Daniels Kite - Assembly

The main goal of an assembly is to create a sequence that can portray a films narrative so the audience has a clear understanding of what is going on. The first assembly normally never achieves this goal as it is also a time for experimentation and trying a different approach to the film that may differ from the shotlist. "What you really want to do when first assembling a film is to put it together, right from the beginning, without second-guessing anything. Don’t try and be too smart too early. When you’ve finally gotten it all assembled, you can see how far the film has strayed from its intended trajectory.”[1; Pg 37]

My ideal way of starting this process would involve getting all the rushes from the shot list onto Media Composer and start cutting together a sequence that I thought satisfied this goal. However, due to a number of uncontrollable circumstances such as working with child actors and their availability, this wasn't feasible and we filmed over a month instead of the designated 2 weeks.

After each shoot day backed up the footage on a separate hard drive and then transferred the rushes into Media Composer. As we filmed on the Sony F5 I had to download a plug in which allowed XAVC/XDCAM footage to be AMA-linked in Media Composer which I decided was a quicker workflow than using DaVinci Resolve to convert it.

Source: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/pdzk-ma2

Using AMA-Link with the Sony XAVC/XDCAM plug in.

After AMA-linking the footage, I put it into bins organised by shoot day and then labelled the clip by its framing and the action within it e.g. MS Daniel glum. I also imported the sound from the same day ready for it to be synced.

Organising rushes by shoot date.

I synced the sound with the corresponding video clip, using the clapper board as a reference and then started putting the synced clips into new bins organised by scene.

Syncing sound using Inpoints.

Organising synced clips by scene number.

As we filmed in an non-chronological order I only had a small amount of footage from a mixture of scenes to work with at any given time so I began by cutting the scenes together from the rushes I did have day by day, leaving gaps in the timeline for any shots that we hadn’t filmed yet.

Early assembly created between shoot days.

I continued doing this during the gaps between shoot days so I could show the group how each scene looked and also so I could keep a record of what shots we still needed and what re-takes we would have to get.

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Here is the final assembly so far which is still missing around 22 shots:

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The gaps in the timeline meant that the pacing of the film was very difficult to visualise so I focused entirely on the clarity of the narrative which was made relatively easy due to the quantity of good coverage in almost all the scenes. However there were some exceptions, more noticeably scene 9, where there was a lack of usable reaction shots of Daniel which I believe will cause some issues with the pacing of the scene in the rough cut as it is currently very slow due to the Headmasters performance.

Finally the sound is very sparse as I have only used sync sound in this assembly, so overlapping dialogue and any L or J cuts will be improved when I collaborate with the sound designer at a later date.

Biography

1. Michael Ondaatje (2002); The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film; London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Rushmore Analysis

Another film I’ve been looking at for research is Rushmore (1998), also by Wes Anderson, as it contains similar subject matter to Daniels Kite. The major similarity is that the story revolves around a child, who is slightly out of touch with reality, and how he copes with the ‘real world’.

Rushmore opens by introducing this main character, Max, as being smart, funny and the centre of attention but it is quickly revealed that he is just daydreaming about his aspirations and what he thinks of himself. The daydream appears to be ‘real’ as it doesn’t follow the style of conventional or cliché dream sequences, as well as the fact that it appears at the beginning of the film so no rules or exposition has been set up prior to it, making the audience view it as fact. However, the sound is a big give away to the fantasy nature of this scene as it appears almost cartoonish and over exaggerated, drawing attention to the unrealistic nature of the content. The sound also helps the narrative progress by pulling Max out of his daydream and back into reality with a slow sound mix of clapping underneath the rapid cuts between the two locations. 

Shown here at 2:10

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The use of symmetrical wides in Rushmore is similar to my earlier analysis of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and is very common of Wes Anderson’s films, especially with the combination of wide angle lens’ that give a slight curved distortion.

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This is a technique we want to replicate in Daniels Kite to make the film more stylised, ultimately engaging the audience more into the fantasy of the narrative.

Rushmore also uses slow motion in a similar way to our film, shown here at 1:20.

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Tom Rolf, editor of Taxi Driver (1976) and Heat (1995), has said, "...I do not like slow motion at all at any point, unless it’s needed to graphically explain something that your eye probably would not catch at normal speed.”^{[1; Pg 126]} However, within the context of Daniels Kite and Rushmore, I would disagree with him as it is used for a completely different effect, which is to highlight and reflect on the main characters emotion at that point in the narrative. In Rushmore, it reflects on Max’s feeling of triumph and success by mimicking his point of view of seeing everything in slow motion due to his emotion. We want to do a similar thing in Daniels Kite by highlighting Daniel’s internal emotions whilst encouraging the audience to pause to reflect these emotions, hopefully making them empathise more with the character. In the gym scene, the slow motion contrasts heavily with the pace that jars the audience into realising the joy Daniel experiences from this escapism.

Some of the humor in Rushmore relies on the performances of the children doing or saying things that are more characteristic of adults.

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In this scene, the subject matter mixes with the cinematography and performance to create this effect, starting with the camera angle that Dirk is shot at. The Low angle track in makes him seem intimidating and dominant in the scene, which is comical due to the difference in age between the two characters. The spit at the end is also uncharacteristic of a child that adds to the same theme with the music highlighting the gag by pausing briefly.

Daniels Kite has similar moments to this so I tried to mimic the pacing of these types of gag for the best and most humorous effect.

Bibliography

      1.   Gabriella Oldham (1992); First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors; USA: University of     California Press

Moonrise Kingdom Analysis

We wanted to replicate and take inspiration from Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012) for Daniel’s Kite, using its cinematography techniques and visual style to enhance our films themes. Wes Anderson is renowned for his use of extreme wide’s, whip pans, dolly tracks and stylised costume and set design to draw the audience into the fantasy worlds that his films are set in. We want to use some of these techniques to the same effect so our audience can view Daniel’s Kite through the eyes of Daniel and immerse themselves in the narrative.

The wides in Moonrise Kingdom are predominantly used to establish the location of the scene and the characters within it, whilst also allowing the audience to absorb the Mise en scene.

This is so the audience gets the full view of the scene and can understand the characters emotions and reactions within it.

The wides are always symmetrical in some way, either with the main focus of the shot being centre frame or, if there’s more than one focus, both in symmetrical positions in the frame.

Focus centre frame

Symmetry between man and lighthouse (2 focuses of frame)

Not only does this make the images very visually aesthetic, but it also encourages the audience to look at the important character or object first and then allows them to take in the rest of the shot.

We have a number of extreme wides in Daniels’s Kite for similar reasons, mainly to establish new locations that build on the themes within the scene. For example the opening wide used in the gym sequence is used to set Daniel in a new location as well as to introduce the theme of isolation and not fitting in connoted through the lack of anything stimulating imagery contained in the shot.

We hoped that using this framing would allow the audience to see the scene through the eyes of a child by making the gym seem abnormally large and empty, the way Daniel sees it, which would help them empathise with him, ultimately encouraging them to be immersed in the narrative more.

The set design is another huge factor in creating the fantasy world of the narrative, as it is the key component that allows the audience to believe the film they’re seeing is real. Moonrise Kingdom’s set and costume design has a very quirky and childlike theme to it, as well as all being from the same era. This makes the story more believable and easier to engage with because as the film progresses, it becomes less noticeable and more acceptable to push the boundaries of reality without the audience disengaging.

 We have attempted to replicate this in our film to reproduce the same emotions within our audience and so the narrative isn’t jarring in places we don’t want it to be.

Wes’s use of dolly tracks are also a very stylised part of the cinematography of his films, which usually feature when following a character or object through a scene.

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They tend to be quite fast paced which help build up suspense and adds tension to the narrative, whilst also making it flow more smoothly instead of cutting from one static shot to the next. This essentially draws the audience’s attention away from the editing and cuts within a scene, allowing them to, once again, immerse themselves in the narrative.

We’ve occasionally mimicked these types of shot in Daniel’s Kite mainly to help the narrative flow from freely and to keep the fantasy feel to certain scenes. They also make the visuals more interesting by physically showing the audience what we want them to see, instead of making them search for it themselves over a wide.

Finally, Moonrise Kingdom uses a fair few whip pans to add to its broad range of cinematography techniques. Wes makes the camera act as the audience’s eye as if they were in the scene by panning on sound cues to reveal gags or narrative points. (4 seconds in here)

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Originally, we had storyboarded whip pans into Daniels Kite to be used mainly as humorous and quirky ways to reveal gags. However, due to lack of experience and time we couldn’t execute them effectively so we had to work around it by either cheating physical space, to continue the theme of seeing the film through a child’s eye, or by just cutting them all together.