With a lineage tracing back to The Office, St. Denis Medical is the latest in a series of mockumentary workplace comedies from writer/producer Justin Spitzer, this time trading the setting of an office park or a big box store for an underfunded hospital in small town Oregon. In that way, St. Denis Medical manages to blur the lines between genres, being at once a mockumentary sitcom and a comedic sendup of medical procedurals.
For this video feature, Camera Operator got to chat with camera operators Jacob Pinger and Mande Whitaker about what their backgrounds in reality and unscripted television bring to a mockumentary series like this, how the camera operators work with the cast to deliver the show’s humor, and how the operating itself is heightened and exaggerated for comedy, in stark defiance of the traditional axiom that the camera is meant to be invisible.
Despite a paltry budget, and an overworked staff, executive director Joyce Henderson has big plans for St. Denis Regional Medical Center, aiming to make the hospital into something of a destination. Meanwhile, the doctors and nurses are doing their best to get by, dealing with occasionally hostile and often eccentric patients, interpersonal spats, and whatever Joyce’s latest scheme is to put St. Denis Medical on the map. St. Denis Medical is created by Justin Spitzer and Eric Ledgin and stars Wendi McLendon-Covey, Allison Tolman, Josh Lawson, Kahyun Kim, Mekki Leeper, David Alan Grier, and Kaliko Kauahi.
Watch the conversation about St. Denis Medical
