James Cotter
Saturday 20th June 2009 7:52pm
Exeter, Devon
1,594 posts
Quote: Matthew Stott @ June 20 2009, 4:13 PM BST
Well done on making it, and I can certainly see the potential there. My biggest worry for this would be that the style you've gone for feels very 'done' at the moment. The feel and style just feel too familiar, too much like other mockumentary series that we've had. Mockumentaries themselves are sort of played out at the moment I think, that's certainly what I've gleaned from my experience of talking to producers. They're very much out of vogue and that could count against you. I'm sure you're going to keep right ahead with the path you've chosen, and if you do it well I'm sure there will be producers out there willing to go to bat for it, but if I were you I would have tried to fashion a more straight ahead sitcom and dropped the mockumentary angle.
Best of luck with it!
That's certainly my view to. The reason we've filmed it in this style is we only had a short three day shoot and as everyone knows it's the easy thing to shoot in a short while. Plus we're not amateurs but we're also not professionals either so we both have a backgrounds in mockumentaries so for us it give us more time to focus on the comedy.
I think no matter how good a mockumentary is, it will be always in the shadow of 'The Office'. It's like doing a brand new hotel based sitcom is always going to be not as good as 'Fawlty Towers'.
Myself and my co-writer have been discussing this for quite a while, with me very much in favour of doing a sitcom because I think the characters are suited to it especially my character Mark Rodgers.
Quote: Lazzard @ June 20 2009, 4:42 PM BST
There's a nice story playing out here.
I do think you should - actually, strike that - MUST try stripping out the 'mockumentary' angle and try to write/film it as a character based sit-com.
I know it's a tempting style because it lends itself to low-budget,wobbly cameras and dodgy sound BUT it is v. out of fashion at the moment.
EDIT
Like what he said.
Like I just said to Matthew Stott we (especially me) want to do a out and out sitcom because we have a great storyline running through out the series we have written. I've already explained our reasons for filming in this style and hope with a good budget and a good producer we make a good sitcom.