Why Modern Family Never Revealed Who Was Filming The Documentary

Modern Family told its story by having characters speak directly to a documentary camera, only to never reveal who was actually filming them.

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Modern Family told its story by having characters speak directly to a documentary camera, only to never reveal who was actually filming them. The mockumentary-style was popularized on TV by The Office, which featured the employees at Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch being filmed for a documentary examining a modern American workplace. Many other shows have tried their hand at the format since, but The Office and Modern Family are arguably the peaks of its use, outside of perhaps Parks and Recreation.

The more often the mockumentary concept is used on TV though, the less it seems to really matter why the subjects of the piece are actually being filmed. For example, Parks and Recreation didn’t really seem to pay the idea much mind at all, despite it being created by Greg Daniels and Mike Schur of The Office. The Office famously revealed members of its in-universe film crew during its final season, and it wasn’t too jarring a development, as the show had never really shied away from the fact that its characters were being documented.

Modern Family, on the other hand, never opted to make the same crew reveal, ending its 11-season run with zero explanation of why the Pritchetts and Dunphys were being filmed or talking to a camera. It turns out that choice was made for very specific reasons.

Why Modern Family Never Explained Its Mockumentary Format

As revealed by Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan during a post-finale interview with EW, the show decided not to show the documentary crew or explain why the filming had occurred because it just didn’t feel right. More specifically, Levitan and company worried that doing so at or near the end of the series’ run would risk being too meta or cutesy for its own good, and also might take fans out of the story. He acknowledged that The Office was able to pull the filmmaking crew reveal off, but that program had also never shied away from the fact Dunder Mifflin’s employees were being recorded by actual people. Modern Family never once directly acknowledged the people who must’ve been operating the cameras the characters spoke to, to the point where as the seasons went on, the idea that they were being filmed became more incidental than anything.

While Modern Family’s original pilot script incorporated the documentarian(s) as an actual presence, the show proper might as well have just said the characters were sitting in front of their own tripod-mounted camera for all it really came to matter to the plot. The mockumentary style simply became a storytelling device, one that allowed for snarky asides from characters to be delivered directly to the home viewer, but not really anything beyond that. Considering that Modern Family’s final season and series finale earned good reviews, it would appear Levitan and team made the right choice to not answer this particular question.

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