Editor Richard Overall recently completed work on the animated epic Kensuke’s Kingdom, which is an adaptation of British author Sir Michael Morpurgo's children’s book. The film is an old-fashioned adventure, rendered in stunning hand-drawn 2D animation, and stars Sally Hawkins and Cillian Murphy, who tell the story of a young boy and his family, who set off on the sailing trip of a lifetime, only to be hit be a violent storm that sweeps Michael and his dog overboard.
The companions wash up on a remote island, where they struggle to survive and adjust to their new life. Michael later discovers that they are not alone, after being confronted by a mysterious Japanese man who has lived there, secretly, since World War II. The man sees them as dangerous invaders who threaten the fragile island paradise.
In addition to being an editor, Overall is also a writer, director, voice director, actor and voice actor. He's best known for serving as picture editor, voice director and writer on the Cartoon Network's animated series The Amazing World of Gumball, as well as being the voice of various characters. Here, he shares details about his work on Kensuke’s Kingdom, which was nominated for a BAFTA Awards in the Children’s & Family Film category.
Richard, how did you come to work on Kensuke’s Kingdom?
"Kensuke’s Kingdom was produced by British animation company Lupus Films, who are renowned for their hand-drawn films. I edited their 2012 special The Snowman and the Snowdog, and all their films since including the 2016 feature Ethel and Ernest. I first became involved in Kensuke’s Kingdom in a script meeting in 2017. However, as is typical with trying to produce an independent, hand-drawn animated feature, it took a few more years to secure all the funding. When it finally came together in October 2020, we were in full pandemic lockdown. The whole production was conducted remotely as a result. I edited the animatic entirely alone in my apartment, with video calls and written feedback from the directors. By April 2021 we were finally allowed to sit in the same room, which meant I had the luxury of two days in-person with the directors to lock the animatic!”
Who were your collaborators?
“The film was directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry. It was the first time I had worked with either of them. They gave me one crucial note up front: ‘This is a movie, not a film.’ From that point, I knew that it was paramount that we engaged a family audience as well as a festival audience, and from my point of view, that meant keeping a keen eye on pace and emotion. In a story like this, with very little dialogue and gentle plotting, there was always a risk we could let it become a touch wallowy, relying too much on the beguiling visuals that come with hand-drawn animation. I didn’t want it to be one of those films people describe as ‘very beautiful,’ because I find that’s usually code for ‘a bit boring!’ It needed to be emotionally gripping and accessible to all ages.
“I am a little wary of directors that come in pairs! Whilst in theory it should half the time that things take, it can very easily double it, if they disagree about every point. Thankfully Neil and Kirk were very frank, honest and respectful with their opinions. There really wasn’t time in the schedule to be anything but! Once I’d won their trust with the first few sequences, we established a warm, funny and productive working relationship. I was allowed to try things in the knowledge that they’d give it a fair chance, and they were grateful that I was willing to push hard to get the storytelling as good as it could be. As you can imagine, they were incredibly busy, personally overseeing design, animation, backgrounds, the lot, so it was great to be able to take whatever strain I could off their shoulders.”
Can you talk about the soundtrack?
“We were lucky to have our music composer on-board at the animatic stage, which is a rare treat. Stuart Hancock started composing very richly and realized synth mockups of his cues before any animation was drawn. As I had spent a long time spotting the film with temp music, it made sense for me to work closely with Stuart. Again, it helped take a little off the directors’ plates. My entire time on Kensuke’s Kingdom was a pleasure, but none more so than hearing Stuart’s score take shape. I’m a huge fan of classical Hollywood orchestral film scores, so it was a gift to be involved with something so full of melody and motif, and have it recorded by a live orchestra and choir. There’s over an hour of music in the film, and time and time again it is able to say what the characters cannot.
“We were similarly lucky to have sound designer Will Cohen involved from animatic stage. Will and I, along with my associate editor Peter Duggan, worked in a way which allowed us to prepare the full final track lay for sequences long in advance of the picture being locked. I wanted to avoid that situation where you don’t have enough time in the final sound mix to make the fun creative decisions, because you’re still dealing with the bread & butter issues. We made sure that we hit the ground running in those big, expensive theatre sessions, allowing the directors and Will to finesse a brilliant final sound design.
“Finally, I worked with the actors in the role of voice director. Aaron MacGregor, who plays our young hero Michael, was brilliant. He came down from Scotland for the week with his mum, and worked with boundless energy and gave such a great, genuine and natural performance — and all in an English accent. There isn’t much spoken word in the film, but I think this makes it even more of a challenge. If an actor has pages of dialogue, they have a chance to establish the character and warm into the role. Aaron had to do all of that in a few short lines — he had to reach full emotional depth from a standstill.
“Furthermore, all those small noises that keep the character alive - the various breaths, sobs, screams, laughs - take a lot of work to get sounding natural, and Aaron was tireless and sold every moment. However, we did all take a collective gasp though when, a year into the production, he returned for some pickups and his voice had broken. Suddenly, Michael was no longer a boy! Thankfully we didn’t need to record much with him - mainly just the singing scenes, which usefully disguised the voice break.”
What were the tools you used in the editing process?
“Animation editing almost all happens before a single frame is animated. I worked for around five months on an animatic. Using black & white storyboard frames, temporary voice acting, temp score and sound effects, we ‘locked’ the timing of the whole film before we had to employ the large, brilliant team of animators. There is still time to finesse and fine cut once animated, but it isn’t like live-action editing, where you have a choice of takes. I didn’t have a single frame more than was prescribed by my animatic timings - although the nature of the hand-drawn technique means that I could add little holds here and there where necessary or, more often, nip out frames mid-shot to give things a little bit more zip. I was able to cut the animatic on a fairly-simple Premiere setup on my home iMac. My crucial piece of extra kit was a good USB microphone, as I recorded all the temp voices and temp Foley as I went. It turns out that walking on a piece of old garden trellis on a carpeted floor is perfect for ‘old man’s footsteps in a treehouse.’
“Once we moved into full production, lockdown was over and we moved the cut onto a chunkier Premiere setup at Lupus Films. This is when Peter Duggan took control of the edit, as he would be in charge of cutting in the rushes. He had many video layers showing the various stages of animation - from layout blocking, rough line lest, in-betweened ‘clean’ animation, then colored, and finally composited. The temp sound mix was a fairly-efficient 36 tracks in the end.”
What was unique about this project from an editing standpoint?
“Having the composer and sound designer involved from such an early stage was a huge benefit, but it meant we had to be diligent in tracking changes. Despite the animatic being locked, we did have to keep making tiny incremental changes throughout the animation process. Sometimes shots would require a few frames fewer than I expected, so we’d cut it down on the fly to accommodate this - there were twelve unique drawings per second, so every little unnecessary bit of footage added days of draftsmanship. The schedule also demanded that we get ahead and fine-cut sequences as they were completed. If I’d waited until the final shot was in, I’d only have had a day to lock picture. There are various tools for tracking changes from Premiere, but we found they struggled a bit with our multiple video layers. Therefore, in the end, we used a manual system whereby we had a reference audio track into which we cut the full previous mix of the film. Any timing changes were reflected in this, so when we next updated the composer or sound designer with full picture, a simple old fashioned CMX3600 EDL of this track would show where all these changes were.”
Is there a scene or sequence that you would point to as a highlight?
“The most challenging sequence, in pure editing terms, was that 10-minute chunk when Michael is first alone on the island. It had to feel like he was there a dangerously-long time without water or food. However, I had to remember that this was a ‘movie’- we couldn’t afford to let it get boring. We went back and forth a lot on these sequences. At one point it was a ‘day’ shorter and it felt like he hadn’t earned the desperation. At another point we had a whole extra night, and suddenly it really dragged. In the end I think we hit a sweet spot - I’m half way to raising my wrist to look at my watch just as Michael finds the food from Kensuke. Then the story gets going again and we’re on safe ground. I tried a few other tricks in that sequence to keep it alive – jerky, off-rhythm transitions; abrasive sound cuts; anything to allow this long spell of ‘nothing happening’ to hold interest.
“The most satisfying sequence was the finale, when Michael and Kensuke say goodbye to each other. This took a while to get right. We thought we had it working - watching it independently was making us cry. But when watching the film on a run, it kept falling flat. In the end, we worked out it was the preceding scenes that were wrong. We hadn’t spent sufficient time after the poachers section for Michael and Kensuke to consolidate their bond. Once we remedied that, the final scene landed a very satisfying emotional blow.
“We kept improving it bit by bit. One late addition was the final bow from Michael. It seems obvious, but it took a long time to come! The temp score was very difficult to find for this piece. It was the source of my one main piece of defiance - the directors wanted me to use the score from the end of E.T. However, that would have been a cruel trick to have played on our composer Stuart. Producers would have said, ‘Why did we cry more before?,’ and I’d have said, ‘Because you were thinking about E.T. and Elliott!’ So we avoided that and I used a more obscure piece from a documentary. Thankfully, thanks to the brilliance of Stuart Hancock, there were no incidents of ‘temp love’ on this film. Every time Stuart provided a new cue, I instantly forgot what was there before - and that’s very rare. It took a lot of versions to perfect this final cue but it was worth the wait and was extremely moving. Kensuke’s Kingdom was the happiest editing job of my career, but also the one that made me shed tears at some point every day.”