Mocumentary - not documentary!

Kerry and I came up with a fantastic documentary and since our genre we are working on for our wiki chapter is mocumentaries, we figured we'd better make a mocumentary, not a documentary.

Our mocumentary is going to be about the year in the lives of the U of M English EdHD students and professors. Kerry is going to cover the mocumentary from the student's point of view and I am going to cover it from the professor's point of view. Together we think we might just have a pretty funny mocumentary on our hands!

I like the Christopher Guest mocumentaries because he gently pokes fun at his subjects but still makes them sympathetic and likeable. That is how I would like to depict the professors in our mocumentary. The main point that I would like to get across is that our professors are hard working teachers who also have the pressures of research and publication on their backs. These two very different jobs are at odds as they shepherd a cohort through the year. Publicaton deadlines and consulting jobs sometimes get in the way of teaching - and sometimes the students become the researchers or research subjects for the professors - with hilarious results! The main point of the documentary is that all of us are human, student and professor and we all have to forgive each other for our conflicting desires.

Interviewing the professors (of course the interviews would be loosely scripted, mocumentary style) would be a must. The interviews would be dead-pan, revealing, and funny. Our mocumentary will include shots of the teachers complaing about students, getting frustrated with students, teaching, and of course, touching moments with students. I think one of the main difficulties would be getting our professors to be a part of our mocumentary - wait! it's a mocumentary, we can hire actors!! The professors will be stereotypical and over the top, like the characters in Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind.

Kerry's part of the mocumentary will be about the cohort itself - which will be even more scathing and funnier than the professor's part. Go to fnewstrom's blog to see what she's got in mind.