Tortilla Soup (2001) - comedy/romance:

Uncorked (2020) - drama:

Chef (2014) - comedy/drama:

Zola (2020) - drama/crime:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Charlie’s Breakdown - link above) (2012) - romance/drama:

Taking references from this as it composes a montage of Charlie confronting his traumatic memories from childhood

Liar (2017) - drama:

I May Destroy You (2020) - dark comedy/drama:

-       05:28:06: Phoebe MCU on toilet – used first half of take 2 (slate 16) as she pauses between taking the lid off and taking the test. Allowed me to cut to the insert sooner so that the audience knows what she’s looking at, but keeps a similar reaction

As well as making these changes, I included both versions of the title card that the motion graphics designer, Summer, had done. She transferred these to me and I created an export for each version of the title card.

Both films have a plot-twist either at the end or towards it, which is what I want to create with my film: a story with clues that lead towards the big reveal

My Re-Order According to the Original Context (Apocalypse):

Story Idea - Will kills Mikey's mother:

I also used this music to be able to create rhythmic montages, such as scene 3, where I cut between numerous shots of Sunset Park, as well as the food being made in Ricardo’s restaurant. This introduced the audience to both whilst keeping their attention at a medium pace, as each shot would be on scene for 1-2 seconds at a time. I referenced the opening scene of The Devil Wears Prada in creation of this, which is also a montage that introduces the differing characters applying for the same job as the main character. These characters aren’t important, but are included to establish to the audience the types of people that the main character is up against.

The aim of the Assembly Cut was to not only arrange everything in script order, but to also gather an understanding of the pace. The climax (stealing the bike) as well as the conversation between Nicolas and Abuelita in scene 13 is the turning-point for the pace, as everything leading up to this conversation will include medium to fast pace, generating the stress of the mission that Nicolas is on. Scene 9 represents this, which is located back in the kitchen. The chef is feeling pressure to get orders out, and is taking this out on everyone in the kitchen. I began on the medium shot of the chef ordering his employees to do as he requests, I cut quickly to the OTS wide of the employees rushing to complete orders, and cut back to the medium of the Chef suddenly as he takes on his requests himself. As this builds up, so does the music until the plate crashing behind the camera. I cut to the medium shot panning up to the waiter reacting, and as this camera movement slows, cut back to the Chef reacting with a ‘fed-up’ expression. This dramatic and fast-pace build-up creates a complication, as the Chef is becoming more stressed and the audience knows that Nicolas isn’t aware of this.

Once the conversation with Abuelita happens in scene 13, the pace slows right down, Nicolas doesn’t have any ideas left. Scene 14 demonstrates this as I used 2 shots, and cut between them after 8 seconds of the high angle shot (14-2), into the wide (14-A-3) for 13 seconds, using the maximum allowance of these takes, from ‘action’ to ‘cut’. I used an audio bridge to continue the sad music from scene 13 to this scene, showing that the disappointment has stuck with Nicolas. I then used an audio bridge at the end of this scene to begin the turn of pace back into an even faster pace for the party scene. Doing this allows a smooth transition between the paces. The ending involves a slow pace to show each character's reaction to Nicolas bringing great-quality tortillas back to the restaurant. I also used salsa music as the Chef tasted them to put pressure on the judgement, Tortilla Soup (00:00:12:00) inspired this decision.

I found no technical issues with the Assembly Cut, however, there were issues regarding continuity between shots, which can be found in scene 1. Shot 1-C (a wide of Riley and Brandon), which was a lengthy take of the first half of the scene, should've included Nicolas in the shot. However, he wasn't in it, and so there are no good takes of Riley saying her lines, as it would ruin continuity. Instead, I used her dialogue but not her. She isn't a prominent character but her line helps establish that the Chef puts a lot of pressure on his workers, and therefore foreshadows his character throughout the entire film.

Some dialogue in this scene (and others) wasn’t needed, therefore I cut them out. I came up against continuity issues in doing this, as well as dialogue being too close together to be able to make a smooth cut. One example was trying to remove the second half of line 11. To solve this, I used the audio from 1C-1 as the Chef leaves enough pause in his sentence to be able to make the cut. As his mouth movement wasn’t clear enough in the visual shot I was using, this was possible.

In scene 4, there was an issue with the quality of audio on MCU shots of Nicolas, which meant that I couldn’t use those. Instead I re-edited the scene to cut between the wides and MCU of Ricardo. I also managed to find another visual shot (4B-3), which synced up with the audio of 4A-2 (MCU on Ricardo) for the first half of line 4. It is definitely something that I can get away with, as I played the sequence for 2 of my classmates and they couldn’t notice it was edited.

Draft 5 and 6: