Week 7 – Cops, props and shots

After rewatching Edgar Wright’s 2007 action comedy Hot Fuzz, I was thoroughly impressed with the way he was able to subvert the action genre over and over again, critiquing the overblown, over-exaggerated nature of generic Hollywood cop blockbusters.

He was able to so thoroughly provide a deconstruction of the genre through editing, and his visual style was so captivating and distinct, that I felt the need to replicate it in some shape or form – hence, explaining my test exercise.

This, in addition, provided another element to my action-oriented project.   On one hand, I would focus on the anatomy of a fight scene, analysing what made them exciting and exhilarating to watch, and on the other, I would investigate how filmmakers utilise editing to make otherwise mundane and boring actions appear high-octane.

I feel Wright has the art of the montage pat down.  The way he circumnavigates and ploughs his way through a narrative with minimal dialogue in a ‘show, not tell’ fashion allows for the narrative to develop without seeming too forced or laden with verbal exposition.  It does not detract from the tone or pacing of the narrative – aspects like police paper work and travelling between cities in Hot Fuzz are made exciting and rapid through the use of editing and montages, thus keeping in tone with the high intensity of the main crime/thriller plot.

Test v1 from Justin Luh on Vimeo.

The above video was shot over an afternoon/night, where I conceptualised various ‘everyday’ actions that bore some element of visual significance, actions that could be easily identified and dynamically represented.   Fiddling around in Adobe Premiere with the scale and positioning of certain images allowed me to amplify the intensity of specific actions.  For example, when the PAID stamp comes down onto the paper, I deliberately add a crash zoom to add speed and flow amidst the whip pans.  It is incredible how much of a difference a simple half-second zoom can make in a dynamic montage, and how much power it lends to a basic movement.

 

 

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