The Growth Of The Mockumentary

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 the only time when the term was actually coined was when a director by the name of Rob Reiner told reporters about his film This is Spinal Tap in an interview. Of course because of this little show, mockumentaries really took off as people enjoyed watching them. There were actually a lot of them that turned into real movies that were shown in cinemas.

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.

Of course in the drama genre, there would be the Blair Witch Project which hit the cinemas after it was shown. In the horror genre, many others followed with Paranormal Activity being one of the most popular. For action, there would be films like Cloverfield and Into the Storm.




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