Genre research - Mockumentary

Our film's genre is 'Mockumentary'; This is often a fictional event that is shot and portrayed in a documentary format, showing them dramatically, but more often than not in a comical light. Although they are meant to be satirical about something in particular, they more-often-than-not don't include a lot of laugher about the subject and try to retain as much of the atmosphere as possible for the audience.

Perhaps one of the most famous and well known Mockumentaries is 'War of the Worlds' by Orson Welles' radio broadcast in the late 1930's. He did a series of broadcasts that appeared to be news information about puffs of green smoke being spotted coming from Mars and projectiles heading towards the Earth from the red planet. Due to the way the mockumentary was broadcasted, it caused some panic amongst listeners as the first 60 minutes of the show was portrayed as a new bulletin.

one of my personal favourite mockumentary style shows is probably 'Monty Pythons Flying Circus'. while not all of the sketches in it are shot in a mockumentary style, a few of them are. The best being 'The Funniest Joke in the World', or 'Killer Joke'. It follows updates on how a man has written a joke so funny that anyone who reads it will promptly die of laughter. It shows how the joke is first created and how it moves on to be used by the army as a weapon against people.