I have been conveinced that this is a real documentary for years and it is one of my favorites. but my friend said it was fiction becuase of the switch between camera shots and the other camera not being visible during the same shot. the sound matches perfectly but the shots dont add up.fact or fiction?
(sorry this is a pooly written post, tired and at work..long day)
I think it is a "mockumentary", didn't notice what your friend did, but that would indicate what you are suggesting is true.
Funny stuff though.
w.
It's very real.
sharehaving lived above ken keen for a year, and having spoken with mark b. and mike s. (and even mark's mom), i can and will fully vouch that they are as outrageous in real life as they were in the documentary. ken was the handy man for the house i lived in.... and his handywork played out on many occasions such as the kitchen film scene in "american movie" where he botched the door cabinet.
last i saw/heard of those guys (spring 2003) mark was filming the sequel to coven (they were over at ken's apt filming a big party scene the day the power went out on the east side of milwaukee) and ken kept proclaiming that he was developing a whacked out cooking show with mark's brother that both vh1 and mtv were in a bidding war over...i saw a few rough cuts of it and i could only really describe it as the "tom green show of cooking shows"... since its now 2005 and i havent seen anything of the show, i can only assume that it got scrapped and that the few legit folks interested in it got fed up with ken's *beep*
i know that mark is making an appearance in a film thats being shown at the upcomming Wisconsin Film Festival.
I noticed the same thing. Whether or not the story was real, they were in fact acting. You can tell this in scenes where, say, he's getting out of a car. They have a long shot of him opening the door, and then they have a medium shot from an angle that implies another camera angle that would have been visible in the first shot. So they were choreographing the set-ups, thus making American Movie not a documentary.
shareno brother its commpletly real, alot of those scenes were reshot when they might have missed something during shooting. but i have met the film maker and the cast and it is a real story with real people. even if they did reshoot a couple scenes to make the movie more coherrent
sharebecause they took a couple alternate angle shots, it isnt a documentary? too bad they didnt check with you before making the film.
shareNote how on the IMDB everybody is credited with roles, rather than being listed as him/herself, as people are on other documentaries.
shareThis movie was shown last night on UK tv - and I was absolutely convinced it was a documentary. The only things that did not seem real was when Mark was apparently fighting with his girlfriend (or at least the mother of his children) - it just seemed a bit forced.
It was a very funny movie though, the scene that really made me laugh was Mark directing the actors when they were dressed in black with cowls so you couldn't see their faces in the woods - quite a stark image against the white snow. He asks one to move a foot to his left and the black cowled figure jumps - both feet off the ground - to his left. This just struck me as so funny. there were loads of other funny bits too (everything with Mike). On the whole I found it an enjoyable movie with very endearing characters - real or not.
Good point.
"Please don't eat me! I have a wife and kids. Eat them!"
A few times while watching this, I did wonder if it was real, I mean would someone be comfortable with allowing their life to be exposed in every mundane and tragic detail? But then Mark Borchadt would still crave any kind of exposure. Mark Borchadt is a very real character, whether he exists or not and sometimes there are things you just can't make up, and the way everyone in the film behaves, it's nearly impossible to reach that level of authenticity.
shareI can understand people's inclination to assume that this is a "mockumentary" because the so-called "characters" are all so quirky and a little off-center. But people like this, with their mangled speech, flaws, and eccentricities really DO exist in the real world! Like the previous poster implied, it's hard to make this stuff up and present it to just 'appear' authentic. Besides, do a search on the film and read some of Mark's or the AM director's interviews. It was all real.
shareyou are absolutely correct. these people do exist, but they usually don't make movies this brilliant. mark and mike might act the roles of unintelligent, rednecks, but if they were in fact this, then they would not have produced such an amazing documentary. its without a doubt, a mockumentary.
shareMark and Mike didn't MAKE the movie. sigmaphiepsilon1. Chris Smith made the movie. You think the subjects of the documentary actually MADE the movie? Your rationale is that it is 'without a doubt' a mockumentary b/c those guys couldn't have made a movie this good? But then aren't you in effect saying that because they DID make the movie, that it's a mockumentary?
It's real. I think I've said this in another thread, but what about the footage from when Mark, Mike, and Ken were all kids making those movies? Kinda hard to call that' fake', isn't it?
Mark Borchadt definatley is a real person that is really his name.and he really acts like that.has calm down some. however living in the same town(menomonee falls,wi) were the film was shoot.i can voch the family is real and he is for real might be scarry but the truth.
shareDEFINITELY NOT REAL! Just look at Mark's glasses. They are completely clear. Those are not prescrition glasses. That pretty much tells it all. If his "costume" isn't real, then why would all the other aspects of the documentary be real? Exactly...
shareeveryone knows its real in the Milwaukee area. I am in Mpls and lots of people have met these guys at bars down there. It may not be a direct "recording" of events but Mark and everyone else really exist. He got interviewed on a national news show this winter (Countdown with Keith Olberman) and he was every bit as wierd.
shareThese people are real, this is not a mock.
The glasses are prescription (check out the basement scene, lower half are lensed)
The reason there is no camera in the 'returning' shot is because what you see as being one 30 second cut is actually minutes of footage... it called editing.
The editor has spliced reactions with cut material.
Mark is real, several people on this board know the man.
shareI Have to tell you yes. this movie is called mockmentary. However i live in Menomonee Falls,WI . Where Mark currently resides or at least lives near by. i've bumped in to him numerous times at the video store ,gas station etc. He always has glasses on with thick lenses. always! He is just a regular guy!
shareIMDb usually lists the credits on their website however they were listed in the film's credits. If the movie credits chose to list "Mark Borchardt" as "Filmmaker," that's the way IMDb would do it to. I didn't go back and look at the film credits, but my guess is that this is the case.
shareThat's becuase if they listed "himself" for everybody (Tom Schimmels = himslef, Chris Borchardt = himself, Miriam Frost = herself), we wouldn't know who any of those people are. So they have to say Tom Schimmels = Actor in "Coven," Chris Borchardt = Mark's Brother, etc. Ya know?
shareIt's called coverage. A professional can shoot a scene from two angles in a real documentary, and A, have the footage needed to cut from a medium and close medium shot and B, have not have the cameras visible in each other's shot.
shareGo back and watch it, they only had one camera. He does the same thing twice, but you can tell it's two different takes.
shareYou have a really naive vision of how documentaries are made. It's not like security camera footage. As other posters have pointed out, it is either "coverage" or editing. Documentary filmakers with one camera often shoot "coverage" of stuff it is impossilbe to get in real time. They can only shoot one side of a conversation, so they will often get a shot of the other person "listening" so they can edit it together and the audience canbe shown there were two people in the room. Or, they might follow one person into a room, then stop, go into the room and have them walk into the room again. These small intrusions don't make what you see onscreen less real, but they are necessary to build a coherent scene. People are never exactly the same when they have a camera pointing at them, does that make all documentaries involving people invalid? Of course not.
shareread what I wrote again. When you have a person do things twice for the sake of editing. That is, when people are taking multiple takes of actions such as entering a car, the scene is now, rehearsed, acted, and directed. It is no longer a documentary. You are not filming people, you are filming actors. Maybe you didn't understand what I wrote, I suggest you try again.
shareYou have no concept of film making. Please stop being so jealous of someone who actually managed to accomplish something in their lifetime and go back to flipping burgers. Having someone re-do a shot for the sake of editing doesn't make a documentary any less of a documentary than putting news-real in an action movie makes that movie any less of an action movie.
Leave the film critiques to someone who knows what they're talking about.
p.s. I have two degrees, one in Telecommunications and the other in Theatre. I'm currently working on my MA and in a year I'll be going to NYU to start on my PhD. When I say leave the film critiques to someone who knows what they're talking about, I meant people like me.
So staging and manipulating a sequence in a documentary is the equivalent of using stock footage in a film? And it doesn't discredit the authenticity or the intended "fly on a wall" aspect of a documentary at all? One last question: how do degrees in telecommunications and theater give you any sort of authority on film, documentaries, or editing? I'm sure you do fine in your own disciplines- as for this, you don't know what you're talking about. As for me and my credentials, I won the NY film and video festival in 2003 while still in college. Not to brandish, but you're out of your league.
shareDo you even know what telecommunications is? You're probably one of those people who thinks it has to do with telephones. Well it's not, it's the study of media production and story development. I've been producing on two different magazine television shows since I was 19, one of them has won 7 Emmys in the last three years, I've produced a handful of music videos, worked on over 30 short films, I just wrapped my third full length film and guess what I'm starting pre-production on right now. A full length documentary. You bet your ass that staging and manipulation are part of non-fiction film-making. It's called telling a story. And as for editing, I edit on Avid, Final Cut and Premier fluently and I'm certified in Aftereffects and Pro-tools. I have minors in Journalism and Creative writing and I've been directing and designing for theatre since high-school. It all comes down to story-telling in this business. If you don't know how to tell a good story then you're sunk.
Random elements of a story don't make a story any less of what it is. Does putting historical re-enactments in a documentary piece make it suddenly fiction? No, of course it doesn't. Does putting true events into a fictional piece make it suddenly fact. Even more absurd. You do what you need to do to get the job done right. And given that the subject of the film is an aspiring film-maker it seems like it would be and insult to him to do any less.
Documentaries are not supposed to tell stories. They're supposed to capture stories. Otherwise, in concordance with its definition, it's not a documentary at all.
shareI honestly don't know where you're getting your info from, but I took this discussion to one of my production classes today. There are people in this class that are already accomplished film makers not to mention the department faculty that have been in the business for more than 30 years. No one can believe that anyone who claims to have won the New York Film Festival could have such a naive view of how documentaries are made.
We have whole classes dedicated to the making of documentaries and we do in fact learn about staging and coverage in those classes. You think that when you go to interview someone that you just plop them down in a chair and go for it? No, you take the time to find a good location, you move furniture, you set up lights. Heck, I've even gone out and gotten lamps and plants for the back-ground in an interview. You tell people not to wear white shirts or baseball caps, you get their hair out of their faces and even put make-up on them. YOu ask them questions and ask them to repeat the question back to you so it looks and sounds like they're telling you a story, but really you're prompting and manipulating their words to fit the story you're trying to tell through their lives.
If you're filming them in their homes or another location you go in before you start shooting and move things that are casting funky shadows and rig up lighting. The light in an average home is nowhere near the levels you need to get a decent shot. You even go out with them in their car to re-create the last drive their loved ones took before they died, or you go with them to a place they wouldn't normally go to illustrate a part of the story they are telling you.
When you go on location cold, use only what is there, get only the straight facts as they develop and skimp on the editing what you're doing is a news shoot. News is something that is gathered, a story is something that is told. From what I can tell you've never had any actual production training, which is fine. Lots of people do just fine in this business without going to school for production. But please don't tell me I'm wrong when I have years of training to back up what I'm trying to tell you.
You keep clumping things together to make your point and try and win the discussion; I'll bet my life savings that you're a woman. You're comparing adjusting locations for shoots to actually setting up shots and DIRECTING actors to do things in a way that seems natural so as to pass off for reality. It's directing, it's acting, it's a complete manipulation of the mise en scene. Sorry hun, you are incorrect- and so are the sub-geniuses in your film class. As for my credentials; I'm not going to tell you my name or my projects- you can choose not to believe me about my production experience- it's fine.
share<<As for my credentials; I'm not going to tell you my name or my projects>>
You are a coward, narrow minded and most likely a liar. I'm done with you.
Haha! No... this discussion is representative of why women need to start taking over the movie industry!!!!
shareAs a telecommunications major and student currently enrolled in a documentary class I can honestly say dante12x has no idea what he is talking about and should really learn about what a documentary is and the process of documentary filmmaking. Check out the documentary Alone In The Wilderness. A man would set up a camera walk away from it to film himself and then walk back to pick up the camera. Does that mean that what happened was not real? Does that make him an actor? Just because audio overlaps between shots doesn't mean it was acting. Also, if you are good enough editor you can seamlessly cut out lot extra crap and stick two things together. If you idea of a documentary is reality TV shows and you think a good documentary means setting a camera in the middle of a room without and cuts then you are an idiot.
shareThanks telecomm. I wish I'd known your opinion before the premiere of my first documentary on the Sundance channel last week. I would try and explain, as I have before, that multiple takes, from different angles implies direction and acting, but I don't think you're going to undertand.
shareUm, documentaries aren't supposed to tell stories? Well silly me, and I thought I'd been told hundreds of them over the years...
shareWell put. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Maybe that'll play just as well in this discussion.
shareface it man, you've been owned!
shareWhat are you, twelve?
shareI am not in the film industry and I learned a lot from this discussion. If you think about it, even when you backup your home videos you can't help but make a little bit of editing here and there: is takes the real but boring lags out of the scene.
I also recalled some diplomacy principles about debates: If you insult your counterpart, you make harder for him to change his mind. The subject is not longer "the definition of documentary" but "who is the idiot here". Nobody wants to loose that one.
Well said Byron. I think my point is that when you lose sight of the parameters for documentaries, you end up with the advent of Reality TV. And no one wants to be resposible for that.
share-"by - dante12x
-I noticed the same thing. Whether or not the story was real, they were in fact acting. You can tell this -in scenes where, say, he's getting out of a car. They have a long shot of him opening the door, -andthen they have a medium shot from an angle that implies another camera angle that would have -been visible in the first shot. So they were choreographing the set-ups, thus making American Movie -not a documentary."
I just stubbled apon this discussion of Real vs Not Real, and was interested in this issue of editing and coverage, i.e. the example of Mark getting out of the car. I am a professional documentary film editor, and also a big fan of this film, and because I am a documentary geek i threw in my DVD of AM to check the shot that "dante12x" was referring to in an earlier post. After scanning i believe the shot he points to is the opening of the fist scene w/ Uncle Bill in it (approx. 28:15 according to my DVD player's counter).
You do indeed see a long shot of the car pull up and stop. Then it cuts to a medium from the driver's side as Mark gets out. However if you look closely at the 1st (long shot) the car has barely stopped and Mark is in the act of shutting it off and pulling out the keys with his Right hand, before it then cuts to the next shot of Mark getting out (where he has at this point some sort of clipboard or binder in his Right hand, and the keys he was pulling out of the ignition have now suddenly ended up in his Left hand). Also, at the tail end of the 1st long shot you noticed the camera start to move as the operator is presumably starting to take steps to walk around to the drivers-side of the car.
As an editor, it is quite obvious to me that the few however-many seconds from the car being completely stopped and shut off, to Mark gathering up his belongs before opening the door, and the camera man walking around and re-framing the shot, have been cut out. The sound was cut similarily, w/ the sound from shot A being carried over a bit to shot B, so you hear the car engine finish winding down and shut of as he opens the door as if it had happened all in one motion in real-time, which is a common editing device.
Maybe this is not the shot that was being referred to, but it was the only one i came across while searching. The fact that people see it at a glance as being one seamless action (or 2-seperate takes) is a testament to the camera operator, who was skilled enough to get the shot he needed (the car pulling up), and then use the few seconds while Mark parked the car and got his stuff to quickly walk over and get the follow-up shot of him getting out. It also means the editor did his/her job, of making a nice cut that deleted unnecessary seconds, while creating the illusion of seamless action. Editing (of both pic and sound) is all a slight-of-hand trick, and this is esp. true of doc editing, since you are trying to make a coherent, engaging story out of everyday life, which by its nature is boring 99% of the time. It is NOT manipulation or choreography, it is professional shooting and editing.
As for the idea of acting and mockumentary, all I can say is that I have had the opportunity to meet director Chris Smith and I was also once a film student of producer Sarah Price, and can only say that they are as geniune and sincere doc filmmaker's as you will find. As for Mark and Mike i can olny say that the one brief time I got to be around them they are very much exactly the samey on film as they are in person.
One last question: how do degrees in telecommunications and theater give you any sort of authority on film, documentaries, or editing?
My girlfriend (who is also the cinematographer and editor of all of the films I direct) has a Master of Arts degree, with a focus on documentary filmmaking. That was what her primary studies concerned...the making of documentary films. It is her ambition in life to make documentaries, as a career. So, she would be qualified, even if you don't trust the word of someone who studied telecommunications. And I'll tell you precisely what she would tell you...you're wrong.
more real docs reshoot scenes like that. especially entering and leaving places and exteriors.
shareThis IS real and did happen, I viewed this film in October 1999 at the Boston Film Festival, as a guest of a performer who opened the show. After the movie my friend and I were invited to catch some brews at the Sam Adans Brew House, which we did and after 4 hours with this group I can honestly say, NO ONE came up with it-that IS how the guys communicated and how things were shot. We missed meeting Mark's daughter Dawn and Mark's mom, as they were exhausted which sucked, as I could have used meeting them. This has to be the greatest documentries combining the reality of affording the process of wet flim to the lab with the genuine humor this group of people display is strong and very real. I also managed to develop a crush on "Uncle Bill", true, natural the love and faith you see this guy display toward his nephew is astounding SPOILER ALERT****When Mark gives Uncle Bill his Thanksgiving Bath, it gets you at that center of their relationship- a beautiful thing. Mike IS that shy, Mark is that off the cuff my only regret was not meeting Uncle Billie :o(
shareIt's real, it's real, it's real. Come on, guys.
The comments about coverage: exactly. MOST documentaries take extra steps to cut away and make things more interesting in both visuals and audio.
I'm surprised there's so much debate about this... the documentary IS REAL. I could see how some people may have doubts but a little research online will tell you it's real.
I went to a screening of American Movie at a film festival in Harrisburg, PA and Mark spoke after the film. He's pretty much the same in person as he is on screen.
What about the footage of Mark, Mike, and Ken when they were younger? That's as much proof as anyone needs.
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Why is there always some dumbass in every doc on this site claiming that it's all fake? You really think no one would have found out?
I hate people that focus so much on proving stupid conspiracies online, just enjoy the movie, it's very good and very real.
If this movie is a fake they got some of the best actors in the world to play the parts. this is one of those times when one has to think that the movie is so outrageous that it has to be real. I mean, who could make this stuff up?
shareI was at The Boston Film Festival when this movie showed and I hung out with Mark, Mike and the people who shot the film afterwards at Sam Adam's Brewhouse. They really are like that, it isn't acting. It is possible to do the shots the way they did them, I do photography and it is legite.
shareNo documentary exists without editing like that. The news does the same thing (not that we should trust the news). Every person in front of a camera acts different. Just like everybody tweaks their personalities a bit when around certain people. A true true true documentary would be one single ongoing shot of an event. Documentaries fabricate chronology and situations a bit. That doesn't make them fiction. They are real people, no scripts.
sharewell actually, even documentaries have scripts, depending on how the creators go about (for example, narration, questions to ask the interviewees, b-roll shots etc.). there are many types of documentaries and they can be shot in many ways. filming someone get out of a car is even less of an intrusion on reality than when a director asks a real person "and how did you feel about this?" or whatever. and as i believe, they actually have a shot in the movie of a cameraman shooting what was going on, which means they had two cameramen, probably the director behind one and his cameraman behind the other. which doesn't mean they didn't reshoot the getting-out-of-car shot, because it likely that they had to do that with many shots, anyone who has taken any sort of media class or shot docu footage will know this.
shareim sorry. but if this movie is real, it is perfect.
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Victory. Honor. Pride. All these mean nothing... if you don't have balls.
-Dodgeball
THE WAR GAME won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1967...
...did I miss something and London really was nuked?
I'm fake the movie is real... London is not a real place, any footage of the U.K. is actually CG created by Uwe Boll's crew of special fx crapist's
I love my cat her name is Misfit
goodbye,
Sure it's real and so is Spinal Tap.
It's not necessary to tell me that you think I'm right. We'll just... assume it.(The Thin Red Line)
There's a reason "American Movie" is in the documentary/special interest section of the video store and "Spinal Tap" is in the comedy section. Don't you people think that if it was fake someone would come out and discredit it.
shareIts not fiction, its just damn good documentary filmmaking
sharejust to confuse or broaden the debate - godard said something like "every film is a documentary of its own making" and also "cinema is truth 24 times a second." i think that is at the heart of this film. it is both a documentary and a movie. herzog says he sees no difference between his so called "documentaries" and his "movies." he is able to elevate his work by "manipulating" or "directing" his so called documentary type protagonists. i believe he does this for the greater good, to give us, show us something special, not to play a trick on us. what is special about american movie is that we are able to see the passion and determination of a man fighting for something he loves (almost fighting for his life) and the humour, love and loyalty of his friends etc. and for this to be evident i have no problems if the director thought it necessary to rehearse or script scenes to get at what he wants. maybe it's just art...
shareHow could anyone consider this anything other than a documentary? How could that even be a legitimate debate? Maybe the fact that people debate this is simply evidence that this film was done very well. WTF?
shareThe fact this thread contains debate is idiotic.
sharei just saw a commercial with them in it for a halloween thing on the G4 channel. so maybe it was like a spinal tap thing, i dont know.
shareIts NOT a mocumentary, its the real deal guys. I don't know why this is even an argument, go to americanmovie.com and read up a little on Mark.
shareAlso, this ridiculous arguing on how setting up scenes and directing people makes if fiction, do you even know how a documentary is made? What the hell do you call Errol Morris' work??
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