stances of falsity are the predecessors of the mockumentary genre, though they serve very different purposes. The false images in the early films were used to provide authenticity; fake scenes were used to include the action and events that the camera was unable to capture to add to the credibility of their footage. When the camera was unable to physically be there and obtain the actual footage, or when the film didn't turn out the way the documentarians wanted they would simply use false footage to make up for what was lost. The premise was if the audience was able to see even a re-enactment, they would be more apt to believe that it actually occurred. The goal of the mockumentary is not to enhance credibility but to explicitly question the believability of what the audience is viewing. While many of these early documentary films used fakery to add to the realism the directors were trying to portray, mock documentaries are set up to look as realistic as possible both to trick the audience, and also to challenge them to question what they accept as matter-of-fact.For as long as documentaries have existed they have embellished the truth and taken liberties with the documentary form to make the truth seem more believable. In the beginning of documentary film the audience was not ready to question what was real and what had been staged, film was new and people were not questioning the actuality of the events they were accepting as "real." Erik Barnouw, author of Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, states that directors of mock documentaries start with a fictional event or person, and embellish the fiction to make it seem more believable or convincing. Often times the aim of mockumentaries is to satirize the documentary form. Still today, over a decade since the advent of film the relationship between images and truth remains blurred. As sited in Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries, "reality television," programs like Cop...
