The idea for my final project (so far) is to explore a character worthy of a John Hughes film in the style of Edgar Wright, since these are perhaps two of my biggest obsessions when it comes to cinema. In order to do this, I have to understand what Wright brings to a film, and what it is I love so much about his style so that I can understand how to translate these techniques to my own work. Considering this, Vimeo user Tony Zhou has made the perfect video essay for me to refer to as a basis for this exploration:
So much is covered in this video, from framing to editing to shot transitions and zooms, all as cinematic techniques that work to create comedy. It’s a range of techniques that suggest significant thought has been put into how each scene is shot and presented to an audience, since humour is not just achieved through dialogue, but present in everything you are seeing in the frame. Although the video is quite extensive and compares Wright to good and bad examples of making use of the frame, something to focus on for my project are the eight techniques that are listed, specific to how Wright stylises his films.
(The following gifs have been taken from http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/8-comedy-techniques-edgar-wright-does-right/)
1. Things enter the frame in funny ways
2. People leave the frame in funny ways
3. There and back again
4. Matching scene transitions
5. Perfectly timed sound effect
6. Action synchronised to music
7. Super dramatic lighting cues
8. The broken fence
These are all, apart from perhaps the last one which relies on an ongoing visual gag, simple enough ideas that I can attempt to recreate in my own project. Of course, it really does depend on what form my final piece ends up taking. However something else that is brought up in the video is the way Wright creates montages. In Zhou’s video this is in relation to showing a passing of time in the narrative, however it’s also a technique that he uses to show action, and that I could definitely use to show character. I’ll go into this a but more, but first here’s a video of Wright himself explaining “the art of close-ups” (aka. montage).
If you didn’t watch the video, basically Wright explains his love for using the close up to show action. He uses the example of the ‘tool-up’ montage, something he describes James Cameron as being the king of, and how his appreciation for this kind of technique translates into his own films. He explains it as being a good way to keep the pace up in his movies and give the narrative a sense of rhythm, and its become somewhat of a trademark for him as a director. There is a lot of emphasis put on timing in these montages, and the quick pace at which shots are cut to emphasises the lead up to action. Of course, even this is played with to create humour, such as in the Scott Pilgrim clip below in which Scott is ‘suiting up’, but the pace of the montage is broken by the amount of time it takes him to tie up his shoe laces.
I will come back to the Scott Pilgrim clip, but first I think a huge point has to made about how Wright does transitions. In the montages, and in Wright’s work in general, there are lots of crash-zooms, whip-pans, and various other movement-based techniques that all enhance the shots and give them a sense of importance. These are techniques he uses to transition as well, and as he mentions in the video, all of these montages are scenes with beginnings and ends, and each ends with something moving across the frame, or by blacking out. This is going to be something I will really need to think about before I film, not only in finding what the most interesting way to shoot each action/thing, but in deciding how each shot will connect to the one before and after it.
Now back to the Scott Pilgrim clip. Since my project is leaning towards being somewhat of a character profile, I actually think this clip is a really good example as a starting point for what my project might look like. The close ups in this montage show (in order) Scott’s face, shirt logo, sweatbands, coat, shoes, and then whole body. Showing a character bit by bit through close ups could be a really interesting way to start my video, and could be equally as entertaining when combined with all the other techniques I’ve mentioned in this post.
