Transition | Development

Since pitching our idea, we have made a number of significant changes to the original idea.  Crucially we were still making a mockumentary, but we were changing the style from the BBC history documentary style to factual entertainment style, drawing from 'Supervet' and '24 Hours in A&E'.


I watch Supervet from time to time, and I thought that there was a lot of potential from twisting the show into a comedy by making the vet completely incompetent, but with the same air of confidence we see with the real Dr Noel Fitzpatrick.  I began developing the concept and played around with potential ideas by watching through some episodes to pick out key points we could draw out and twist into a more comedic angle.  Here is what I noticed:

• The show follows a very structured narrative style: it will start with establishing the day at the vet practice, followed by an introduction of a patient with their backstory (which can often be a sob story of some description), we then enter the consultation room where the vet investigates the problem, he then performs the treatment on the animal, and will either end with an emotional montage of the animal, either happily recovering from the surgery or remembering the pet that has sadly died.  These are all overlaid with interviews with other vets, Noel himself, and pet owners.
• Fixed cameras are placed throughout the surgery, although it is clear there are some pickups used for some shots.
• Noel has some little quirks which make him more interesting to watch, for example, drawing free hand sketches to show the problem rather than relying on graphics.
• Noel is also very confident, and can sometimes come across as a little arrogant, but that does not diminish his passion for the animals he treats.

I would like to twist some of these tropes, for example, by taking away the compassionate attitude toward the animals, this could make the vet character more entertaining as he does not care what he is doing.  I would also like to make my vet character incompetent, so humour could be found in what he or she gets wrong when treating the animals.

Moving forward, we will be basing our mockumentary on this style of film rather than the Philomena Cunk style, so we will need to shoot the film using a lot more static shots and in a more 'fly on the wall' style instead of a presenter-led piece as we were initially planning.