Documentary is a non-fiction movie with the purpose to educate and inform the audience about nature, history or cultures and show events about that specific topic it is set on. A mockumentary also is classified as a documentary sub genre, but its purpose is to mock documentaries or doing the same thing as documentaries, only in a comical/humorous way.
 |
| Fig 1: Poster. |
Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's What We Do In The Shadows (2014) is a mocumentary film, that follows the everyday life of 4 vampire flatmates, as they go along with their days. The vampires are Viago, Vladislav, Deacon and Petyr, who share a flat in nowadays New Zealand. The most of the film just shows them living their life, hanging out or trying to get into nightclubs and luring people into their house to feed on them. But lots of things change when a human 'who they originally targeted as prey, is turned into a vampire by Petyr. Now he is a new member of the flatmates, and he often brings along his human friend Stu.
The film is set out as a documentary film, that follows a specific person or group of people around with a camera, where they show what they do in their everyday life. But instead of some celebrities or somewhat extraordinary people, we are presented with clearly fictional creatures, as the few vampires show the crew and therefore the audience around the house and talk to the camera as if they were answering the questions on an interview.
It is rather a comedic factor to watch and follow these vampires as they try to get into nightclubs, but are always rejected. Knowing that they are some supernatural creatures who can manipulate, levitate, and transform, it just becomes much more entertaining seeing them have a house meeting about such an ordinary thing, such as doing the dishes, (which was not done by the 'young' two-hundred-years old vampire for five years). Or one of them laying newspaper down to protect the couch from mess when he is about to kill a person.
As often seen in these type of person centred documentaries, they have voice overs of what was happening at specific events and their feelings about and towards them. As for example, we know that not all of them are very happy about Nick joining them as a new vampire, as he is supposed to keep it as a secret, but he keeps talking about it openly; which is clearly stated by another vampire that it is forbidden to do and he is not happy about the newcomer. While Stu, who is very much still a human, and is not supposed to even know about vampires is allowed to hang out with them; as explained by many characters during voice overs, Stu is very liked and they are happy that he is around.
 |
| Fig 2: The vampires talk about Stu, as if in an interview. |
Furthermore, the camera does look like it is often hand held, like in most of these type of documentaries and the lighting does appear to be often created by one light source that was following them around (with the crew). When the vampires are met with a pack of werewolves they are shown to have tension between them, and as the bunch of men turn into werewolves, the camera seems to move as if a person was running away as well, or the camera is moving too fast as it is shaken, blurring sometimes what was happening.
List of Illustration
Figure 1: Poster. (online) At: http://chriscrespo.com/review-what-we-do-in-the-shadows/ (Accessed on 16/11/2017)
Figure 2: The vampires talk about Stu, as if in an interview. [online gif] At: https://giphy.com/gifs/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-iIQ9Uqx9H8KrK (Accessed on 16/11/2017)
No comments:
Post a Comment