Ascension

Ascension came to us as Untitled PRC Project. The brief covered production, consumption and waste: how things are made, how people spend, and what happens to discarded material. We needed to find places where the filmmakers could spend time watching these activities unfold.

In September 2018, the team was already asking about interactions between people and the sounds they could record. Factory noise and the possibility of recording workers were already part of the discussion. Our research had to account for what the crew could hear and observe at each location.

By mid-September, recycling and Sanhe had become priorities. We developed the research around the people available to speak with the filmmakers and the activity the crew might be able to follow.

Our Shenzhen work covered Sanhe and an internet café: places where people looked for work and spent time away from it. Our producer arranged both, giving the visiting crew a local contact for the two settings.

The café was part of the research in October 2018, before the crew arrived. Later that month, the schedule placed the team in Shenzhen before the factory work. Our producer and a production assistant were involved in the local arrangements.

After filming, we followed up on location releases for the café and recycling. Those arrangements continued after the crew had moved on.

Recycling was one of the locations we arranged during the 2018 research. It gave the filmmakers a way to follow material after its first use. Our factory work also included a bottled water factory.

Each workplace offered different activity to observe. We developed options for the filmmakers; the crew decided what to film and how to approach it.

The recycling material also needed work during the edit. Following the October location-release correspondence, the production requested translation of a recycling interview in December. We supplied the translated script and location agreement in January 2019.

In 2019, the research discussions moved into factory recruitment, workplace pledges and settings for self-improvement or business training. The filmmakers were still deciding which situations they wanted to pursue.

Our producer arranged the boss school, a place organised around learning how to succeed. Alongside the industrial locations, it gave the production a setting for its interest in ambition.

We continued the research as those interests changed. The later school and recruitment discussions grew out of the collaboration that had begun with the first locations.

Translation and subtitling continued into 2020. The recycling interview was an early part of that work; later subtitle material was sent to Jessica Kingdon and acknowledged.

An observational film records speech in the middle of other activity. Instructions, conversations and presentations all need to be understood when the editor chooses a scene. We helped make that material accessible to the English-speaking filmmaking team.

Our involvement began with research and location arrangements in 2018 and continued through the film’s translation and subtitle work.

Ascension became Jessica Kingdon’s 2021 feature documentary about work, consumption and aspiration in contemporary China. It premiered at Tribeca, winning Best Documentary Feature and the Albert Maysles Award, and received a Documentary Feature nomination at the 2022 Academy Awards.

Kingdon directed and edited the film. She produced it with Kira Simon-Kennedy and Nathan Truesdell; Kingdon and Truesdell were the cinematographers, and Dan Deacon composed the music. Alchemist Films provided the China research, location arrangements and language support described here.

For an observational shoot in China, allow time to develop the locations before fixing the itinerary. Discuss translation and subtitle needs early too, as the local team’s work may continue well beyond the shoot.