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Clip description
Ja’mie (Chris Lilley) starts a student representative council and looks at changes that can be made around the school.
Curator’s notes
Summer Heights High finds humour in moments where there’s a distance between the surface meanings of words or actions and their actual intentions. Here, Ja’mie imbues her 'concerns’ for improving the school with a none-too subtle class subtext, and a basic desire for self-aggrandisement.
The combination of 'captured’ footage of Ja’mie with interview footage demonstrates the series’ mockumentary style. While the team incorporates documentary elements, like the straight-to-camera interview and observational filming, according to producer Laura Waters, they are not interested in going out of their way to include self-consciously stylised documentary elements such as deliberate 'shaky-cam’. The emphasis is, rather, on an improvisational performance process that invites actors to 'bounce off’ Lilley’s performance. In this respect, a requirement of the series’ director was also an ability to bounce off Lilley and work with this process. For Summer Heights High Stuart McDonald took over this role from Matt Cameron, who directed We Can Be Heroes (2005).
