Real Documentaries In A Mighty Wind

In the mockumentary A Mighty Wind, the director uses many aesthetics of a real documentary to highlight and satirize real documentaries, but still making it feel like a serious documentary. They attempt to create a realistic film that portrays the elements of an actual documentary while still making it entertaining and capable of providing a hidden truth behind the satirizing. The director attempts to show the nostalgic effect music has on people and how those emotions are important to the audience. They also try to show the impact certain people or groups can have on a society while still making a film that has comedic and dramatic elements to it. One aesthetic that is incorporated throughout the film is the use the on-camera interview

The reason for this is that real documentaries do not have much nondiegetic sound to convey the thought that these actors are actually real and have knowledge of everything going on around them. Also since the film revolves around the idea of folk music or music in general, they attempt to use that as their main source of music. They try to incorporate real music scenes as much as possible to make it seem like a real performance. Besides the use of old footage performances most of the other sound comes from the actors mouth, either through song or regular speech. All of this put together brings attention to the importance, the happiness, that real and live music has on people’s lives. Which happens a lot in real life, since people usually have a special connection to music especially when it is from someone they used to admire. Also since A Mighty Wind is a satire to real documentaries the director makes it a point to mimic real documentaries, so by mainly using diegetic sound they can make this film truer to the structure of an actual documentary. Thus achieving a better film that follows guidelines to make the film easier to understand and keep up