Documentary, why not Mockumentary?

Sara and I thought we were pretty clever to come up with the idea to make a mockumentary about our 2006 cohort. Sara is taking the professors’ point of view while I’ve chosen to represent the actual students. What I would like the audience to take away from the film is the idea that the world of academics isn’t necessarily all that intelligent. I think people who are not pursuing advanced degrees often think they would not be able to do so. I want viewers to realize that higher education can include humorous and annoying aspects just like a typical job. Essentially, we’re all human and we all have many faults to be mocked. However, we would like to mimic Christopher Guest’s approach and still make the characters loveable.

One of the characters we would highlight would be a nontraditional student: she’s 87 and this time she’s sure she found her calling. It would be a lot of fun to come up with archived footage of this character as a way to tell her history. Another character is a constant complainer. She’s always finding faults with the professors and feels she’s being short-changed in her education. She also likes to complain about her lack of free time because of all the homework. However, we would off-set her interview footage with footage that shows that she’s drunk the majority of the time. We would also stress that she refuses to meet for group work unless it’s at a bar or at someone’s house (where there’s alcohol). Of course there could be the know-it-all and perhaps a student who speaks little English and says off-the-wall things that don’t get a proper response because no one can understand him. The possibilities with a character like that are endless. I think it would be funniest if everyone talked loudly and slowly to him (treating him like an idiot) while he made insulting and hilarious comments back that no one understood.

Since all of our classes are three hours, which can be pretty tedious at times, we would exaggerate this class time even further. By doing so we could have a common theme be the students’ lack of attention during class. When a student is obviously not prepared to answer a question, they would just say, “engagement” (it seems to be an appropriate answer for various questions). In addition, it would be funny to have the camera in the back of the classroom when the students have laptops so that the audience could see the wide variety of things that they are actually doing while in class (maybe on-line shopping, instant messaging, etc).

There are really limitless possibilities. Check out spike speaks for Sara’s side of the film.