A hilarious send-up of documentary conventions in Phil: A Tribute to a Man

The emotive instrumentals. Gazing out to a desolate sea, hair blowing in the breeze. Searingly honest, poignant statements over a mug of something hot. A face furrowed of brow, bravely concealing an inner struggle. Ah, the documentary filmmaker’s toolbox, a veritable treasure trove of tropes so easy to send up, just as director Jim Archer has done perfectly in his new project Phil: Documentary of a Man.

“The idea was to parody a lot of the documentary shorts that seem to popping up more and more these days. I actually like a lot them but I thought it would be funny if the subject of the documentary just absolutely didn’t deserve to have a film made about him,” Jim explains. Where the short works so well is not only in its perfect dialogue and knowing mocking of documentary conventions, but in the technicalities. It’s shot so perfectly that it really does warrant a double-take if you didn’t set out to watch knowing that it was a parody.

“To make it really work it had to seem as real as possible so I got the DOP Marcus Autelli on board, who I’d shot a commercial with previously,” says Jim. “I knew he could really deliver that reportage/art doc aesthetic that we needed. Then it was just a case of finding an interesting backdrop – which in this case was the seaside town Whitstable – and running around with Joe the actor trying to find interesting (and silly) shots.”

The narrative is tea-spittingly funny. “If my neighbour doesn’t like me shouting through the wall, he’s free to move…” says our protagonist. “Everyone has a dark side, every Jekyll has a Hyde. Every Ant has a Dec. I don’t know why I go into the supermarket and swap everything round, I can see why it annoys people. Suddenly I’m putting grapes by the beef.”

The beauty of all this is that the whole thing was improvised. “Originally I had written a rough script but I was worried it would sound too scripted, one of the main characteristics of these docs is that it just sounds like snippets taken from a stream of consciousness,” says Jim. “Joe (Morpurgo) who stars in it is an amazing improviser and I knew that if I did the interview with him we’d come up with the funniest stuff. We sat down a couple of days before the shoot and came up with a rough character, someone equal parts boring/bored/sad/self obsessed/psychotic and then just did a mock interview.” Watch and enjoy, and we defy you not to giggle.