Kids On The Run

As a writer my intent is to create a piece of writing that is able to attract and maintain the interest of the viewer. Once I believe that the story is able to stand on its own strength, I begin working on my material as a director. I build up my projects in a very organic manner, so in order to deconstruct my vision in this document I will break it up into several headings.

Theme as Visual:

At the heart of ‘Kids on the Run’ is the theme of finding one’s place in the world i.e. a sense of belonging. In the film we see the world through the eyes of these four children, who form the bottom ranks of society. Translating this into visual means often keeping the camera at a low angle. This way the world is seen from the ground up, and it also plays into the perspective of a child. In such compositions the background plays a major factor, and the exaggerated height of buildings and other people from such an angle expresses that sense of longing in the children’s minds. This kind of shot-taking is reminiscent of Ozu’s ‘tatami shot’ but is used purposefully and not just aesthetically.

Family is an important theme in the film. The four boys form their own pseudo-family, but are unconsciously always seeking a familial relationship with the people around them. Saif looks up to the policeman, Abhijit, as a father figure and a role model whom he often imitates. Umeed looks up to the teacher, Tarini, as a mother figure who nurtures him with food and education. When Saif and Maya fall in love they almost become the parents of that pseudo-family. Sachin’s memory of his father is what haunts him and drives a lot of his actions. There are many moments when these roles are reversed or destroyed as the children take a closer look at their heroes.

E.g. the use of volume and height to define dominance of Sachin’s father over Sachin is often transferred to different scenes in which Sachin feels threatened or scared. At the end of the film however, when he overcomes his fear and extends his help to the policeman we see a reversal of this composition.
A common dilemma shared by all the characters in the film is that of isolation. In the case of the four children, they will be shot with wider lenses to pit them against their environment. The cold grey background of the city and the dingy back-alleys seem to engulf them. For other characters like the teacher or policeman, using telephoto lenses alienates their singular figures from their environment. I want to communicate the idea that these children’s search for identity is a universal problem, not brought on by their specific circumstance but by a society that tries to classify and compartmentalize us.

Love & violence play a pivotal role in the film. In this work I explore the idea that love is violent and violence is intimate, and it is this idea that will guide the visual adaptation of several important scenes.

E.g. one scene intercuts between 4 events: Saif spying on Abhijit having sex with Diya, Amitabh being attacked by the gang of beggars, Sachin buying and using drugs, and Umeed struggling with a kidnapper. They are all shot in a similar fashion, using handheld and low key lighting to create an atmosphere of breathlessness and urgency. Using wider lenses also distorts the image and puts us at an uncomfortable closeness to the characters.

Another theme the film tackles is idealism. The children don’t know any better and are fooled by the advertisements presented to them through the glass walls of the McDonald’s restaurant. To them the food there represents much more than a means of staving off hunger; they see wealth, family, warmth and happiness all resonate from a burger. It is this craving that brings them to try and steal some of it, which ultimately leads to tragedy. But wealthy corporations aren’t the only culprits. We see the children look to education as a cure for poverty, family as a source of security and the police as the upholder of justice. Even the teacher and the policeman both buy into these naïve notions of the institutions they serve, but by the end of the film no one is left certain of the true purpose of it all.

Location as Metaphor:

The McDonald’s restaurant is an important location in the film. It is located at the corner of an intersection, and is in many ways the center towards which all the pieces of the story come together. I chose McDonald’s because of everything that it and its food stands for as mentioned earlier. The building is greatly contrasted against the dingy streets and seems to imply an unrealistic world lies within.

The children’s home is another important location. It is directly under a bridge, and faces the railway tracks. Both these qualities symbolize their desire to connect and join the rest of the world, and to become a part of society.

The back-alleys behind the McDonald’s in which many scenes take place are designed almost like a labyrinth, which suggests its inescapability. It also seems to narrow down the world so that each aspect and action can be observed in isolation.

The school is seen as a very dry place with a dull, monotonous colour scheme, to emphasize its desire for homogenous uniformity.

Use of Animation:

There are four dreams in the film, one for each of the boys. Two dream book end the film and the other two help divide the film into three segments. The dreams will be animated in 2-D. The reason being that it is only in their dreams that the children can express themselves freely and their joys and fears are uninhibited. Similarly as a director I can use these dreams to break away from the visual restraints of a very rooted and realistic film, and explore these characters through an unrestricted lens.

I have a lot of respect for animation and its ability to create meaningful stories without words. I wish to bring this sort of careful nuance into these sequences using different styles of animation. I want to use different styles of animation from different parts of the world (India, Japan, France and America) in order to differentiate the children’s dreams and make them uniquely personal.

Visual Style:

A major portion of the film will be shot in the handheld fashion. This is not to imitate and give the film a documentary quality, but it is an aesthetic choice that takes into consideration the inherent qualities of the handheld shot. It works very well with the idea that these children are not rooted in place, and that they are constantly on the move like vagabonds. The raw energy of the constantly moving camera heightens both the urgency as well as the restlessness that these characters are dealing with. The idea is to create emotion through motion, using the handheld shot.

Static frames are very important with respect to the policeman and the teacher, who represent the grounded security of their respective establishments. Also in a film that comprises of mostly handheld shots the sudden cut to long static shots during important and emotional scenes imitate the idea of time standing still, or holding one’s breathe. These moments will add a layer of unflinching seriousness to many crucial scenes.

There are several visual motifs in the film that further and enhance many of the ideas that concern me as an artist. I strongly believe that having these layers of subtext allows for one’s work to be more open to interpretation and consequently improves the dialogue a viewer can have with the art and its form. These motifs are spread across the film in the form of specific images, words, or objects, and makes for a rich unfolding of meaning.

E.g. recently India has seen the rise of independent filmmaking, and I would like to be a part of this movement. I have always been fascinated by the Renaissance movement, and there are a few points in my film where I have been inspired by the art from that great period. In the film, the scene in which the children have a food fight and Umeed is covered in ketchup sauce pays homage to Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’, the scene in which Maya rushes to Umeed’s unconscious body is composed to look like Michelangelo’s sculpture ‘Pieta’, and the moment when Sachin offers his stick to Abhijit resembles the fresco, ‘Creation of Adam’ by Michelangelo.

I have a very strong relationship with colour and its ability to contain meaning, and I like to use colours to multiply the psychological effect of places and performances. I don’t believe that colours have a predetermined associations because that implies that everyone thinks alike, which we don’t. Instead, I believe that every film is a clean slate upon which I have the artistic license to introduce and define certain colours for the purpose of telling a better story.

E.g. the colour red has a different significance for different characters. For Sachin it is deeply linked with his past trauma and physical assault by his father. Whenever he has an emotional breakdown this colour possesses a dominance in the frame. For Umeed, the colour red foreshadows his death and scenes in which he interacts with the colour all hint towards his tragic fate. Green is associated with safety, as their home under the bridge is covered in green moss but as the film progresses the moss dies out. The teacher, Tarini, has a green colour scheme as she provides an oasis for the children through education.

Sound & Music:

The world these children live in is chaotic and unpredictable, but not meaningless. This is also going to be my approach towards how the sound design and music of the film will be constructed. I listen to a lot of jazz & blues, as well as both Indian & western classical music. I picture the idea of the children’s longing and isolation to be accompanied by a slow saxophone melody. In this film I am looking for a fusion of jazz and Indian classical music. This kind of exploration and experimentation will give the film and its themes a certain universality, and move away from an otherwise melodramatic score.

The idea of trying to find a new, genre-less soundtrack ties into the theme of discovery that the children are experiencing. Amitabh’s performance itself is a testament to this, as he uses his body as percussion instrument, and through his own creativity and persistence creates a mix of traditional Indian folk dance and western jazz drumming.

Another place where music is important is in the dream sequences. I see the dreamscape as a chance to break away from the traditional use of music simply as a tool to enhance the atmosphere of a scene. In Sachin’s dream where he is attacked by his father the television is playing an advertisement for McDonald’s, and I want to juxtapose the cheery, naïve music from the advert with the dread in Sachin’s mind.

The Indian national anthem is used in the film to represent the idea of identity with respect to one’s country. Umeed, being young and never having lived anywhere except under a bridge, struggles to understand the idea of nation and citizenship. At the end of the film the national anthem is sung as his body is thrown into the back of a garbage truck, which makes for a bold statement about the treatment of street children in India and how our society has decided their place in the world.

Conclusion:

These are some of the ideas I have had as I visualize and build my film in my mind. As time goes on I hope to improve upon them and create a piece of art that can be appreciated for both its content and its form.