All the auditions were improvised, "you're seeing the auditions you see in Guffman; those are the first time I ever saw them," Guest admitted in an interview. There was no screenplay for Guffman; Guest used a loose outline to allow for flexibility. In order to produce a final product that can be understood as believable Guest expresses his meticulous attention to detail, "it took quite a long time to delineate all the characters and show how they would all interact in this town." Guest set out to show "how to skewer human pretensions without looking like you're stabbing the human spirit."To offer a realistic portrayal, mock documentaries borrow many of the tools that traditional documentary form uses to produce "truth" and rather, use them to produce fiction. The "verite" style is synonymous with both traditional and false documentary form to provide a sense of realistic camera work. In the "verite" style, the camera is handheld and shaky, lighting is uneven, sound quality is poor, and the acting is impeccable. This "unprofessional" look aids in the aura of believability. The Blair Witch Project is a recent example of a very successful use of the "verite" style. The credits provide the background of three young adults sent into the woods to make a movie of their adventure. This documentary style film takes place in Burkettesville, Maryland were a subsequent legendary haunted woods is the center of focus. Upon entering the old cemetery from the legend, strange events start to occur. They enter the forest and hear strange noises from the woods, get lost, lose their only map, they are soon starving, cold, bickering through the forest while videotaping the whole time. The movie is a documentary of their subsequent disappearance made from the footage they shot and left behind. Blair Witch posits itself as a documentary in the "verite" mode. Similar to Guffman, the actors in Blair Witch were not given a script to follow but had...
