This 6-minute opening scene of the film Baby Driver is said to be one of director Edgar Wright’s best work. In this scene, Baby (the driver) jams out to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” while evading the police to get three bank-robbing criminals to safety. Since this scene is rather long, I will be deconstructing parts of the scene.

In the first 30 seconds, you see the car pulling up and a close up of a hand clicking the iPod. What I feel was implied in these two shots was that the director was hinting the audience on the significance of the car and music in this film. The first beat of the song plays and it cuts to a shot of Baby, who you can tell is the driver and was the one that played the music as he has earphones in and is on the driver’s seat. As that same beat repeats 3 times with orchestric music building up in the background, it cuts to a mid shot of 3 different characters looking in each other’s directions, making it seem like they are about to battle one another.

Following this shot, is a sequence of shots that are perfectly in sync to the music which created a sort of flow and groove while watching it. This includes a 3-minute traditional car chase that has been elevated into something more exciting and reckless by Wright’s practical effects and razor-sharp editing skills. It is a must to point out the inventive sound design which merges ambient effects with the soundtrack to create a highly entertaining experience. For example, the engine revs being lined up alongside the music track. It just all worked hand in hand.

My personal favourite part of this scene is at 4 minutes and 22 seconds. It begins with a mid close-up shot of Baby driving on the highway through the side of his eye and his body language that you can somewhat tell that he is looking on the other side of the road. I assume that the cameraman would be filming from the inside of the car on the passenger seat then cuts to a wide shot of the highway. In this shot, it is obvious the director wants the audience to focus on the two bright red cars. How? Notice that every other car surrounding the two red cars, are either grey or black, blending with the colour of the road, making the two red cars stand out. The camera then pans to the left following the two red cars driving the on the other side of the road in the opposite direction.

What I love most about this shot is that if you look closely as the camera is panning past the car window and tracking the two cars, at 4.24 minutes, both cars perfectly aligned in the centre of Baby’s car window and stops at a close up of Baby’s face. From that shot it cuts to him changing gears, signalling that..it’s about to go down. It cuts again to a medium wide shot from the front of the car, I am curious to know how this shot was done but it showed Baby turning the wheel making a U-turn aggressively to the other side of the road, catching up to the two red cars. A wide shot with a hint of the car, showing it was a passenger’s point of view of the two red cars was so intriguing in a sense that, the bit of the car at the bottom of the frame aligned with the centre lane in between the two red cars, creating a vision for the audience try and guess what he is about to do next.

The next shot shows Baby driving straight in between the two red cars and slowing down his speed so he lines up accordingly with the other two cars. But why? It then cuts to a mid shot of all the passengers from the front of the car again, this time with the passenger in the front seat looking up, in the background, there is some sort of noise. This is when the audience will assume or wonder if there is a helicopter up above. From that, it cuts to a what I call a ‘dirty over the shoulder’ shot for vehicles, the camera is positioned above the helicopter shooting downwards with a wide shot showing the now 3 red cars aligned on the highway with the helicopter flying into the frame. This is leading the audience up to what the driver has in mind, placing the helicopter in the frame with a top view of the cars gives us viewers an idea of the reason behind his doing.

Whilst deconstructing this scene, it was just so fascinating to know how they constructed this scene from the camera movement to  the number of cameras that were used on set to how tough the process must have been to edit such a fast pace scene. Moreover the fact that there was no dialogue throughout the 6-minute opening scene shows how well they communicated with the audience through the editing.

This was my first experience with a script as a sort of guide and foundation for filming and I feel like it made the whole pre production and post production different as compared to previous exercises I have come across. Reflecting on this exercise, I personally enjoyed the pre production process with my group. Reading the script together and having a discussion on the concept we were going for as a whole opened up a safe space for each member to share their visions for each scene we were going to shoot and agree with what would suit best.

As for the production process, it was fun to experiment with different angles and perspective as now I had to take into account the fact that there was a dialogue to follow. We needed to make sure we were shooting to edit and that we got the shots we needed. This was to make sure that when we edit there will be a proper flow to the scene/film and the shots between dialogue ran smoothly. The ‘dirty’ over the shoulder shot is definitely something I would like to explore further in future projects. It gave the shot more depth and perspective.

Another new and exciting experience was handling F4 audio recorders for the first time. Who knew something as simple as coiling the wires could be so important when it comes to setting up and packing down the equipment. It was eye opening to see how much the little details impact the process, an example would be the way the wire has to be placed and wrapped around the stick preventing it from knocking and interfering with the audio. I was aware of this equipment from watching behind the scenes makings of films, so it was very interesting to learn how it actually functioned, like the importance of placing it near to the throat and the significance of getting some atmos audio for editing purposes.

Lastly, syncing audio !! I honestly always thought the audio from films had always come from one recording with the video camera and not having to take it separately and syncing it. I cannot emphasize enough how important I now know logging is! Having to experience losing our log sheet and listening/watching back all the clips for the first time was something I hope would be the last.