A Flock of Red Kites Fly Overhead in a Cleverly Edited Video Using 20 Minutes of Condensed Footage

In the sixth video of his San Diego Studies series, filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaken cleverly edited 20 minutes of kite flying footage into a a single shot, making it appear as if a flock of red kites were swooping over his head. The footage was taken at Tijuana Slough on a cloudy June day.

This was shot on June 28, 2015 in an area of San Diego County called the Tijuana Slough. It is the most southwestern corner of the continental U.S. where the U.S. meets Baja Mexico. The landmass in the bottom left of the frame is a neighborhood of Tijuana called Playas de Tijuana and just before that is the international border. The area is historically rich and politically complex. …I injured my shoulder last summer and couldn’t surf or swim all year so I started flying kites at the beach for fun, that’s the source of the idea. In the previous videos I looked for large scale events but for this one I was curious to see what could emerge from something really simple. We shot at the border because it has predictable wind and the area doesn’t attract crowds, so it’s serendipity that I made a video about hidden complexity in a place with an enormous amount of hidden complexity. A note on the gray sky, these weather conditions are called June gloom by Californians. Throughout late spring, low altitude stratus clouds are produced over the ocean and brought inland, usually late at night, by prevailing winds.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.