Assembly Scene Analysis

When discussing the assembly phase of the essay film, I believe it is important to dissect it into visual and auditory, the two must develop very unique functions in order to harmoniously complement in the final iteration of the film. As opposed to traditional means of production, where the bulk of the narrative and structural choices are made in advance of shooting, these actions occur simultaneously when conceiving, shooting, and editing the essay film. I edit my projects in chapters, meaning I assemble the image and the essay in movements. Once each part feels complete, I put them together and add any images and/or narration to smooth over the transitions. The foundation of the visual element of the film is the implicit contextualization

As the assembly of images takes place, so too does the assembly of theoretical and observational threads in the essay narration. The theoretical thread of the work is built upon an amalgamation of subjective facts that are particular to my experiences with the conception of memories and the way in which I represent them with visual media. In some cases, the images are chosen based on thoughts that have already been written, and in other cases thoughts are created based on images that have been chosen. As opposed to the visual component of the film, the essay narration specifically directs the attention of the audience into understanding meanings regarding the subject of the film, in this case memory. In editing the image sequence with the voice-over, it is crucial to maintain a balance of information. The editorial rhythm must be such that the viewer is allowed brief pauses in the flow of information to meditate on the

Therefore, I have to create a thread through the different media, and the tail and head of the digital component must meet coherently. I began by furiously chopping the clips apart and redistributing them on the timeline without any sort of method. At a point where I had an interesting assemblage, I began to pare it down, cover empty space, and fine tune the rhythm. In the second movement, I use the same method as the first, but I narrowed my clip selections to three specific landscapes I had shot. I would begin one landscape with fragmented images and move slowly into more static and coherent vision of the place, then to the next landscape, starting over with fragments, and so on with all three consecutively. The third movement is more fluid, switching back to juxtaposed, individual locations, but assembling them in a way so that one is somehow visually similar to the next. The fourth movement continues and accentuates the fluidity of the third, melting into long tracking shots, that are made even more dreamlike with warp