The Work of Sasha Baron Cohen: A Blurred Line Between Mockumentary and Documentary

The Work of Sasha Baron Cohen: A Blurred Line Between Mockumentary and Documentary

Incredibly, the earliest notable uses of mockumentary conventions can be found only a few years after the term ‘documentary’ was coined. Going back as far as the 1930s, filmmakers were taking a medium largely used for the informative and ‘mocking’ it as a way of providing entertainment to a wide audience. Many would agree that the finest spoof-satire is that which fools a section of the audience into believing what they are seeing and hearing. This, of course, is virtually impossible in the modern era. Celebrity culture and the internet all but prohibits it. But in the earlier years of the 20th century, the moving image was still an exciting new development that found it easy to fool people. 

Luis Bunuel’s ‘Land Without Bread’ was produced at a time when the word ‘documentary’ was barely a whisper, but Bunuel was bold enough to make a documentary about something entirely unfascinating (the poverty and culture of the Las Hurdes region of Spain). Coupled with a blasé yet somewhat sarcastically exaggerated narrative voice over and the use of Brahm’s 4th, Bunuel was able to entirely confuse audiences who could only have left screenings pondering the earnestness of the piece. So offended were the Spanish upon discovering the film’s parodical nature, they banned it for three years following the film’s release in 1933.

Almost 75 years later, documentary filmmakers were still causing a stir with the way they played on non-fictional situations. Sacha Baron Cohen in particular, has become a superstar as a result of his individual take on the documentary/mockumentary genre, for the paramount reason that the only entirely fictional element of his films is the central characters that he himself portrays. While his almost entirely improvised content is often funny in itself, the biggest laughs come in the form of the reactions of the ‘real’ people with which he interacts. The mockery of modern society is something that has been existent in comedy for decades, but Baron Cohen individually triumphs in the way that he toys with the comfort zones of others, often forcing members of the public into the most awkward conversational spots imaginable through a well-read use of sociocultural opinions and taboo violation. 

The character of Borat and his skewed views of religion and politics was thrust into middle-America in the film, ‘Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ over the course of which he commits various solecisms; all caught on camera and all exposing of the stereotypical middle-American standpoint on God, homosexuality, and social status. So much so, that by the end of the the film it is difficult not to feel as if you have been somewhat educated to the ridiculousness of core groups of the American public, their beliefs, opinions, and the way they live their lives. It is this point in particular that forces one to consider Baron Cohen’s films as a credible form of documentary filmmaking as well as a box-office comedy smash.

Bill Nichols comments on documentary story telling in his book, ‘Introduction to Documentary’. He states that ‘to the extent a documentary tells a story, the story is a plausible representation of what happened rather than an imaginative interpretation of what happened’. While this statement separates documentary storytelling from other filmic  forms, it isn’t able to define the sub-genre that Baron Cohen’s works belong to. ‘Borat’ cannot be lumped into the mockumentary genre based purely on the fact that the only thing fictional in the film is the central character; the definition of mockumentary being ‘fictitious events presented in the documentary format’. 

A more definitive example of the true mockumentary format would be the works of Christopher Guest who over the years has created endless memorable, lifelike characters and realistically imagined worlds for them to reside in. As an esteemed artist himself, Guest has scripted, directed and starred in a variety of films that satire musicians (‘This Is Spinal Tap’, ‘A Mighty Wind’), dramatists (‘Waiting For Guffman’, ‘For Your Consideration’) and even proud dog owners (‘Best In Show’), all through what has become a trademark use of the mockumentary form. The difference between Guest’s mockumentaries and others though, is that he never intends to fool the audience into believing the film to be anything other than a form of entertainment that uses the documentary format as a comedic device.

Based on Guest’s firm grasp on the mockumentary and Nichols’ definition of what constitutes documentary, it almost humourously leads one to assume that the likes of ‘Borat’ (and more recently ‘Bruno’) lend themselves more to the documentary genre than any other. If we are to conclude this though, it cannot be without acknowledging the fact that Baron Cohen’s use of a deeply thought out but fictional central character is almost entirely individual to his films alone. 

More so with Borat than Bruno or even Ali G, an entire biographical back story is given to these characters. Why this is so integral to Baron Cohen’s comedy is for two reasons. Firstly, by writing and then (in front of the camera) diligently living by the history of the character, it enables Baron Cohen (as an actor) to be able to form a continuous cohesion with regards to the humour of the character, committing the beliefs and practices of his comic creation to any social situation he might find himself in.

Secondly, when performing the character as a relative unknown outside of the UK, it made Baron Cohen dreadfully difficult to ‘catch out’. Though most of the people he found himself in contact with were more often than not less intelligent than he, on frequent occasions he was forced to defend himself with the sharpest of wit and most inescapable conviction. This mechanism is most evident in his portrayal of Ali G, a seemingly unintelligent character who would often interview politicians, clergy, and other intellectual figures. Baron Cohen, under the guise of ignorance, used his own intellectuality against his subjects who consistently took the ‘interviewer’ for granted. Just like the American public found themselves treating Borat like a toddler for the simple reason that he was ‘culturally different’, Baron Cohen allowed Ali G’s lack of intelligence to be taken advantage of until the point whereby he (Baron Cohen) could embarrass his subject into an awkward conversational corner from which there was no escape.

Should one not want to categorise Baron Cohen’s films as documentaries, it should be noted that these films draw parallels with modern reality programming; series such as ‘Jersey Shore’, ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ and ‘Made In Chelsea’. In programmes such as these, as impossible as it is to defend them, they are known for prefacing episodes with a caveat that reminds the viewer that although all the people in the show are ‘real’, some of what they do and say has been set up purely for entertainment. In a way, this is the artistic opposite of what Baron Cohen does, but in terms of realism probably the closest in comparison. The difference being that in films like ‘Borat’, all but one of the people on screen are ‘real’, and the scenes that are ‘set up purely for entertainment’ are only known to the actor portraying the fictional character while the rest of the cast (if you can call Baron Cohen’s unaware public that) are forced to partake and react in a way that is entirely unrehearsed and in no way predetermined.

The reason for the unprecedented success of films like Borat and Bruno may well be down to the same factor that makes these types of television series such massive hits. The viewing public enjoy watching a live reaction. Whereas reality programming has evolved from the likes of ‘Big Brother’ and now seems to predominantly focus on groups of rich youngsters and their playground romances, Baron Cohen has adopted and confirmed the notion that it is far more appealing to use this unrehearsed format as a means for comedic exploitation. Despite the fact that Borat is an entirely fictional character with an entirely fictional set of beliefs and opinions, if we are comparing this film to the likes of ‘Made In Chelsea’ et al, you would be hard pressed to argue that the former is in any way less real in its depictions of actual people. While the entire cast of a reality show are forced to enter certain predetermined situations and say certain things, Baron Cohen enters conversations as a lone wolf and uses his fictional portrayal to coax an honest reality out of his unsuspecting subjects.

In recent history, other satirists that have risen to popularity as a result of this type of reactional comedy include Chris Morris and Paul Kaye. Like Baron Cohen, they used the documentary format as a front to such an effective extent that over the course of the only season of ‘Brasseye’ (a nightly news parody) Morris was able to convincingly trick a range of respected celebrities into supporting varied causes such as a crackdown on a fictional drug from the Czech Republic and even a spoof charity organisation called ‘Nonce Sense’ that was ‘set up’ to protect children from paedophiles. Kaye similarly was famous for disguising himself as celebrity interviewer Dennis Pennis and crashing red carpets and press junkets at venues as reputable as the Cannes Film Festival where he managed to gain access to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

It is probable that Morris especially was a hefty influence on Baron Cohen’s work. Morris’ willingness to destroy taboos at Channel 4 (where Ali G first appeared) tore the wall down in terms of what comedians could get away with presenting, and also highlighted a type of comedy that not only attracted viewers, but caused media controversy. Never one to shy away from controversy himself, Baron Cohen has used controversy to his ultimate advantage, using it to create a media buzz around his films before they are even released. Whereas controversy surrounded Morris following the airing of his content, Baron Cohen is known for using it as an advertising ploy. Most recently, he appeared on the Academy Awards red carpet as his newest character ‘Admiral General Aladeen’ where he proceeded to spill an urn onto television personality Ryan Seacrest which Aladeen said contained the ashes of form North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.

While Sacha Baron Cohen is not the inventor of his specific comedic craft, he has certainly refined it in the last ten years. He would probably be the first to admit that he owes much to those that came before him, but through an informed and effective use of delivery tactics, improvisation and strategic situational positioning (Borat’s venture to middle-America being the best example of this), not to mention his brash, in-character advertising stunts, he has made a name for himself not only in the realms of modern comedy, but in the smallest sub-genre of amusingly exploitive documentary filmmaking.

Alonso, Alex. (2002). Tricked Into Silly Interview With Wannabe Gangster Ali G of Britain. Available: http://www.streetgangs.com/features/031202_ali_g. Last accessed 10th May 2012.

Nichols, Bill (2001). Introduction to Documentary. Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press. p10-11.

Charles, Larry (2006) Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, USA: Four By Two

Walker, Andrew. (2001). Chris Morris: Brass Neck. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1460805.stm. Last accessed 11th May 2012

Witchel, Alex. (2006). The Shape Shifter. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/magazine/12guest.html?pagewanted=all. Last accessed 11th May 2012.

Post Production

Post Production

For the first time this term, the production and post production stages were to overlay. This was not something we had anticipated or planned, but it actually ended up revealing quite a lot to us all about how we can individually manage our time to maximize productivity. At one point in our final week, three of us were on set filming our final interview, while the other two held the fort at the media lab and set to syncing footage from the previous days’ shoots.

Why none of us had never thought to work this way before is beyond me. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that we all want to be involved with everything, and want every masterstroke to be a group decision. Thankfully this term, it wasn’t five of us huddled round one computer (I say five, and will continue to say five as a result of David being so scarcely present) overseeing everything. We trusted each other enough to be able to split up and work on different elements of post production individually. Or so we thought.

Syncing certainly isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish on Final Cut Studio as unless you’ve got a very defined marker in both your audio and video,  it has to be done by sight. But at this point in the year, I’d at least expect everyone in the group to recognize the paramount importance of compressing into Pro Res. This unfortunately was not the case with Josh, who we had assigned the task of compressing the Jacques interview footage and then syncing it, so that all we would have to do is import the compressed, synced footage onto our final timeline to begin the master edit. Where all of our other pieces of footage were imported and ready to go, when we imported the footage Josh had spent the best part of a day working on, we found it to be in  DV NTSC at 29 frames per second, and entirely out of sync. So much so, that we were left with soundless picture, and pictureless audio side by side each other. This of course, was not the end of the world, and easily rectified. I only wish that Josh had informed the group of his uncertainties earlier, rather than leading us to believe that he knew exactly what was expected of him. There was an initial frustration as we were ready to begin our master edit and then had to push it back a couple of hours, but it all worked out later that afternoon and we pressed on.

On this project, I personally found myself amazed by just how addicted you can become to editing. As with our shoots, we were not as strict with our structure as we have been on other projects. We knew the story we wanted to tell, and how we wanted our rich characters to come across. But as the majority of the interview footage was improvised, editing it together involved finding linking pieces of dialogue across the board, where the characters referenced certain events or characters, and then bouncing between the interviews creating a kind of comedy in the pace of the edit.

Where we had solid pieces of structured footage from our ‘archive’ shoots that involved specific gags or lines of dialogue, we looked through our interview footage and found responses that lent themselves directly to the ‘archive’ footage that we wanted to show. Once the interviews had been edited into place around the individual archive ‘set pieces’ we then set about bringing all of these archive set pieces together to produce one coherent, flowing film.

We were lucky that the majority of our interview footage required next to no additional colouring, although our interview with Mia was initially far too warm, with the actress appearing extremely orange. Through pulling all three colour wheels away from red/orange, slightly desaturating the whole clip, and upping the whites, we were able to achieve a more natural looking setting that slots in nicely with the other two interviews we did at Cinema City (Rubik and Jacques).

To create the look of the archive footage, we ended up being accidentally experimental, for some reason having TWO colour corrections applicable to the clip as well as a customized Bad TV filter that gave the impression that this footage had been recorded on an old VHS home movie camera. Our concern was always to make the footage look distinguishable, convincing and recognisibly continuous across the entire film. Luckily, this meant we really only had to paste the attributes from the first segment of archive footage that we edited. Some saturation issues had to be resolved, and this was due to the lighting varying between scenes, but all in all, we were all very satisfied with how our archive footage ended up keeping to our 70s motif, hopefully convincingly so.

We had a few sound issues later in our post-production week, only really with the interview footage. Rubik, Mia and Dan’s interviews were all spot on for the most part, but due to incorrect settings at the time of the audio recording, we found Jacques interview a struggle to edit. It was initially very quiet, and upon bringing the levels up and compressing it to get rid of the very bassy lower end frequencies, we found ourselved facing the prospect of a very echo-y, tinny sounding Jacques. This was eventually resolved on the final day of post by reimporting the source sound and starting from scratch. First, by eliminating all noise from the audio at its original volume, and then simply raising the volume slightly until it was on par with the rest of the interviews.

The final day morning before hand in had been set aside for final tweaks, assuming that two days away from the film and fresh ears and eyes would reveal any last minute corrections we wanted to make. This was a massive mistake, and thank god we exported a version on Friday as if we had not, we would not be handing in on time. Through the movement of scratch mac files from computer to computer and the reconnection and rerendering of footage, not only was audio forced out of sync, but video filters were altered in such a confusing way that I would have never been able to back track far enough to eliminate the destructive changes that took place.

Thankfully, Phil on hand to help put everything right. As the video from Friday’s export was exactly as wanted, and the audio from Mondays tweaks included the slight changes that were wanted, it was a ‘simple’ case of exporting the audio from Monday’s edit to match the video from Friday’s export. And the film was finished and finally ready for submission. A long haul and extremely stressful, but easily the most fun I’ve had making a film, the most educational production, and in the end, a piece that I personally am extremely proud of.

Production

By the third term, it was refreshing to know that we all had a good handle on how to manage the equipment we were working with. I for one feel like I know my way around a 600D fairly well now, and through conversations with Dan (Tombs) and Liam am able to judge what kind of shutter speed, ISO level and aperture we should be filming at in any given situation. That being well and good, Dan had advised us from the outset to film our archive footage on tape. 

Our first shoot was an actorless shoot at Cinema City during which we set up lighting and camera positions that we thought would be appropriate for our interviews. Through a stroke of luck, we were able to include a auditorium house light courtesy of the Cinema City projection staff that cast a subtle red filter from the back of the room. We then set up a  bright spot stage left to light the left side of our actors’ faces, leaving the right side slightly shadowed. This was a lighting set up that we would come to employ in every interview that we shot (bar the interview with the character of ‘Dan’ that was contextually shot in a bar) to create a consistency between present day characters. This actorless shoot was originally intended to be our first proper shoot, but Stuart (2012 Jacques) requested more time to study the material. We had already booked out the equipment so proceeded to use the time as practice. Practice that would eventually save us time when our actors were on set.

The time we had available to us at Cinema City was always going to be valuable, with 2-hour slots on weekday mornings being the only time were able to book auditoriums. For obvious reasons, cinema screens are unavailable after a certain time of day. Our practice shoot meant that once on set, we knew exactly where our cameras and lights were to be stationed, and more importantly, where we wanted to record sound from. In the end, we decided to position our boom mic on a lighting stand at the feet of our interview subject pointing up at their head. It was completely out of shot and alleviated the need for someone holding a boom pole. With all of these choices made, it meant that once on set, we were rolling within half an hour of gaining access to the premises. 

Frustratingly, actor and location availability meant that our latter interviews were pushed back to the point that shooting overlapped with post production. We were able to complete our interview shoots without a glitch though, with all actors contributing many minutes of usable footage.

It should be noted that we employed a reasonably experimental shooting strategy when it came to these shoots. At least a week prior to these interviews, our actors were provided with a set of question that they would be asked, but we always insisted that the answers never had to be script perfect. There were certain gags that wanted to include based on the material we had written, but we always insisted on a certain level of improvisation. This ask worked better with certain actors, but in the end provided the sense of realism that we were aiming for, and unscripted comedy inspired by the likes of Christopher Morris and Larry Charles.

Gareth Calway and Stuart Laidlaw in particular far exceeded our expectations. They became familiar with the source material and found resonance within it. Gareth particularly, delivered his entire performance almost completely word for word without any need for improvisation. After two perfect run throughs, we requested a bit of further improvisation, but he admitted that he was so fond of his character and the content that he didnt want to stray too far from what we had asked of him.

Lucy Holden was an entirely different story. Though her audition was delightful, once on set she became a grammatically nervous wreck, often contracting herself mid-answer, making her footage the most difficult to edit as a result. In fact, we would go on to find it incredibly hard to select usable footage from her shoot. Not because she didnt understand the character, but because her delivery was so inconsistent.

Likewise, David Frost was familiar with the material but was largely unsure of his delivery. Although he nailed a few anecdotes that we had written into his material, we found it difficult to select usable clips of footage that would be coherent within the story that we were trying to tell.

Shooting the ‘archive’ footage was like shooting a completely different film. And in a way, that was the angle that we were going for. We were trying to create something that appeared as if it was filmed in the late-70s on an amateur home movie camera. They were meant to be candid moments that were entirely unscripted and unrehearsed.

They way we approached these shoots was rather risky. Rather than any type of storyboarding, we simply wrote detailed situational breakdowns and presented them to the actors. There were gags that we knew we wanted to include, but like with the interviews we always wanted the humour to come naturally and not appeared pre-meditated. Before each take, we would read the paragraph long scene breakdown to the actors and feed them specific details that we wanted them to included. After each take, we would feed them more and more based on the performances they were giving. This made directing (personally) incredibly fun, being able to feed lines and jokes to the actors between takes based on the direction the takes were going.

Toby Price ended up being incredible as our 1979 Rubik, and bears a startling resemblance to his 2012 counterpart, Gareth. He responded to direction with enjoyable intent and although not a self-proclaimed actor, he has a wonderful talent for not only acting, but improvisation and I would jump over fences to work with him again. Likewise, Dan Stockman (1979 Dan) became a different person in front of a camera. An amusing and chilled out guy off camera, he somehow managed to produce comic timing that a first year director could only dream of. Unfortunately, takes had to be cut mid way through as a result of my not being able to keep it together.

The locations provided a wonderful sense of production value, and all in all, we were able to film around 45 minutes of usable footage, the majority of which we will have been disappointed to not have used.  

Pre Production

After a lengthy and slightly unorthodox (and unnecessarily drawn out) selection process, a production group of six was selected. We were to be known at Group 2B, and it consisted of myself initially, and I was lucky enough to be ‘chosen’ by Georgie Oatley and Elliot Pace (who I had approached beforehand about collaborating with and who thankfully were still up for working with me), as well as Dan Stockmann and Joshua Stack. The latter two being slight enigmas as far as the year group was concerned. I had barely spoken to either of them up to that point, but still felt complimented that after the afternoon-long selection process, they decided to join the group that I was assembling. David Deacon was also assigned to our group after the fact.

We met a few times in the week that followed to brainstorm various ideas. The first meeting was more about genre selection than anything, and we initially had narrowed it down to sci-fi and documentary. After discussing possibilities within both of those genres, we decided that a documentary would not only be fun and challenging, but would be good practice for the documentary unit of Year 2. 

I was never sure as to whether being selected as a ‘producer’ meant that I had any more responsibility than anyone else in the group, but even so, I felt that my age (as much as it dismayed me) might have been useful in terms of an unspoken leadership in these early stages. I never assigned myself this role, but nevertheless was happy to accept responsibility for the group and the ups and downs that would follow. I would be the first to describe myself as outspoken and opinionated, and in years gone by those character traits have not always worked in my favour. Being that way works in some situations, but not in others. I believe though, that within filmmaking, taking charge of situations for the sake of moving things along should be encouraged. This was something that over the course of the production I would be happy to practice.

At our second group meeting, we discussed possible documentary subjects and landed on the following as potential possibilities:

1. White Collar Fight Clubs
2. The Curious Survival of a Local Independent Stationary Retailer
3. The KONY Awareness Project
4. A Day In The Life Of A Local Comedian In The Hours Leading Up To A Performance

The comedian idea being the subject of our first pitch. As a group, we didn’t feel as if the time we were given prior to the pitch was quite enough time to make an informed decision with regards to the subject that we wanted to tackle, and if I’m honest, our first pitch was simply something we put together for the sake of the pitch. We never intended to follow through with the comedian idea, but we wanted to produce an educated pitch that demonstrated the kind of research we were doing into the documentary genre.

The day after the pitch, ‘Wednesday Screening Chris’ (don’t know his surname) entered one of our brainstorming sessions in C-12. He had obviously expected a larger group of students for his Wednesday screening and stumbled across the five of us (David was absent from this meeting). We told him why we were there and what kind of ideas we had been discussing and asked him if he had any documentary features in the catalogue of DVDs he had brought along with him. He left us with a few, but the one that generated the most interest within the group was a film called ‘Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream’ by Stuart Samuels. It was a documentary feature comprised mainly of interviews and archive footage that featured the likes of John Waters, Alejandro Jodorowsky, George A. Romero, Richard O’Brien and David Lynch. It offered eye opening insight into the world of midnight movies and the impact it had on the cinema going public in the 70s. Films like ‘El Topo’, ‘Pink Flamingos’ and ‘Eraserhead’ opened up a world of possibilities in terms of feature film content, and it was intriguing to hear the films’ makers speaking so candidly about their experiences. They addressed everything from the production to release struggles, and something about this film struck a chord with all of us.

As soon as the film concluded, we were all buzzing with excitement. After seeing such raw footage (from many films none of us had ever seen), we knew that we wanted to make a midnight movie. They are elements of a midnight movie that define it as a genre, and we were all in agreeance that it was something we wanted to explore further. The comedian idea was immediately forgotten, and we were all excited about something, and it felt fantastic to witness that kind of unified enthusiasm about a project.

But we still were fascinated with the idea of a documentary. We had already done a week’s research on the genre, and the whole reason we were exposed to ‘Midnight Movies’ was because of our interest in the documentary genre. So, we discussed the possibility of producing a film about a midnight movie. The idea was that we would create a fictional film, fictional filmmaker characters and a fictional level of success for the ‘midnight movie’ that we would birth. Out of nowhere, ‘Orangutang Bangarang’ was conceived.

In terms of style, the segment of ‘Midnight Movies’ that stood out the most was the chapter dedicated to John Waters and the making of ‘Pink Flamingos’. While other segments focused on interviews with the director while showing clips of the actual film itself, we were allowed access to on-set home movie footage of ‘Pink Flamingos’ being put together. For whatever reason, this stuck out particularly, and we had our plot.

We decided that we would invent a film and the history behind it and then film in two different ‘eras’. We were going to cast two actors to play each of our characters. The present day filmmakers would be interviewed to recal their time on set in the form of actors aged 50-60, while actors aged 19-25 would portray their 1979 counterparts who would be shot as if they were ‘on-set’ putting the ‘ultracult’ film together. This meant a casting challenge in terms of finding two sets of actors that bore resemblance to one another, but also a challenge as far as creating ‘aged’ footage was concerned. Both were challenges that we were more than happy to accept.

Writing our film became enormous fun. Once we established names and roles for our characters, we came together to create not only a world for them to live in, but entire back stories for individual characters that would come to be integral to how we expected our actors to present their characters. We had a self-obsessed director, a timid producer who was quietly in love with him, the actress that was the director’s muse, and no-name actors who were forced to take part as a result of a tragic primate death.

Although I originally pitched the name and loose plot of the faux film, most of us played a massive part in the writing of the characters. We started by taking our character back stories (as far back as how they came to meet at St. Martin’s College) and writing a series of questions that we would pitch to them in their ‘present-day’ interviews. These questions were based on the biography of the characters and their relationships. As a result of this, we hoped that if we were able to draw the performances out of our actors, we would be able to edit something that was coherent across our board of characters, that their responses would match up with the answers and anecdotes given by everyone.

I proceeded to write the interviews for Rubik Winstanley (director) and Jacques Mignon (his right hand man and executive producer), while Georgie wrote the interviews for Mia Rosenbaum (actress/muse) and Elliot wrote Dan Manstock (actor). Splitting the writing this way meant that more senses of humour were incorporated into the script and would hopefully provide a broader chance of laughs.

We began to cast. Obviously there are faces that pop up a lot in NUCA films and we wanted to try and avoid that as much as possible as we felt that we really could create a alternate world for our characters to live in if we were able to produce an unrecognisable cast. The only notable face that I am aware of is that of David Frost (or David Norfolk as he prefers to be called for some reason) who has previously appeared in ‘False Reading’. He was cast as the 2012 Dan Manstock (the actor who portrays the lead orangutang in our fake film), while we were able to cast the magnificent Gareth Calway as 2012 Rubik Winstanley and the enigmatic Lucy Holden as 2012 Mia Rosenbaum. I, personally took a rather massive gamble casting Stuart Laidlaw as 2012 Jacques Mignon simply because of the drastic age gap between he and the other 2012 actors. As he is only in his mid-30s, I still found him to be appropriate for the role for two reason; a) he is Canadian as the role of Jacques was orignally intended, and b) his character is extremely gay and without applying stereotypes, we thought that his character may have been more image concious over the years than the other filmmakers which would justify his more youthful appearance. Whether or not this would work would have to be discovered in the moment.

In terms of the 1979 counterparts, the character of Rubik Winstanley was a no-brainer following a photograph of one of Elliot’s friends being presented to the group. Image wise, he was exactly what we envisioned Rubik to look like. Turtleneck and glasses, and a sharp jaw. I pitched the idea of Helen Anderson as Mia which again went down fine with the group. She had the youthful exuberance and floaty hair that we expected from a newly de-flowered muse. For some unknown reason, Dan offered his dramatic services to the dual roles of Dan and Jay Manstock (twins) who would be playing the male lead in ‘Orangutang Bangarang’.

Location-wise, we always had two in mind. The present day interviews we hoped would be filmed at Cinema City, and the ‘archive’ set footage at the Victorian plantation gardens in Norwich. Thankfully, Georgie had some pre-existing connections at Cinema City and they were more than happy to oblige us whenever they were available, which turned out to be most mornings between 930 and 1130.

The plantation gardens were similarly accepting of our proposal and gave us free run of their location provided we left the location in the same state that we found it and donated to their garden in the form of two pounds a head. Actors and crew combined, this came to around 18 pounds, so we happily budgeted 20 pounds on account of their support of our film.

We bought toy guns and painted them silver, and a 18 pound (!) monkey mask. Then, we  proceeded to shoot.

Non-Narrative Production Diary + Reflection

Pre-production

The non-narrative way of thinking is not something I’d really considered before the commencement of this term. I had always been focused on the idea of telling a story. Now, I was faced with the somewhat daunting prospect of trying to tell a some sort of story, or at least make some sort of statement/point using a form of presentation I’d never tried.

What started as frustration soon turned into excitement though as we began to explore the non-narrative form. We were lucky enough to be exposed to a variety of non-narrative pieces through the term’s Wednesday screenings with Chris. And though some of the things we were shown were challenging to the point of frustration at the time (the famous work of John Cage, to name one), it is evident looking back at the term that simple exposure to the format has had an effect on the way we got to thinking about the film we were being expected to produce.

Two places we drew influence from were the works of Oskar Fischinger and Norman Mclaren. For me, these two artists opened up my creative mind to the idea of an abstract audiovisual communication. Fischinger’s experiments with visual music in the late forties (or, his ‘Early Abstractions’) ended up lending themselves directly to the theme of ‘rhythm’ that we would eventually focus on in our final piece. Whilst it would be very easy to lose yourself in the abstract, non-narrative world and produce something that is (and I quote my peers) a ‘mash-up’, Fischinger’s work was testament to honest correlation between what your viewer is seeing and what they are hearing. That correlation is something that we would come to consider crucial to the way we edited both our sound and our visuals.

Mclaren’s influence is also immediately evident in our film. In fact, there were ideas borrowed from his 1971 film ‘Synchromy’ that reveal themselves within the first minute of the piece as appearingly random falling drops of melted snow are married to a range of electronic beeps. While there is no defined or trackable rhythm (they are just drops of water falling from a roof after all), the brain cannot help but accept that there is some kind of consistency to it. As both the video and audio clips are looped, upon hearing it repeated, the unnatural rhythm it does possess is able to become familiar to the listener and therefore they may (or may not) be able to accept it as natural as the film progresses.

Initially, what we wanted to do was create a sort of freeform, split screen documentary of the seaside town of Wells-next-the-sea, concentrating our efforts on the themes of nature, industry and community. We set aside time in the Cavendish Building (C12) to indulge ourselves in a screening of Simon Pummells' 'Bodysong' (2003) that chronicled (through over an hour of archive footage) human life from birth to death, dialogueless, accompanied on by an original musical score from Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead.

While this particular film provided endless encouragement in terms of our understanding of the non-narrative form, strangely enough it was in the trailer that we discovered how we wanted to 'not tell' our 'story' through the use of split screen visual editing.

The trailer for 'Bodysong' highlights segments from the film in a progressive split screen form that advertises each chapter of the film from birth to death. Though only a few minutes long, the trailer features original musical accompaniment, and in many ways is a non-narrative piece all of it's own.

Production

We were much looking forward to filming in Wells as it is a true seaside town with a rich history and spectacular scenery. We had our three themes in mind had a structured game plan in terms of how and where we wanted to shoot. Unexpectedly, our day of shooting landed right in the middle of this winter's only real bout of snowfall. That particular occurrence along with the fact that we were shooting during the day in midweek made for an experience that took some adapting to.

Whereas we had originally planned to shoot with three separate mindsets, the snow and lack of people meant that we were faced with a cold, barren setting that immediately required rethinking. Abandonment soon became a familiar feeling, and our concentration soon turned to the lack communal sense in a town that had previously prided itself on providing an exciting family oriented atmosphere.

I'm sure that none of the Wells 'summer magic' has been lost in any way, shape, or form, but the winter non-wonderland that we encountered on our visit surprisingly enabled us to think about the social issues that we would eventually want to put across in our film.

The sense of community in this country used to be noteworthy. Neighbourhoods used to band together in response to the friendships of the children that inhabited it, and the town hall was the central hub of activity on most evenings and weekends. In recent years though, we have become a nation of conservative, overly political correct people who don't know the names of the people living next door to us. We keep to ourselves and concern ourselves more and more with paranoid privacy and financial security with each passing, cash-guzzling Christmas.

These thoughts, as political and opinionated as they may be, began to become a focal point for our shoot. We knew that what we were shooting was never going to tell a story, but as we garnered more and more footage, a point began to form. Rather than a narrative, we started to think about a statement of sorts that we would be able to convey through a strong communication between the visual and audio aspects of our production. Keeping only the visuals in mind, we proceeded to shoot in both 28mm and 50mm formats keeping in mind the themes of social neglect and disintegration. We explored every corner of the town which featured industrial hotspots, abandoned playgrounds, and points of natural beauty; the setting providing the visual canvas on which we were able to paint a cold, abstract picture that highlights how British values have evolved in the last 50 years.

Post production

Post-production was always where this film was going to find its shape. We had never planned to record live sound in Wells, as we always wanted to propose a modernistic, 21st century influenced sound design to compliment our traditional visual style. In an industry that (in music) is dominated by the same four, computer generated and vocoded chords, and (in film) post processed, trend-fucking 3D cash cows, we wanted to identify the current social state of the country (and how the country defines art) through a bold audiovisual communication. This was always going to be a tough ask, especially considering that the last thing we wanted to do was fall into the trap of 'messy pretensiousness'.

So the idea of a somewhat coherent rhythm returned to the forefront of our minds. We decided that we wanted to take sounds that were apparently random and unconnected and marry them to a visual progression that was both challenging and socially relevant.

We filmed a progressive tracking shot from a car window that documents Wells from the town centre, along the boardwalk until we finally made our way to the seafront that is (much like our theme) completely detached from the greasy spoon, stick of rock town centre. This journey is the basis of our film (the only one of ten sequences that doesn't loop) and signifies the distance between commercialism and natural tradition that we wanted to highlight.

With this snow-laden backdrop in place, nine individual clips begin to introduce themselves every 20 seconds once the film is underway. Once the 3x3 focal points were in place visually, we were able to start thinking about how the introduction of different sounds would sonically echo the ever changing visual progression of our film.

We originally challenged ourselves to make this film a performance piece. There would be nine sounds against a melodic drone background, all within the realms of live performance. What we wanted to do was select these individual sounds and then perform them in a foley environment in real time without any kind of loop. We thought that this would provide a natural sound design that would stand out over the course of 3-4 minutes. Upon realising the mechanics of our visual edit though, we once again began to consider our original ideas concerning rhythm, and (somewhat boldly, I suppose) decided that like the visual edit, we wanted to experiment with a kind of forced familiarity over a period of time.

What started as a base drone became an expansive sonic trial. We used this project as a chance to try things out as far as Soundtrack Pro was concerned. Having enjoyed success in our on location, live sound recordings for our narrative piece, we elected to do the exact opposite for our non narrative sound design. Purely for the sake of experimenting with a different practice altogether, the sound of 'Community Moderne: Values Flail' is comprised entirely of sounds provided by the Soundtrack Pro sound library. The simple reason for this is that there were so many kinds of sound that we wanted to manipulate and then include in our final piece. Many of these sounds could well have been recorded live, but there was a precise mechanical crispness to many of the used effects that I felt were synthetically important to realising the modernistic criticism that the film addresses.

The point of the film was always to lightly highlight the past while being cynical of the present, and the almost ironic use of pre-recorded sounds only poked fun at an entertainment industry that is making millions of dollars from recycled ideas and regurgitated riffing. Where we lacked in original recordings, I feel like we made up for in the way that our sounds were manipulated and then strategically placed within a stereo space to directly correspond with our visual edit.

The one thing that I am truly proud of with this film is the way in which we were able to shift visual and aural focus of the course of the film. Sounds are introduced with an immediate permanence. You will hear it for as long as you choose to before moving on to another sound, or another image. A minute later, you may find yourself dragged back to focusing on that same sound. That one individual sound will never have wavered or shifted, it will have remained constant. Whilst we are pleased with the final mix, we hope to have offered our listeners the chance to create their own 'mix' through our careful consideration of levelling and panning.

As this term concludes, I am pleased to have made a non-narrative film that I personally understand and feel capable of explaining to people who may ask me about it. It is a format that I was completely unfamiliar with only two months ago, but now feel confident in returning to.