Wright or Wrong? – MIDNIGHT SNACK

The director Edgar Wright has always been a personal favourite of mine. In fact, I would go as far to say he rests as one of the more innovative directors of the present, taking established cinema tropes and smashing them into high energy, high-octane cuts.

The anticipated release of his upcoming film, Baby Driver, has the British director back in the spotlight for me, and what better way to discuss the creation and innovation of worlds than with an auteur who captures in 5 what most directors do in 10.

Let’s start with the International Trailer for Baby Driver. Fun fact, there were actually two trailers released for this film, an official ‘American’ one and the international one, and if you ask me which one captures Wright’s work better, it’s this one. The music, pace, and classic jump cuts mashed with whip pans and fast zooms all scream Edgar Wright.

His world is very much sound-driven. Wright’s films have “sound and image function cooperatively” [Mcqueen, p.143], allowing for “heavy stylization and self-conscious virtuosity” [Bordwell, p.180]. Everything is exaggerated and yet for one moment, we, the audience, do not question it, as we are completely content and seduced by this hyperactivity.

This is further amplified by Wright’s love for bombastic editing – despite the fact that this IS a trailer, Baby Driver features a song towards its latter half where our titular protagonist swings and manoeuvres his car to the beat of Radar Love by the Swedish band Golden Earring. It is dynamic, yet illustrates a great deal about the nature of the protagonist.

When discussing audial-visual storytelling, it is important to note that both these factors come into play and are equally as important in crafting a specific world. The landscape informs the soundscape and vice versa. Baby Driver presents a unique example where we have a duality of sorts.

So often lost in his own internal world, Baby constantly listens to the hum of the headphones and lives within his musical mind. That, in a sense, can be considered the law of his world, inferring that the various songs represent his mood and his motivation. Everything is dictated by the music, as far as Baby is concerned.

This, funnily enough, generates an example of a parallel world – the physical world, where Baby interacts with the mob gangs, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, etc., and the mental world: where he hides behind his music tracks.

I take inspiration from Wright as a master of the soundscape. He knows how to generate a stylised mood that instrumental in highlighting the quirks and inner workings of his world. His trailers aside, he is also able to very quickly establish a complex, layered world within no time, needing very little or even no verbal exposition.

I want to apply this flexibility of audio-visual information in my work. Not necessarily an abundance of dialogue, but rather, the use of sound effects and appropriate visual cues to heighten my ability to convey a convincing story quickly and methodically.