Editing

First Draft: 

With editing, this is where a bulk of my decisions were decided with the product. While I had most of the stuff envisioned, I hadn't thought about the details in full until now, because this is where everything needs to be complete. All image references are from "Image References: Editing".

First off, to edit the disclaimer. (1) I started with the background, which was a starry background, because is looked rather generic but interesting enough. In time with the narration "The Featured Event's" and "Featured Disclaimer" I had swipe on the screen with about a three frame transition, slowly moved across and then disappeared after three frames at the end. The font I decided to use was Blondi, because it had a very commanding and aggressive appearance. The pure white contrasted with the black outline that made the text look defined, and this pattern would be kept throughout the rest of the clip. (2) "Disclaimer that disclaims" had a similar effect, but with a vertical entrance as opposed to the horizontal one from before. However here, I decided to also include the disclaimers that might be mentioned in an actual disclaimer like seizures, and a joke one that would then have a line appear through it, "Mediocrity". This was intended to create humor. (3) From here, a transparent skull comes from the back to the front, fading in and out. This is to make things appear more sinister than they actually are going to be, as the skull represents the negativity, but the transparency reveals there's nothing to be afraid of. (4) This then is followed by "Featured" and the Splatoon clip coming on screen at an angle. The angle is meant to be mocking of how some clips in films are slanted just for variety's sake. After that, they both spin into the background and then consecutive Chihiro's from Danganronpa appear on screen. (5) How I achieved this affect was by planning one's pattern across the screen, and keyframing four points in it, duplicating the image and then cutting each ones movement after one of those points. On Italian, I then have Waluigi's head stick in on the side because he's one of the most recognizable Italian stereotypes in media. On "Dante", he walks across the screen (6), an effect I achieved through keyframing the horizontal movement, then every few frames alternating the angle. On "it'll be here soon", the background starts to fade out, ready for "Here it comes", where the actual disclaimer starts to rise from the bottom till it hits the top. The disclaimer then has a wall of text appear with the words "This film features naughty words" repeated over and over, with multiple walls of text and a glitchy sound effect to create a sense of confusion. (7) I achieved this effect by layering multiple walls of text scrolling up over eachother, and then altering the amount of tracks playing it as well as the start and points of it. The words if made out cause humor, as well as the audio which when reversed is "Buy our merchandise", mocking subliminal advertising in mainstream media.

As the final wall of text scrolls up, beneath it the first live-action shot comes up. (8) This was meant to be a transition into it, which I feel looks smooth enough. For this shot, the audio I felt was a little distorted because of movement, so half of it I re-recorded in post, the dialogue in it. I felt the chair squeak was quite nice, as it was diegetic. (9) From here, the shot crossfades with an image of a family watching TV, because it matches with the dialogue. The zoom on the TV is meant to symbolize that it's the focus. I also decided to make the image black and white, to show that it was from a long time ago. Upon the transition as well, the first bit of music I wanted to use starts playing, "Verdanturf Town - Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire". I decided on this due to it's relaxing tone, slow pacing and how simple it sounds, matching with talking about Drake's childhood. It then crossfades into another image of a child holding a Gameboy Advance, but zooms out from it being close to the gameboy, creating a reversal of the previous effect (10). During this part, the boxart of Pokemon Emerald flies across to center screen and then zooms in, placing emphasis on this game (11), signifying it's nostalgic impact to Drake, especially with how it's in colour unlike the background, which shows how this game brought colour into his life. We then cut straight to the second live action shot (12), a shot of Drake presenting Emerald to the camera. This hands on approach gives a more personal interaction, and seeing someone interact with a given thing creates a more attached feeling, i.e. a child, dog, etc.

Then, to transition, Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards fly across the screen, to reach a crab shot of part of Drake's room (13), showing off his amiibo collection accompanied once again by the non-diegetic voice over. The choice to transition with the Yu-Gi-Oh cards was done because there wasn't a natural transition to a scene in the same area that also moved, so the choice of Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards added momentum to it and also felt like it wasn't out of place. It then fades to a tilting shot of another part of Drake's room (14), that shows of his game consoles as well as his TV, which is playing RWBY. Both this, and the previous shot were sped up, in order for the first to look less stable, so it looked more amateurish, an idea I wanted to experiment with as somewhat of a mocking joke, and the second to just flow at a better pace. From here, we fade to a pedestal shot of Drake's game collection (15), which hold the same idea as the last two. From here, it fades to a collection of game footage, first Xenoblade, then Persona. The abundance of fades is because I felt that since it was just exploration of the room, it needed to be samey, and Xenoblade and Persona have this too because they're the first games shown like this. However, the next transition is a linear wipe from left to right to reveal Rashid from Street Fighter V. (16) The choice of this is because it contrasts with Rashid's movements as it now appears that he rolls out from behind the wipe, creating a dynamic switch that I'm a fan of. From here, it fades to Blazblue, and the does an iris transition to Death Parade. (17) The iris transition is a where a clip fades and another emerges thanks to an expanding circle from center, which I absolutely loved because it made it look like the clip was emerging from the moon in Blazblue.

From here, it does a few more fades until Drake says the word "Gatchaman", at which point the music which had been playing throughout fades out, signalling a change of pace. From here, we straight cut to another live-action shot (18) where Drake says "Go, Bird!" followed by the non-diegetic music of Gatchaman Crowds: "Gatchaman ~ In The Name of Love". The choice of this song comes down to the fact it's faster paced, relevant to what was just mentioned and can begin from any point the word "Gatchaman" is yelled out, which is perfect for transitioning in. Once it comes in, it's quite loud, until the voice-over starts, which it turns down in a snap. From here, it flashes to white into the Vocaloid section (19), which matches the Gatchaman theming of transformation, as it looks like the video is transforming. The Vocaloid sections follows the similar idea of previous sections, with jump cuts, fades, etc, with a voice over, but how it transitions to the first special guest (20) is through a similar transition to the trading cards, only this time is images of icons in media communities. J.R.R. Tolkien for books, Satoru Iwata for gaming, Hideo Kojima for gaming and Mew2King for e-sports. The RabbidLuigi shot is one of my favorite in the entire thing, because of how broken it was when it was put into editing. I can't identify how the problem was caused, but what it became I was a fan of, because it looks like a transmission. As a transmission, it makes it seem like it is a really special guest that went out of his way, which combined with RabbidLuigi's condescending ego, it emphasizes his grandness by effectively making him look awful. The text is in the font "Century", which is rather formal and represents the "specialness" of the special guests. It fades on screen for a few frames, it fades out. To transition to the next clip, the second special guest Giovanni, (21), I use the Venetian Blinds, where it fades in from a specific angle with a specific movement. I use it because it at least looks more varied than a fade. For this guest, as he's speaking in a different language, along with his introductory text which is the same as Rabbid, he also has subtitle text which starts at the top until the intro text disappears, and then appears at the bottom. This text is in the font Plantagenet Cherokee, and instead of matching the white and black color scheme as seen before, I chose a yellow and black color scheme. The reason I chose this is because it is a clear distinction to what's already established through text, showing the more individual feel it has for Giovanni, this is his text and what he is saying. The transition to guest 3, Sharla, (22) is 3D Blinds, that seem out of place but it's better than a standard wipe. Now here, I want to point out what edits I do. The text. Nothing else. The reason for this is for a reason I haven't stated earlier, entirely my fault, but this is because of the fact I didn't have a good time to talk about it, as Sharla wasn't a character conceptualized in the original planning state. Her enthusiasm for something the interviewer, Drake, the main character, doesn't like is reflected through the gloomy atmosphere, low key lighting, dark clothes and uninspired editing. It's like the video itself reflects Drake's opinion. Anyhow, upon Drake saying something Sharla doesn't like, the music cuts out naturally in the song and it's naturally stopped then, to show a moment of hesitation for humors sake.

After this moment of hesitation, the music kicks back in, full volume this time, where it dissolves to a blank screen where in time with the track, video clips jump in of famous community members videos (23). How it's handles it is frame perfect with the music, synced up individually to take up a quarter of the screen in the order "top left, right, bottom left, right, repeat". On the 9th beat, after two loops of 4, it then begins having clips appear in pairs of two except for six, in packs of 16. (24) The outside 12 an order of "1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1", going from top left, splitting up to go round the screen until the last one is in place on beat 15. From there, the last four cover the next 4 beats, in the same order seen before. This was done as an entirely ambitious task with the intention to show the scale of the media influence. Each clip was picked with some sort of variety in mind. It then 3D Blinds to a white screen, (25) which while it's an unoriginal transition in context of what I used, the fact I have four rows of visuals makes it perfect for transitioning, which then dissolves into a gold visual galaxy as I call it, where the title enters in time with the music (26), along with "A Drakeante Production" at the bottom. From here, it Portal transitions into a black screen (27), which I chose to use because it's game-esqe feel I felt fits the themes. After that, the Angel Beats opening appears and fades out, (28) to show off that's where the clip would lead into.

Rework

After my first draft, reworks were done to cut down on the amount of additional footage used, namely around the centre and give it a more mockumentary feel. The disclaimer and ending are left relatively untouched, though the middle section from "bigger games" to RabbidLuigi went under a dramatic overhaul of changes, which I'll list now.

• (29) On the first live action clip, there is now text saying "*filmed by professional amateur". The idea I had with this was that there's a small joke going on with how it's shot, because composition wise, while it's good, some of the camerawork is questionable. This is self awareness at the inconsistency of quality throughout it, such as focus and the Rabbid glitch.
• (30) On the section where Drake mentions specific examples, from "Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards" to "Panty & Stocking", images of a character from each of the series appears to establish them rather than a clip from the show. The only exception to this is the Gatchaman clip, as it's the final one. The characters are Eliot Kid (Eliot Kid), Horrid Henry (Horrid Henry), Super Sonic (Sonic The Hedgehog), Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles), Yu Narukami (Persona), Ryu (Street Fighter), Hazama/Terumi (Blazblue), Satoru (Erased) and Stocking (Panty & Stocking). The decision to do this meant all the clips could be replaced with live action, rather than the additional footage, while still showing the point Drake wanted. The editing was also done in a style that reminisces the original source material for a few of them. Examples are Super Sonic, who does a loop before flying off the screen as a reference to the iconic loops in Sonic games and Yu Narukami, who's image enters in similar fashion to his Instant Finish in Persona 4 Arena.
• (30) After the pedestal shot in the room of the games, there is now a shot of Drake putting on "Deal With It" glasses to read. The idea of this shot was to parody similar looking shots in other films, not just mockumentaries, but any genre. Drake has been seen earlier with his actual glasses, meaning the viewer realizes these are fake and don't help him read. The high-angle is a commonly associated shot with this type of scene. The glasses themselves are a reference to "meme culture" spread through the internet. The editing at this point is what gives the illusion of camera movement up and to the right, it's a simple post edit pan. It keeps the pace the previous shots established, while not technically moving and creating comedy. To get into this shot is a fade-in, to match the others at this point.
• (31, 32, 33) The three shots listed here are meant to be a parody of western shootouts, which sounds like quite an absurd thing to go into here. However, it was useful for showcasing how gamers see multiplayer games as competitions. First off, Drake appears and squints his eyes as the screen narrows on him, and then the same happens for a new character, who'll be referred to as Drake's Friend/DF. With these two shots, I layered royalty free fire over the top of them, to show how "heated" the battle is, but with 90% transparency to avoid the fire becoming the main focus. With the narrowing, it was achieved through simply messing with the ratio of the clip, narrowing what was in the visible frame. Afterwards, a high-angle, almost top-down shot of them pulling out their weapons, a couple of 3DS's both playing Pokemon. This is a parody of two shots where participants pull out their guns in westerns, but with an appropriate item for the scenario. The entirety of this sequence uses straight cuts, to showcase the quick reflexes someone in a western shoot-up would have, this time for entirely ironic reasons.
• (34) The transition between (33) and (35) is as the screen rotates one way, a Pokeball appears on screen, rotates the opposite way at a slower pace as both zoom into (33) fading, then the Pokeball. The idea for this was to simulate an effect used in Pokemon games when a trainer challenges you to a battle, usually a foreground object and background scene take contrasting actions to transition, and I feel this captured it.
• (35) This was a still close-up of Drake's head while showing him talking to people on Skype. These people, two have their faces, one does not, which is what a typical skype group chat may look like. Both the two with faces however, are indistinguishable, as they aren't important to the mockumentary, just ideas. The one image you can see though, the bunny cat, is meant to provide comedy in the fact it does meet a type of humor on the internet previous mentioned, meme culture, but a more accessible version of it as some people will find cat pictures funnier than glasses. This shot was also my way of hiding a couple easter eggs relating to development, something that might be nice for viewers to find if they rewatched it 5 years after it came out or something. The person on the far left is the narrator in the disclaimer and the three people that are shown match personalities of the original three guests (RabbidLuigi, Giovanni, FaceRigDog): a Brit (middle), a non-native speaker (left) and a talking animal persona (right).
• (36) From a page roll transition after "Miracle Paint", a shot of Drake looking adoringly at the camera is shown, being a parody of reverse shot scenarios. If you think about it, it makes sense that he's facing the previously shown clip, but it's a parody in the fact that it's a perfect 180 turn around, you can't see anything of the other shots in this one. As such, it makes sense it's reversed, but you'd never know, a little bit meta. The movement of the camera was done for the same reason mentioned in (30), for pacing. The only other thing worth mentioning is that this is the only time we see the opposite side of Drake's room and that the hat is meant to make him look nerdier and a bit more pathetic.
• (37) This was a still shot of someone playing the Vocaloid game, Project Diva F 2nd, assumed to be Drake. It iris transitioned from the previous shot to get here. While the camera is stationary here, the self-recorded gameplay element of the moving note prompts as well as the controller keep the pace.
• (38) A linear wipe leads into an arc shot of Drake singing, which references the main media area that's just been talked about, music. The arc shot shows One Punch Man on one screen, implying he's singing a song from that, and Audacity, a recording software implying this is an actual recording. Comedy here comes from fact this part of Drake's room has been shown a lot before, so certain things can be identified, such as where his microphone would be. The opposite way from where he's facing. This then has the scrolling images used before into a relatively untouched ending sequence.

Final Product: 

Planning

Scripting

Scripting was the first task and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. From my concept, I was able to quickly think of some ideas for what I wanted to do. I took a lot of inspiration from Comic Book The Movie in particular, admittedly too much, but I felt like I was able to utilize the concept of it effectively into making it it's own thing.

Space and starry background, narration with edits that match what is being said.

Em: Before we start, the featured events featured disclaimer. A disclaimer that disclaims all dis claims. Things like, the graphic nature of the featured events featured splatfest, featured guests such as nerds and one Italian, featuring dante from the devil may cry series. It’ll be here soon, here it comes…

As this is said, the background slows down and blurs out. The disclaimer goes across the screen, too fast to be read. It reads “This film features naughty words” over and over. While that scrolls across the screen, the following is said in reverse, sped up to meet the end of the disclaimer. This whole sequence should take place during a quarter to a third of a second (15-20 frames if 60fps)

mE: Buy our merchandise.

To start off, a lot of the disclaimers I've seen for Mockumentaries are never serious. I think I took that to an extremity with this one. Repeated use of "disclaimer" and "featured" are meant to drill these points into the ground. "Disclaimer" emphasises the hugeness of the disclaimer, while "Featured" is a mockery of how other films tell you contents beforehand, like guests and what's coming up instead of just waiting for the natural progression and just the general overuse of it. "Splatfest" is used because it references the game Splatoon, which the audience should hopefully understand if they were to fit under the target category, a lot of terms I use in this are, but the reason it creates humour is because Splatoon is one of the most non-violent shooters out there, contrasting "graphic nature". "Featuring Dante from The Devil May Cry series" is also intended to be humorous as it's a reference to the Shin Megami Tensei franchise. On the box art for the release of one of the UK games, a seal with that on was placed on it but due to Dante's trivial role in the game, it became a target for mockery. I use it here because it's one of the more noticeable jokes in gaming culture, which is the largest area I cover during this opening. The "Buy our merchandise" part of it is meant to emphasise how little the disclaimer actually meant and parody the overuse of subliminal messages in the medium.

Cut to a mid shot of Drake walking in and talking directly to the camera in his room.

Drake: Hello there, my name is Drake, anime watcher, competitive gamer, just general fantasy world enthusiast.

Cut to still images relevant to what Drake's talking about.

I grew up around fictional realms, with cartoons early in the morning, my family introducing me to comic books and receiving my first game when I was 6, that being Pokemon Emerald for the GameBoy Advance.

Cut back to the mid shot showing the game being turned on.

It’s so gratifying to take my old cartridge, turn it on and hear that music. Nostalgic.

As shown here, I put very little info about the camerawork in the script, namely because I felt that it'd be limiting when I came to storyboarding. It's a personal thing, but I feel I should make note of it. The introduction of Drake however is something I wanted to make a big deal about, due to the fact Drake is the one the mockumentary would be designed around, which is why his introduction is the first thing I set in stone. I knew however that I didn't want every shot to be live-action, due to how little movement and story telling is done here, along with how it goes against what the genre wants. That's why I decided to add still images because they get the point across of how Drake grew up. I chose Pokémon Emerald as his first game because it was my first game and as such, I understood that you could get nostalgic feelings from it, especially from the soundtrack.

Crabs and pans of the room

Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards, shows like Eliot Kid, comics like Horrid Henry, games like Sonic, all these made up my early years and brought me to where I am now, where I’m still enjoying all these forms of entertainment. I’ve got into bigger games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona and started taking these to more competitive levels with games like Street Fighter and Blazblue. I’m watching anime with themes I could never dream of as a kid like Erased, Panty & Stocking and Gatchaman. Go, Bird!

Even the music I listen to take these elements with vocaloids rising in popularity. Some people would call these weird, and I get that, but these are a part of who I am, where I came from, and who a lot of other people are.

The crab and pan is meant to just pad out the paragraph. I wouldn't want to run the risk of boring the audience with footage they may have seen from their respective shows/games, so I decided to include a showcase of the room due to how much I can show off. It'd also give me a chance to include camera movement options I probably wouldn't have otherwise. The mentioned franchises (Eliot Kid, Yu--Gi-Oh, Persona, etc), all of them have influenced my life personally in some way or another. To say at this point Drake wasn't inspired by myself would be lying, so I used these because I knew if Drake was like me, this could've made him who he is today. The use of "Go, Bird!" at the end of the paragraph is a reference to Gatchaman, as it's the dialogue used to transform in the show. I'm also going to have the hand movement for the transformation here so it show the impact the show had on Drake. With the Vocaloids, I'm thinking of having actual Vocaloid music videos or live concerts as the footage to show the scale of them.

Rabbid: Gaming for me is a big part of my life. Not just because I enjoy it, but because I enjoyed it so much as a kid that it’s my job now. A lot of passion goes a long way. One minute, you’re playing Wind Waker on the gamecube and the next, you’re out there saving the countdown community. It isn’t easy being the most popular man on this part of the internet but hey, someone has to do it.

Giovanni: (Speaking Italian, subtitles over read) Anime is the best thing ever, everyone should watch it. It’s changed my life from being average into above average. People need to just watch it, it’s a crime not to. Seriously, my dad works in the force and I’ll get him to arrest you if you don’t.

These are going to be introduced as special guests to emphasise how fictional works influence people. However, each of these is going to either say something odd or be presented in a way that isn't normal. Eg, the Rabbid one is not the actual well known Rabbid, I'm going to get someone who sounds vaguely similar to him. Giovanni speaks in Italian, however, the subtitles don't match what he says. What they do mean however, is that "You're asking me to speak Italian, when I consider English the better language?" which creates humor, in and of itself. Both of these shots are likely going to be midshots but they may not, I haven't decided. I might also add a third one of these too this to have a rule of three going on.

Drake: And there’s many more out there who have been infected by non-reality. They’ve grown up with stuff like this and are still experiencing and enjoying them today, to the point where jobs are a thought of the past, because their living is in-front of them. Right now, I’m playing one of the games that I’ve spent way too many hours to admit on it, Super Smash Bros for Wii U.

(Improvise into a failure)

(Do the same for some fighting game)

(Do the same for Undertale)

(Eventually just watch One piece)

With this sequence, the idea was meant to be that Drake wanted to show off his skills and just couldn't, constantly looking like he was playing something to an impressive degree but actually playing quite poorly. The games I'd chose for this, Smash Bros, another fighting game and Undertale, all have clear difficult points in them where it could be easily reached and embarrassing for Drake, those being ranked matches in the first two and the Sans fight in Undertale. Switching to One Piece, an anime, was meant to just show him giving up. The word choice, "infected", was meant to make the culture ironically sound parasitic and as if it was something you wouldn't want to be a part of.

Maybe I do spend to much time doing this stuff. I guess that’s what we call a Virtual World Problem? Oh my god, I just figured out the title for this, I am a genius.

Cameraman: We already had one.

Drake: But mine is better.

Cameraman: With all due respect…

Drake: With all due respect I hired you and can fire you at any point. So can I have my damn title sequence? …oh I haven’t rendered it. Stop filming!

This was a rough version of the dialogue I intended to show here with an interaction between Drake and Cameraman. The impression I wanted to get from this was the Drake didn't like the Cameracrew because they stuck to what you should in a film, what was decided before, where Drake wants to just change things throughout. I would want this if it was a full length film become a reoccurring gag throughout the film, that he would argue with a cameraman, replace them, repeat throughout the film. The idea with the camerawork I was thinking here was to have it have a similar shot to whatever was before, but for Drake to make the shot look wrong by coming up close so the viewer wouldn't see much, only hear.

Title sequence starts. Montage intro-ish, with a little bit of length to it. The music is “Uncontrollable” from Xenoblade Chronicles X. Clip of game, reaction, game, reaction, etc. As they appear, the titles appear and eventually culminate in the title.

For the title sequence, I wanted to make it look bad. Like, really bad, by doing a cliched montage intro seen in amateurish videos on fictional works, see example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gtj6dhKuIM (Time frame 0:00 - 0:42) Inconsistent video quality, seemingly random and bland transitions, goes on for too long, dull font, etc. I'd obviously make it look better than that, like syncing clip changes with the music, etc. The song, Uncontrollable, I chose because of it's chorus having very distinct start and end points, meaning I couldn't cut it up until it had gone on for too long and as a lyrical track, had very distinct points to transition. https://youtu.be/cgudF-hVlDA?t=1m9s Eventually, the titles would appear and then it'd fade to black.

Casting 

Narrator: The narrator at the start I had a person in mind for immediately, someone with the ability to have a voice that could sound soft yet a little monotone, could build something up to sound more amazing than it actually is. This is why I got my friend Em Stjernberg to help out.

Drake: Like I said before, Drake is heavily inspired by myself, so I thought casting myself as him would be fine. Since Drake is the main character, I knew that he'd be the character we'd need the most for filming and the easiest way to guarantee that is to be the one who is needed. That being said, I also have the looks for Drake, looking permanently tired, overly long hair, etc.

Rabbid: For Rabbid, I wanted someone who sounded like the real RabbidLuigi, which I'll put a link to here (https://www.youtube.com/user/rabbidluigi), but I wanted to make a small adjustment. I wanted him to sound so condescending, and my friend Will Barringer was just the guy to ask. As someone who was familiar with the same community Rabbid is from, he knew the personality quite well, but he could make it sound so much more empowered like he was on his high-horse, and that's why I asked him.

Giovanni: Giovanni's character I wanted to speak fluent Italian, so my first instinct was to have a native speaker, and the best one I knew I could get a hold of was my friend Tommaso Fatichi. I could've probably taught another one of my friends the phrases, but it runs the risk of sounding disjointed and with someone fluent in the language, it allows me to pull somewhat of a joke. What I told Tommaso was to say anything in Italian for a length of time, but I didn't tell him what. As such, what he says will be different from the subtitles placed over him, creating humour there.

Cameraman: For the cameraman, they wouldn't be filming most of it, rather being a voice behind the camera. However, I did want people who could be available at almost any time, incase I did need assistance but mainly, I needed them to either be a voice behind the camera and potentially the third guest. This is why I asked my friends Aimee Reid and Sasha Dunn, because when one wasn't available, the other likely was. This meant I constantly had one of them to assist me, and they both could play characters with rather timid voices, which is what I needed from the Cameraman.

Storyboarding 

With the storyboards, all of which will be attached here, I started thinking about every shot and drew how I envisioned them. All text is written out on the "Storyboard Images" entry to the blog so you know what it says if it's unreadable here. (Key: Page Number - Shot Number)

1-1: For the disclaimer, I felt a black background would be to boring, yet a starry background has a similar effect but is more interesting and dynamic.

1-2: With the emergence of "Disclaimer", I wanted it to be big, yet not too big, which is why I later decided to remove the angelic effect and just have it rise during the "Here it comes...". The glitchy-ness and repeated text is meant to throw the viewer of, to create a shot where re-watching it reveals new things which while not relevant to the story, provide humorous effect. On their second watch, they may read the text, which is rather underwhelming for the build-up. However, upon a third or fourth, they may take it upon themselves to reverse the audio to here the subliminal message parody, providing more humor due to how it's so unsubtle yet they didn't hear it earlier.

1-3: This shot was done to give more of an introductory feel to the introduction, as repetitive as that sounds. There was no real other reason for this sort of shot so be done.

1-4: The use of still images instead of live-action is to give the implication of this being something from the past, and adding a hint of diversity. While I later went on to replace the intro of Emerald with just the boxart, the fact these were what was shown show the importance to Drake.

1-5: Here I wanted the effect that it focused on the game when it's audio becomes important. However, due to how everything had to be shot, it was too far away, so zooming through editing proved a bit of a problem. What it did allow however, is to hear that music, or at least part of it that makes it memorable, what a lot of kids who grew up in the 2000's will remember.

1-6: The idea with the non-set transitions is that I didn't need to set shot length. I could just let them flow naturally into one another. Other concepts for the next few shots include Yu-Gi-Oh collection showcasing a table covered in cards and a duel disk and watching an anime while showing the reaction with a panning camera.

2-1: Viewing the amiibo collection shows just how dedicated Drake is to his games, along with the boxes full of dvd's in the back showing his films. The idea with this was to signify how important media is to him, and show his enthusiasm for them. The crab shot reveals is over a period of time and the amount of amiibo in particular shows this to a bigger degree.

2-2: The pedestal shot here has the same effect, this time with TV showing anime even when he's distinctly not watching it as well as his video game consoles. The amount of them shown is above what is considered a normal amount, showcasing a bit of an obsessive nature.

2-3: Same effect as previous two, this time with video game collection, some DVD's, and any memorabilia of games he has.

2-4: The praying is meant to look important, but not reveal what he's praying to. This is revealed in the next shot with quite a comedic fashion.

2-6: We see he's praying to "Haruhi Suzumiya", a fictional character who is considered to god of the universe in the anime she is from. As such, Drake is praying to a fictional deity, and humor is caused because of it.

3-1: The Gatchaman hand action is from when a Gatchaman powers up during the show, meaning it's a symbol of it. As such, imitation of it shows a liking towards the show. The Vocaloid song at this point isn't decided, which if I don't choose one, I'll use a Gatchaman song most likely.

3-2: Each Vocaloid video is distinct in style, and I can show how popular they are nowadays because of the live performances, eg. David Letterman show.

3-3: This is meant to be a way to transition into the special guests, people I consider including are just influential figures in fictional media, like Hayao Miyazaki, Hideo Kojima, etc. The music I changed to keeping later on because I felt the special guest bits would be too bland without.

3-4: Rabbid speaks at a midshot away from the camera, as specified earlier. Nothing much to say about this other than the transition changed to something else because I felt it was more varied.

3-5: Nothing much to say about this either, transition was changed for same reason.

3-6: At this point, I decided on the third special guest, to be the obscene one, a piece of software that moves in accordance to the user, that can appear as whatever you want it to. It would create humor due to how random it is.

From here, every last one of these shots gets cut, so I'll explain my thoughts for each originally.

4-1,2,3,4 & 5: This section is entire improvised. The first four share the same shot, as it can be used to show that he's trying to hide the fact he's having to refilm each thing. The fifth one when Drake gets annoyed at the cameraman, can be handheld as long as it carry's on from the previous shot.

4-6: The montage intro is commonly used with video countdowns, and is synonymous for being overly long and I wanted to have a parody of that. Needless to say, the reason I cut it is because it would've dragged on and been awful to watch. The choice of Xenoblade's "Uncontrollable", came down to the fact the chorus is in the perfect frame of being too long between 30-40 seconds.

5-1: I wanted the title to be the last thing the viewer saw so it showed climax to the intro, but how I wanted it I still was on the fence about. I did have a general idea of having it fade out afterwards.

Filming

Filming took longer than expected. First off, the camera I borrowed from the school was broken, which I didn't know till I got home, so Aimee lent me hers. However, this consumed batteries like a mad thing, so it was quite costly.

After speaking to people and finding out who I could get onboard, I first got the footage for the special guests. This is because they were relatively small clips and didn't need much variation to them. However, the FaceRigDog one couldn't be filmed because of the requirement to get my friend on Skype with screen capture software and like any piece of tech, something had to go wrong. The facecam broke so FaceRig couldn't recognize Josh's face. so I needed to come up with a substitute, I'll get onto that later.

The second filming session covering the bulk of everything went rather smoothly. Almost everything in the original storyboard was filmed then and there. However, there was an alarming problem that came up right there was that the camera naturally darkened everything. This meant that all the footage filmed that day was unrecognizable. This also wasted quite a few batteries, so for the next filming session, I borrowed a working camera from the school. This camera had the problem of having a natural zoom, which made things problematic but I could film everything in a lighter environment, where it was recognizable. Once again, I managed to refilm everything but without the last scene. However, once again, there was a problem. This camera produced files incompatible with my editing software, so I needed to refilm with the first camera, but it was getting late so when I did I had to change the environment again. This time, internal lighting was turned on which produced a problem of not showing much different with the ritual scene but I didn't refilm that. I didn't refilm a lot here due to my decision about the ending session. I felt the last scene and the montage intro would've been quite grating without making much progress, the joke would've got old so I decided to change the ending their and then, after I refilmed everything.

What I mentioned before about a substitute guest came into effect now I didn't need Cameraman's character, but I wanted someone with similar effect, so Sharla became the third guest, played by Cameraman. I wanted the conversation to have similar implications to the first one, so I wanted to find a franchise unmentioned before hand where Drake could imply he hated it. This led to Harry Potter being mentioned.

Additional Footage Hunting

Additional Footage was important to the intro, considering how minimalist the footage filmed live was. I'll make a list of each clip used, where it was from and why it was used:

• "Wii U - Splatoon Squid Kid TV Commercial" - This was used to go alongside Splatfest, to have a visual side to the joke.
• "South Park Intro" - This was used for background visual effect while Drake was talking, to make it look more interesting.
• All photo's - These were all featured to emphasize a point at the time.
• "Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Trailer" - To produce irony as it would play when talking about Pokemon.
• "RWBY Volume 2 Opening" & "Super Mario Maker" - To provide visual difference in the panning.
• "Xenoblade Chronicles", "Persona 4 Dancing All Night", "Street Fighter V", "Blazblue", "Death Parade", "Erased", "Panty & Stocking" & "Gatchaman Crowds" - To provide visual cues when mentioning the names, since I'd ran out of room to show and because the ritual scene was impossible in the current lighting.
• "Reikenzan" - Visuals in the background.
• "Vocaloids" - To distinctly show how odd they are when talking about music.
• "Hyrule Warriors Trailer" & "Fire Emblem Awakening cutscene" - To transition from Vocaloids.
• "A Talking Cat!?! - Jontron", "Q&A #1 - MasterJakeStudios", "Sleep Fighter - RocketJump", "Sequelitis - MegaMan Classic VS MegaMan X - Egoraptor", "Zero Difficulty (The Jimquisition), "Death By Glamour Acapella - SmoothMcGroove", "The Completionist Kicks Off 2016!", "Super Speed Update!! - Markiplier", "ProJared Intro", "Eastern Philosophers VS Western Philosophers - Epic Rap Battles of History", "Game Theory", "GrArkarda", "RWBY Chapter 1 Volume 1", "Uncontrollable Cover - Tsuko G", "Visiting Chuggaconroy - StephenVlog", "Undertale The Musical - RandomEncounters", "Peppermint Cream - NSP", "Anime in 2013 Part 1 - Gigguk", "Undertale - Dating Start - Jazz Cover - insanetherainmusic", "DigiTy", "ChallengersApproaching Intro", "Hugo Breaks Street Fighter - Maximillian Dood", "Ocarina of Time With Lyrics - BrentalFloss", "Drakeante Intro V2 - Myself" - All of these make up the collage at the end of the intro, each appearing in time with music.

The music also follows to this, the tracks being:

• "Verdanturf Town - Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire" Composers: Junichi Masuda, Go Ichinose, Morikazu Aoki. Arrangers: Junichi Masuda, Go Ichinose, Morikazu Aoki
• "Gatchaman ~ In The Name of Love" - Jin Aketagawa and Iwasaki Taku

Now all of these have been mentioned, it's now important to mention how the law is brought into this. As long as it isn't blatant plagiarism of works, the law allows for copyright to be overlooked in the name of parody, as long as it resides within fair dealing and I believe my work does. The film was not made with profit in mind, and does not achieve a profit for making it, and if it was to be completed the credit sequence at the end would contain every last borrowed reference thing, along with who created this. I wouldn't claim any of it as my own, or attempt to profit of of it. Futhermore, with educational undertones that may be brought up in any sort of documentary, the law protects the fair use of works with intention to educate, which then brings up, what would VWP educate people in? I believe if I went on to continue the product, beyond the opening, the relevance of media as a whole would be explored and you would reach a conclusion about the impact it makes, just in a vaguely mocking path to it. A humorous approach that abides by the law. To further give myself validation, I've not only studied copyright law to know whether this is fair, I will also upload the first draft to YouTube, which will immediately strike my account if it detects even a hint of copyrighted footage.

EDT: No strikes after upload, the product isn't breaking laws.

18th February to 9th March - Preliminary Task

The preliminary task was "film a person coming into a room, having a conversation with another person with a reverse shot", and since I had done this task last year for my GCSE coursework, I decided when filming this to be quite a bit more ambitious with it. Basically, give myself a broad enough scenario where I could allow myself to mess around in editing, see what I could discover with Sony Vegas.

Starting on February 18th, I began the scripting process for my preliminary task. As shown by here, not much substance, but what it allowed me to do was give me creative freedom later down the line. This script would later go on to not be the final one, because of some technical difficulties and need to pad the length out a bit. It had no plot, it just allowed ambition.

Next was storyboarding, immediately after finishing the script. It came to a total of around six different shots, due to the length. The first shot showed what was happening without revealing too much. The second had Man's face revealed and speak, giving a feeling. The third revealed Man2, fulfilled reverse shot and provided a contrasting difference from mid-long shot to long shot. Fourth and fifth were both close ups where I had an idea of something experimental I wanted to do in editing. I wanted to see if I could have a second shot overlay half the screen, clearly split in the middle because it would show the synergy of the two characters. I gave up on this idea during editing, because I couldn't work it out. Finally, shot 6 was a high-angle of both Man and Man2 walking down a hallway with the cameraman staying equidistance away as they sung Firework.

Filming was relatively quick, not much to say, had everything in 40 minutes. Editing was the hard part because I realized how mediocre the audio was on some clips, and how mediocre the camerawork was on others. This is where I made the big decision for this task of keeping all the ones with good camerawork, and removing all audio, turning it into a silent film. How I achieved this effect is through the use of filters on each shot to make it look more like it was developed in the early 1900's. To replace the audio, I removed each clips current audio and put in a fairly old light-hearted track "Kevin MacLeod - Look Busy" and for all the dialogue, after any shot containing some I put a black screen with a fancy white border with the dialogue in text form on top. This would also have a filter placed on top of it. At this point, I knew that I wanted some more experience with non-live-action stuff, so at the end of the previous shots, I added in a record scratch as the Youtube Copyright infringement message appeared, so I could do a short joke parodying The Fine Bros. The Fine Bros were quite topical at the time, for trying to trademark "React" videos and striking any video with the word "React" in it. The joke became The Whine Bros due to the pun and it was useable because I was going on the assumption that the audience would have a reaction to the earlier half. This led me to get in contact with one of my friends who could record audio and I used our mascots commonly associated with our online personas to represent that. This was mainly to test my usage of moving images through the editing process. As it zoomed in to a black and white version of the message, specifically the face, I had Gary Jules - Mad World playing because that's a song commonly used for "edgy" things on the internet. Overall, I think this task could've been done better, but I did what I set out to do at least.

YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g72odeR69Fo

Conceptualizing Mockumentaries

First off, I made a storyboard with a few ideas for my final piece. Understandably, not many of them stood as I made a list of positives and negatives for each of them but I managed to narrow it down to four I liked above the rest.

Animade A Plan: Disclamer, history that sounds odd despite nothing actually being wrong, interview with anime watcher watcher, hint at their death and link to schools, end up at Comicon

The Friendly Island: Disclamer making it sound like the most horrific thing known to man, parody of We're Back, narration of a similar story to TLI's rise to fame, have shots showing their progression

Virtual World Problems: Disclamer, introduce myself, background info, where it's gotten me, guests talking about areas (Tommaso (Italian), Rabbid (gaming), Lotus (anime), Muffin (Facerig)), show either Smash or Undertale, fail at it, say the title, show the title

The last idea was the one that stuck the most. namely because of the concept for it which was "A mockumentary based on how fictional media influences people". This concept explores an area I'm incredibly familiar with, considering my main hobbies are gaming, watching anime, etc. As such, I could come up with a lot to say about it and that would make scripting a whole lot easier. My target audience would be people who also share love of a media product, niche 16-35, and it's scenario would be "Exploring how Media Products have influenced lives".

11th Febuary - All You Need Is Cash (The Rutles) Analysis

All You Need Is Cash is a mockumentary based on The Rutles, a British Rock Group that has resemblance to The Beatles which is "purely - and satirically - intentional". The Rutles are just a parody of the Beatles and the events and songs featured in this film are parodies as well. Eg. Yellow Submarine is Yellow Submarine Sandwich and Get Back is Get Up And Go. What I classified as the opening for this one is when the first song ends, the titles have been shown and we have our explanation of who the Rutles are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA7bYjCbfX4

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 At the start of the film, we are met with a mid shot of screaming girls, not in terror but joy. Before we even see the group we know they're a big deal, because of just the sheer happiness the fans seem to have. The audio is diegetic screaming that bridges into non-diegetic when the shot freezes. The moment the shot freezes captures the expressions of the fans, emphasizing what I mentioned before. Everything before the title is in black and white, which from a timeline standard makes it believable if we're considering The Rutles follow the same basic event structure of The Beatles. This should be the early days of the Rutles, which for the Beatles was 1960. Color TV's didn't become mainstream till mid 60's, early 70's, so it makes sense for this to be in B&W. The shot then swipes to long shot of a plane, which we could believe has The Rutles within. This swipe allows them to transition in a way that isn't a straight edit but also isn't a scene transition, just changing perspective. It then goes to a crab shot of more screaming fans before freezing again, but this time its a close-up and the fans are behind a gate. With how close they are to the gate, it has the illusion of busting out of jail which shows the determination of these fans. Non-diegetic music has just started to fade in, which sound like The Beatles song Get Back. When you listen to the lyrics however, you can tell it has the exact opposite meaning, as this isn't Get Back but a parody of it called Get Up And Go. The Rutles themselves have had a lot of songs made for them that are straight up parodies of Beatles songs, which provide humour due to the different meanings of the song and because it plays with expectations of what you think the song will be.

The freeze frame then swipes to a long shot of the planes nose opening, not something you see often and since the audience can see that part of it that is opening, it creates a bit of suspense as to what's inside even though they can probably work out what it's going to be. When the shot turns into a long shot that zooms into become a mid shot of the front of the aircraft, we can see the door the Rutles are there, smiling and waving. This sells the audience that they are a big deal, because they act like they are. We're also sold on it by the reaction in the next shot, where the fans are smiling and waving back. The screaming is still there, but not as loud, to continue believability. It then cuts back to the mid shot, with the Rutles jumping down and walking forward, leading into a freeze with the text "The Rutles" appearing on screen in red with a white outline. The colour red stands out on the B&W background, to draw more attention to how important he is.





The text fades out and then as the music follows, from top to bottom scrolls a mini introduction to The Rutles, an introduction done in a humorous way. The first half of it is a joke on how every group these days are called living legends, so they incorporated "living" and "legend" into every way possible in the sentence. It's funny because it's redundant and people just can't take it seriously. It's also helped by the way after that this story is called semi-legendary, making it sound underwhelming which is humorous in its own regard. The second half of the introduction comes down to the speed of the scroll, which is too fast for the narrator to keep up with, so he has talk fast to keep up. This is humorous because of how unnecessary it is. It takes something that could be very standard and changes one element to make it funny. The names of the Rutles are also said here and they create humour themselves because of how strong sounding 3 of the names are and how average the last one is: "Dirk, Nasty, Stig and Barry". As the text finishes scrolling "Get Up and Go" continues playing.


The entirety of the next shot is a gag, a forty second long one. I would say how the camera starts, but it isn't consistent, zooming in and out. We see the Rutles getting in a car to avoid fans, door shuts, immediately out that car the other side to get in another car, door shuts, out that car to get in the front of the van, shut the door, climb out the back, brush themselves down, get in a final car and then be driven away. The reason this joke works is because of how cartoonish it feels. It takes a fairly standard concept we expect, rushing into cars to be driven away, and plays with our expectation of what happens. The first time, it's funny because its unexpected. The second, it's funny because its even more unexpected when they already pulled that joke. The truck is an unexpected vehicle choice and going from front to back is also funny. The truck also gets laughs with the fact the lyrics at this time in "Get Up And Go" are about a truck. After getting out the back, you see them briefly slow down and wipe themselves down which creates humour in the fact they have time to clean themselves up a bit when they should be running. When they get in the final car, we see the number plate "Rut 1", which while it is part of Rutles name, it also provides humour because of "rut" having two definitions. "A long deep track made by the repeated passage of the wheels of vehicles", which is funny because they are in one. The other definition is "a habit or pattern of behaviour that has become dull and unproductive but is hard to change" which implies that things won't go very well. As they drive off text in similar fashion as before fades on saying the title "The Rutles in All You Need Is Cash". This title is a parody of a phrase commonly associated with The Beatles due to it being a title of one of their songs "All You Need Is Love".

The music then stops and we're taken to present day, where someone is introducing the Rutles and walking down a street while doing so. What starts of as an inherently normal scene, changes to become more comedic as it goes along. First off, the man is introducing them in a perfectly straight and normal way, but what he says is underwhelming and at points downright silly. Two examples are how the Rutles would "last a lunchtime" and "Their first album was made in 20 minutes. The second... took even longer." This is a clear parody of typical explanations that describe sensations by making them seem unimpressive or not giving us a solid idea because this entire line of dialogue is taking the mick. Apart from the dialogue, there's also humor obtained from the way the shot is filmed. It starts of as a tracking mid shot and follows aside the man. However, the camera is placed on a slowly accelerating bike, so the reporter needs to keep up with it. While it starts off at walking speed, eventually he needs to pick up the pace, to jogging, to running across the street when the bike goes to fast for legs to carry. This provides humor because it's not only ridiculous, but it's making fun of the shot usually used at this point in a documentary, which is usually slow paced and occasionally not engaging. It perfectly captures the mocking elements the genre is known for, while progressing the coverage at normal pace.
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What I've learnt from The Rutles is sometimes simple intros have the same effects as one's that have a lot of effort put into them. It depends how the simplistic nature is used. As long as it gets the point across, it's good. It also shows how a musical mockumentary should be done, with songs that aren't serious and a story that is ridiculous.

22nd January - Comic Book The Movie Analysis

The next film I'm analysing is not a mystery film but rather its a Mockumentary. The reason for this is because at this point I was starting to feel I didn't see mystery as the best option for me and I didn't want to not have all my heart in it because that would be visible in the final product, while with a mockumentary it allows me to take a different approach with a bigger focus on comedic elements that can be combined with others like mystery, if doing a "conspiracy" theory, and parody, all in the form of a documentary. As such, I wanted to research other mockumentaries to see what they do to achieve this effect and hopefully, be able to integrate similar ideas into my final product.

The opening of a mockumentary is interesting, as a lot of them have titles and then get on with the big thing, while some don't even have titles. As such, determining a stopping point is hard but what I classify the opening as is the point where initial exposition ends. We get an amount of backstory on what we're going to be watching, and that's our intro.

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The film starts off with the scene of clouds sped-up moving in the back with text fading in and out across the centre before the title swoops in. Comic Book The Movie doesn't just talk about comic books, it directly parodies their style and this intro is very reminiscent of other comic book to film adaptations namely from the clouds and the sinister music, something that doesn't fit the tone of the film but matches the theme it covers. The credits also bring that vibe with the bold yellow colouring with a light black outline and shading, the boldness primarily reminding me of other superhero titles and even of the onomatopoeia seen to simulate action in comics. It also looks similar to the Comicon logo in terms of colours, shade and font. The music quickly contrasts as the title flies on screen into a sort of child-like tune complete with slapstick sound effects as parts of it fly on to it. This change says to me that the film understands how these superhero stories made kids feel and this showed the transition. These stories filled with hardship and struggle made children admire and happy, they wanted to be these heroes and the music reflects the optimism of these kids. The logo vaguely reminisces the Batman logo, yet another reference to an established franchise. Contrasting blue and white also relates to the cloud background due to the sky and clouds colouring, which could potentially represents how free you feel with this  hobby, which in turn could be ironic due to how costly the hobby of being a comic book fan actually is. The text looks more dynamic as once it appears, the logo rotates, zooms in and swipes to change scene, the 3D-animation making the film seem grand, like any superhero film.

 

After the title swipes away, we're left with a camera shot of a man sitting down and telling us who he is, Don Swan. The mid-shot at a constant angle is very reminiscent of a vlog, where someone videos their life for entertainment purposes. The blue and white colour scheme comes back due to his shirt, which shows the link between comic books and Don, if that wasn't made obvious by his monologue and the Mise en Scene where you can see iconic comic book memorabilia, eg: "Duff" from The Simpsons.  From the introduction, very direct look at him, etc, we can tell that the documentary will centre around him.

It then goes to a couple still images separated by a fade. The first zooms out from the lower right corner, the second zooming out from centre. As this happens, Don is describing comic strips he obtained during his childhood which is a cliché of mockumentaries, the backstory is told as exposition rather than told as a story. The use of still images is reminiscent of internet vlogs because generally in vlogs, when a person mentions something they'll occasionally have an image up so people understand what they're talking about. These images are in black and white, which captures the "back-in-the-old-days" feel, which shows Don's experience with the media, meaning the audience has a bigger trust in this persons words.

The next few shots as he says "There's nothing I love better..." focuses on the aesthetic of his room with a few dynamic shots. One of him playing with his dog, one showing his book collection and the other two showing memorabilia and collected items. The mid shot of his dog being pet is interesting, as it doesn't seem necessary but it provides a contrast from the shot of his face the scene centres around. The dog itself shows that Don is a respectable individual as he's able to support his hobby and what matters. The colour contrast between white and brown through the dog and floor leads me to label him as "ordinary", due to how non-special it is. This is to make it feel more authentic and provide a layer of comedy when the "mocking" elements kick in. The camera pans in the next shot to show off the book collection, books that feature memorable names. "The Flash", "Supergirl", "Green Lantern", all these names that sell the audience that this guy is a comic book fanatic. They understand Don's character from surroundings rather than interactions. The next shot of all the memorabilia also sells the audience on that because the amount of stuff there is massive. The panning of the camera is also useful for exploring the scale as it allows us to see more than what would fit in a initial still frame.

After returning to the original midshot, Don talks about how he has "Once Upon A Dime" with it turning onto the screen through a fade/zoom. The background turns into what I can only describe as a green/white mist, which is such a vibrant colour scheme that it echo's other comic book superheroes designs with two colours. Coming into the design of the actual fanfiction (originally made for this film, this isn't a real thing), it combines elements from other fanfic covers (simple design that draws inspiration for comics), comic book covers (title, issue number, main hero, the price in a specific outline) and plain awful elements (use of comic sans) to breed a certain sense of legitimacy into this cover, keeping this the audience in the illusion that this is a real thing. We then proceed to some very amateurish camera work as Don introduces the comic book store. The mise en scene shows an authentic looking store, but the camerawork isn't good quality at all, shaking, obviously hand held. While usually inexcusable, it works to the films favour as it brings in the feel that it's homemade, some amateurish video project, that it isn't a big thing. It looks mediocre, not only showing the average-ness of the main character, but also of the whole thing. This allows the film later on to play itself as the problem being bigger than the scale of the film, which means it's setting up the comedic elements even from the start.

A conversation is then shown between Don and who we assume are co-workers at his comic book store and once again, it comes off portraying him as a normal guy. The diegetic conversation is just general chit-chat, nothing special about it. It feels like something a normal friend group would talk about that is being filmed by an outsider, not a pro. The conversation goes in the typical nerdy way of ridiculous theories and ideas: in this case being about Spiderman having the web producing abilities of a normal arachnid and it can come off as relatable to an audience who find it fun asking those types of questions with their friends. It builds similarities and creates ideas an audience can relate to.

After a similar shot to "Once Upon A Dime", this time for "Commander Courage" (when Commander Courage gets shown, heroic music starts playing, showing that this will be the focus of the film), a wipe transition comes across to a close-up of Stan Lee talking about it, a man most people in the comic community know as one of the most important creators to the medium, (Marvel: co-creater of Spider-Man and Hulk, etc. The fact Stan Lee is talking about "Commander Courage" brings this vibe of that it's meant to be something serious even though it was created for the sole purpose of this film. However, this is where humour starts to show itself as what Stan Lee says about "saving America" and "making the world safe for comic books" seems completely out there. A similar scenario occurs with Peter David, another name in the comic industry, who says something that sounds normal first but ends with "wops on Hitler". It's an unexpected turn in both scenarios because you don't expect these big names to say something so out there and this creates comedy with how natural it sounds despite how wrong it is. The fact it's Stan Lee and Peter David however strives for this balance that "Commander Courage" is taken seriously in this film which contrasts with the hilarity of what they're saying. The latter of the two jokes is more hilarious because of the comic book cover that goes along with it, with Courage punching a Swastika with phrases around him like "Courage flattens Der Fuhrer!" and "The fall of the Third Reich!". It's so racist it becomes funny but it isn't offensive due to how it comes seemingly out of nowhere and its spoken by men who are known to be incredibly respectful guys.

Music starts kicking in towards the end of the last scene, which changes to cover the feelings of "Commander Courage" talked about next, changing from heroic to sinister. Sticking in this extreme territory, the next line starts with "in response to the tragedy of 9/11". This is the moment the audience realized they've been deceived thinking it'd be serious and these mocking elements are the focus. This is where they mention the revamp of Commander Courage named "Codename Courage" and they go all out with clichés of characters in other comic books. Starting off, "some sort of anti-terrorist" is the exception, because that goes hand in hand with the 9/11 joke. The name "Codename Courage" comes off as much more down to Earth and serious, like the dark themes reflected in more modern comics. These dark themes are also reflected in his redesign, which makes his costume completely black. This is a massive shot at a lot of revamps of comic books which change things into a stereotype which I can only describe as the Batman style. Main character who wants to fight on their own, anti-hero, dark colour schemes and usually tragic backstory. The film then proceeds to make fun of sidekick characters by changing "Liberty Lad" into "Liberty Lass". These are the two usual archetypes of sidekicks, either a younger kid like Robin, or a female of any age like Batgirl. In this scenario, both these character archetypes are played at extremes with "Liberty Lad" looking so similar to Robin and other characters of that archetype, while "Liberty Lass" is played up to have skin tight clothes, exposed areas, clearly sexualized which is probably a shot at how sexual some designs of heroines can be interpreted as like Wonder Woman and X-23. The character is then described as "edgy, ultra-violent and didn't even have a secret identity". Each of these features don't sound heroic at all, relating to the idea of anti-hero. These are all clichés of the media as I mention before, but the accuracy of how some are done lets the audience relate at least one comic book franchise with it, making them imagine how ridiculous the changes were creating personal comedy and for those who didn't, there was at least one joke that didn't need comic book knowledge, the 9/11 one. The fact it's then followed up by "the version that attracted Hollywood's attention" is then likely a shot at how all films adapted from comic books follow a dark broody version of the story, rather than more cheery ones. (See as a modern example, Man of Steel (2013), a modernized version of Superman) One thing I've noticed in particular with the editing of these images is that they're edited on basic levels, so transitions are simple and don't detract from the dialogue, it still looks amateurish which keeps up the feeling that its going to cover only a small problem.

Don then mentions his role in this, being invited to the San Diego Comicon. This wasn't a set, this was the genuine San Diego Comicon of 2002 and a lot of the film is filmed there. As such, it looks like a Comicon would be expected to look and its style of camerawork and editing matches it. Some speed-up, overall view of the area, mixture of medium, long and extreme long handheld shots. This allows the audience to believe the SDC as real even though "Courage" isn't, meaning they can imagine where this will go: people being involved with no idea of what's happening. That's a level of comedy being set up.

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Comic Book the Movie's opening for me was pretty eye-opening, as it showed how the genre of a film impacts the overall quality required to make a good intro. With mysteries, you needed a sense of authenticity to get the audience involved. With mockumentaries, you just need to talk about something people want to hear about but make it amateurish production wise, and talk about the subject in a completely unexpected and unusual manner. The important thing is to not take it too seriously and if you can make it appear like it will be even thought it won't be, do. If things can make the audience go "What?", make them.