FMP – Edgar Wright

One thing that I love about Edgar Wright’s movies is how he challenges the traditional idea that as a director/cinematographer/editor you need to keep transitions basically hidden from the audience or you risk the audience “coming out” of the story. Conventional wisdom says that for “verisimilitude” (I like that word) you, the film maker, need to be helping the audience to stay immersed in the world of your film by making it believable, and that anything that “jolts” them out of that belief, such as an obvious transition, will risk losing their attention and engagement in the story, and risk them stopping watching.

I get why you want your audience to keep watching, that makes sense. But I don’t think there is a “one size fits all” rule to make it happen. My research is showing me that Comedy is an area where this “hidden transitions” rule can really be broken to very effective comedic benefit. Edgar Wright creates some brilliant, and very obvious, transitions, which do remind the audience that they are not actually within his world but work very well for Comedy.

And actually, as I did more research into Comedy Theory, I realised why more obvious transitions may works well in Comedy. For example, with the “Benign Violation” Comedy Theory, where what is comedic is a violation (like someone falling down the stairs, even dying) but it being benign (that is no-one actually gets hurt) in that audience is not getting hurt and they know that the character isn’t getting hurt because they are an actor. In a Comedy film where you have obvious transitions, yes it does remind the audience that they are not really within this world. But that adds to the “Benign” side of the Benign Violation Theory, since it makes it clear that they, the audience cannot get physically hurt by what is happening on-screen, so it frees them up to find it funny. Thrillers work in the opposite way, they DO need to make the audience feel that what is happening on screen could happen to them and thus prime them for jump scares, making them jump if they hear a noise suddenly in their own house, feel unease about did they actually lock the front door etc. Thrillers need to blur the line between the screen world and reality, whereas one area of Comedies is to make it clear to the audience that they are physically safe, and so can feel free to laugh at the misfortunes of characters on the screen.

This may seem to contradict another idea of Comedians making the stories that they tell feel “Relatable” to the audience, for example the comedian Michael McIntyre embellishes a lot of day-to-day activities that people can relate to for his humour, for example driving, how the British deal with snow, Christmas, even going to the Dentist or just how we walk. He picks topics that we DO relate to and that we can feel as if we are a part of. But he performs in safe environments (benign) so the audience feels free to laugh since obviously they are out of harm’s way. But often in Comedies “bad” things do happen to the protagonists, who we are meant to associate the most with out of the characters.

Edgar Wright frequently uses interesting transitions such as in Hot Fuzz (2007) when PC Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), the main protagonist is making breakfast.

He also uses Whip-Pans to comedic effect, such as in Hot Fuzz at the start when Nicholas is being reassigned from London to a small village in Gloucestershire, against Nicholas’s wishes. Because Nicholas expresses that he is unhappy about this reassignment, the Chief Inspector is called into the office, seemingly at Nicholas’s request, and there is a Whip-Pan from Nicholas to the Chief Inspector (Bill Nighy). You totally notice this Whip-Pan, as you are meant to, and it has a story telling element in itself. I feel that it gives an emotional feeling of “speed” and time passing almost instantaneously, and so it makes the audience believe that the Officers giving Nicholas the reassignment news totally anticipated that he would want to argue against this reassignment with the Chief Inspector and so the Chief Inspector is ready and waiting. The look of surprise and confusion on Nicholas’s face adds to this feeling.

Edgar Wright also uses repetition, which my research showed me is a classic Comedy Device. In the scene in Hot Fuzz where Nicholas goes to tell his ex-girlfriend, Janine, that he has been transferred. Janine and her colleagues are all crime scene processors and are all dressed identically in white disposable coveralls with hoods, face masks and goggles.  Wright has Nicholas say the lines “Janine, I’ve been transferred, I’m moving away for a while” first to a person who responds with “I’m not Janine”. We hear a cough from just behind Nicholas, from the actual Janine, obviously to get Nicholas’s attention. He turns around and repeats exactly the same line to the real Janine. I found this comedic, which is obviously what Wright intended.

Edgar Wright has even used repletion across the three Cornetto Trilogy movies. In each movie, he has the character played by Simon Pegg leaping over fences, with varying degrees of success.