When I first decided on this initial concept, it was because it was something I hadn’t done yet in film making; a comedy that also has underline and themes about the risked of ignoring mental health issues, The final product did greatly resemble what I had envisioned but has much more emphasis on the mental illness themes than there is on the silly slapstick. For example, there was going to be a lot more physical jokes like the one on the swing, such as running into a wall, jumping off a ledge or shouting at animals to get them to obey him, but in the final product there are interview with loved ones and even a professionals input in trying to understand his case.

Originally, the Practitioner I intended to resemble the most was Andy Samberg, because he has actually made Mockumentary style films before; 7 Days in Hell and Tour de Pharmacy. I was going to try using a similar sort of cinematography and character writing , and also a plot that had the same absurdest energy. But after some development in the script writing, I realised that my style of comedic writing was more slow paced and shared the spotlight with the other themes used, sometimes even blending with them, like the Father character being so over the top with his bad attitude.

This was more akin to a Ricky Gervais production rather than Andy Samberg, so I decided to divert from my origin intentions and focus more on focus more on him for most of the technical elements as well, using transitions and shot composition that often appears in his works; most prominently in the Office, which I hadn’t seen prior. This revelation rendered my research on what make a successful Mockumentary some what less useful, because I realised that the whole would likely end up better if it came entirely from me and not me trying to openly mock something by emulating it, which is actually why I decided that there weren’t going to be any superheroes in the film.

The target audience was teenagers and young adult, due to the intention for a quick pace and physical comedy, but after the changes to the concept that occurred in the writing, it seemed as if that might have to change as well. After some more altercations to the script and a second look at the information I did have on my demographic (which was very lacking, I should have done a better job gathering data), it didn’t really change as much, but rather, appeals in a different way; using darker, more subtle humour and using it more to emphasize the severity of the main characters mental illness.

I believe that this production best shows off my abilities in writing and editing rather than my skills in cinematography and directing. When I was filming with my actors, I didn’t pick the best time to shoot many of the scene that were outdoors. The strong winds meant that between several takes, we had to reset the main actors costume (he had a cape), and also rendered much of the audio unusable or needing to be heavily edited. Also, I did a somewhat poor job of timetabling my actors, as we were supposed to have all the needed footage after one weekend of filming; but then an actor cancelled on the second day and the week that I was supposed to spend getting the editing out of the way early had to used for other work.

When the second half filming began on the rescheduled date (a week later and in the midst of other work), I had trouble properly directing one of my actors (Patrick) and getting the delivery I wanted out of him, as he was on his own timetable and had to leave immediately after his scenes were done. It also became apparent towards the end of filming that nobody was really enjoying themselves and we were all running low on energy, even before the shoot began. Thankfully, this issue didn’t stand out too greatly in the final product, but it was reasonable for one of my biggest gripes with the film; the two separate occasions of reused footage.

Because we were all so tired, we didn’t record a great deal of filler shots for when the Narrator was explaining something, so when the time came to edit, I didn’t have enough different shots to fill the time and had to either hold on a shot for as long as I could without it lingering too long, or take the shavings from a different shot and use that instead. All these things might have been failings on my filming and planning abilities, but ultimately they helped me learn more about problem solving in post; editing out bad sounds, filling a time frame while keeping a consistent flow and even capitalizing on the mistakes of my actors, such as the times when Jago’s cape flew into his face.

After I had finished the final edit and uploaded it, I wasn’t really sure if the whole thing actually worked as a realistic documentary or was at all funny (I had seen the it too many times to laugh at anything), but after screen the film and receiving feedback, I quite happy with the final product, which is good, because I lost all the raw footage shortly after uploading this version when trying to transfer it to a different hard drive.

If I were to redo this with more time with my actors, I would have collected more footage of the main character doing silly slapstick, and also would have recorded more of the audio to sync up with video, specifically the outdoors scenes so that I wouldn’t have to deal with erasing all that wind sound, and also the scene in the office, as I couldn’t find any way to get rid of the large amount of echo, even though I was told that it adds the feel of a doctors office.

If I had a bigger budget, there really wouldn’t have been much change. Documentaries don’t typically have a budget of anything other that paying the crew and the editors, where as Mockumentaries are actually full productions with actors, make up, props and sometimes effects. In my production, the only thing I had to pay for was the main characters costume, which was supposed to look cheap (all the props where items I already owned), so all I would really have to do with a bigger budget would be to give my actors more incentive to priorities my production.

I Think the thing I learned most from this project is the importance of a well thought out production schedule; when organizing with my actors, I neglected to find out what else that had planned at other times in case we did need to reschedule, check the weather reports for anything other than rain, properly test every bit of equipment I had been given (most of it worked, some of it was just every poor quality (tie mic are terrible)).