending credits Spinal Tap acknowledges the falsity of the band. However, many do not pick
up on that blatant hint and continue to believe that Spinal Tap really exists and is just
another decent Heavy Metal band.
Another Christopher Guest film, Waiting For Guffman, chronicles the production of an
amateur play in the fictitious town of Blaine, Missouri celebrating the sesquicentennial.
Blaine happens to be the foot stool capital of the United States and was visited by a UFO
long before Rockwell. A prime example of Guest's attention to realism is in the hilarious
audition scenes. All the auditions were improvised, you're seeing the auditions you see
in Guffman; those are the first time I ever saw them, Guest admitted in an interview.
There was no screenplay for Guffman; Guest used a loose outline to allow for flexibility.
In order to produce a final product that can be understood as believable Guest expresses
his meticulous attention to detail, ...it took quite a long time to delineate all the
characters and show how they would all interact in this town. Guest set out to show how
to skewer human pretensions without looking like you're stabbing the human spirit.
To offer a realistic portrayal, mock documentaries borrow many of the tools that
traditional documentary form uses to produce truth and rather, use them to produce
fiction. The verite style is synonymous with both traditional and false documentary form
to provide a sense of realistic camera work. In the verite style, the camera is handheld
and shaky, lighting is uneven, sound quality is poor, and the acting is impeccable. This
unprofessional look aids in the aura of believability. The Blair Witch Project is a
recent example of a very successful use of the verite style. The credits provide the
background of three young adults sent into the woods to make a movie of their adventure.
This documentary style film takes place in Burkettesville, Maryland were a subsequent
legendary haunted woods is the center of focus. Upon entering the old cemetery from the
legend, strange events start to occur. They enter the forest and hear strange noises from
the woods, get lost, lose their only map, they are soon starving, cold, bickering through
the forest while videotaping the whole time. The movie is a documentary of their
subsequent disappearance made from the footage they shot and left behind. Blair Witch
posits itself as a documentary in the verite mode. Similar to Guffman, the actors in
Blair Witch were not given a script to follow but had to react to the scenario they were
presented with. Another way the director of a mockumentary is able to add to the
convincing appearance of the film is by shying away from the recognizable faces of
Hollywood. The movie credits list Heather Donahue, Michael S. Williams, and Joshua
Leonard as the three actors in the film, blatantly recognizing the falsehood of the
documentary style film. Historically factual events are often referred to, or actual
places are depicted in Blair Witch and countless other faux documentaries. Presenting a
controversial subject in a matter-of-fact style that allows the viewer to draw their own
conclusions after being presented with objectively presented evidence is characteristic
of the verite style. 
A lesser known film from Belgium, C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous, which translates
roughly to You Could Be Next, later re-titled Man Bites Dog, confuses the strict boundary
between fact and fiction. The premise of this film involves a documentary crew, which has
chosen to follow a notorious serial killer as he goes about his murderous rampage. The
film the viewer is presented with is supposedly, the film documented by that crew. Just
as in Blair Witch, Man Bites Dog opens up announcing that what we are watching has been
made by Benoit Poelvoodre, Remy Belvaux, and Andre Bonzel; consequently, these are the
names of the principal characters. Benoit is the killer, Remy is the director, and Andre
is the cameraman. As the film progresses, the crewmembers undergo a drastic change in
their attitude of Benoit and his profession. At first, they are taken aback by Benoit's
disregard for human life and his attitude toward the victims. However, this does not
discourage them from continuing their documentary. Their desire to gain this valuable
footage drives them on past their moral objections to this morbid account of life. 
As they probe further into Benoit's life they are fascinated and in his grasp. Until
Patrick, the sound recordist is shot and killed. Remy immediately reacts by grabbing the
camera from Patrick's wounded body to make up for lost footage, while leaving his friend
for dead. For Benoit, Patrick's death means little. Remy, on the other hand, is seriously
affected. In a heartfelt message, Remy turns the camera on himself and describes
Patrick's death as an occupational hazard, of which Patrick was no doubt aware. Remy vows
to continue filming and rationalizes it by saying Patrick would have wanted it that way.
Though the movie reveals Benoit to be not only a heartless murderer but also an ignorant,
self-loathing, opinionated but, poorly informed fool, the crewmembers are lured in by his
way of living. By the conclusion of the film, all three characters are dead, leaving
their film as their only legacy. 
Like Blair Witch, Man Bites Dog is shot in verite style, emphasizing a jerky, hand-held
camera, inconsistent sound recordings, very few non-digital sounds, and remarkably
realistic acting. The use of the verite style is one of the most important steps the
filmmakers take in assuring that the viewers find the film believable. Though the subject
itself, a crew following the actions of a serial killer, is absurd the film positions
itself firmly within a documentary tradition that is associated with conveying the truth
or events as they actually occur. Because the documentary form is so meticulously copied,
it seems as natural to follow a psychopathic killer, as it does to follow a Heavy Metal
band in This Is Spinal Tap.
Certainly not the originator of false documentaries, but a master of it, Orson Welles
pulled a widely successful hoax in 1938 in his radio broadcast War of the Worlds. Despite
the numerous disclaimers throughout the entire broadcast many of the listeners across the
nation mistook his elaborate hoax as reality. In his broadcast, Welles was able to
overwhelm the repeated disclaimers in his broadcast to provide a plausible account.
All documentaries manipulate their materials to a certain degree. Mock documentaries
depend on this manipulation of truth. Traditional ethnographic documentaries just like
mockumentaries take liberties with their material to present a constructed view. The
practice of editing selects particular footage to convey a message and leaves other
images omitted. The word manipulation in the meticulously written and highly emotional
voice-over narration serve to project one view. 
Part of what makes a mock documentary successful is its ability to exist as the same time
in the world of the fictive and the world of the actual. A mock documentary's stance is
that the specific world it projects does not really exist, though the larger world that
encompasses that specific world does exist and can be studied through the lens of the
smaller, more specific world. By making assertions about its projected world a mock
documentary, like a traditional documentary, can refer to the actual world.
Bibliography
References
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/03.20.97/wait-guf2-9712.html, 2/13/00
http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/w/waiting_guffman.html, 2/14/00
http://www.splicedonline.com/97reviews/guffman.html, 2/14/00
http://desert.net/filmvault/knox/w/waitingforguffman1.html, 2/13/00
? http://desert.net/filmvault/knox/w/waitingforguffman1.html, 2/13/00
http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/Zelig.html, 2/14/00
http://mrshowbiz.go.com/reviews/moviereviews/movies/TheBlairWitchProject_1999.html,
2/15/00
http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/blairwitch.html, 2/13/00
http://www.filmsinreview.com/reviews/blairwitchbyroy.htm, 2/15/00
http://www.spinaltap.com/, 2/13/00
Nichols, B. (1994). Blurred Boundaries. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Barnouw, E. (1993). Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Eitzen, D. (1995). When Is a Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Reception. Cinema
Journal. v.35, n.1, p.92-94.
This Is Spinal Tap. Dir. Rob Reiner, 1984, US.
Man Bites Dog. Dir. Benoit Poelvoorde, Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, 1991, BEL.
Waiting For Guffman. Dir. Christopher Guest, 1996, US.
The Blair Witch Project. Dir. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999, US.