Transition | The Pitch

Katie, Melissa and I had each agreed to go forward with a 'Cunk on Britain'-style mockumentary.

Our film would be a 3-4 minute long scene from Moments of Wonder from Charlie Brooker's Yearly Wipe, but I would rewrite the scene in my own style.  We would aim to keep the same subject matter and facts but change the character and I would add my own jokes.  The character would be naive, like Philomena Cunk, but with a different personality.  Here is the scene we would be adapting:



Alex (Writer/Director)
I would be responsible for a number of things in the project, in particular, writing the script, planning the shoots and directing the project during production and post-production.

Melissa (Editor)
As editor, Melissa would be responsible for editing the film under my direction, including organising the footage, colour grading and audio mixing.

Katie (Director of Photography)
Katie would be working with the cameras, and was in charge of deciding how to shoot the scenes, in terms of lighting, camera movement and framing, again, under my direction.

We would all be taking a level of responsibility with regards to producing the film, as we did not have a producer.  Therefore, locations, scheduling and budgeting would be a group effort.

We researched into the mockumentary genre, looking at 'Cunk On...', Charlie Brooker's 'Yearly Wipe', 'Come Fly With Me', and arguably the first mockumentary, 'This is Spinal Tap'.  The main realisation from our research is that the comedy came from how the directors stuck to style of a documentary overlaid with the obscure characters which took real or believable facts you would expect in a documentary and added colourful and naive characters for the humour to shine through.



After pitching our idea, we got some useful feedback to take forward with our idea.

Simon suggested that for me to get a better taste of writing, we should come up with our own subject matter and research for our film instead of just re-writing the original scene.  He also made it clear that it was vital to cast actors that could deliver a funny and believable performance for the comedy to shine through.