Edgar Wright Auteur Theory | Research Catalogue

Dylan Barnes | Research Investigation (First Draft)

To what extent could the soundtrack in Edgar Wrights films be seen as a signature style.

Film
Item 1: Baby Driver (2017)
This film will be very helpful to my research as it is one of Edgar Wrights latest movies, which features a very heavy use of soundtrack with both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and music. The film centres itself around its soundtrack which plays a large part in the narrative of the film, it also shows the progression of Edgar Wrights use of soundtrack throughout his years of directing since this is his latest film. The film has a lot of scenes that support the auteur theory as every scene from the character driving the car, to him just walking, is filled with music and other sounds to fit the scenes. For example the opening scene would be a good one to analyse as it immediately introduces us to how the film is going to be throughout with its use of the soundtrack being the compelling feature. In the scene the music is perfectly timed with the actions, and editing, as well as the regular sounds of someone driving a car except they are editing to sound more powerful and stand out more to the audience.

Item 2: Shaun of the Dead (2004)
I believe that this being one of Edgar Wrights earliest films would be best to show how the soundtrack in his films plays a more important role as he did more and more films. In this film the soundtrack may not use as much music as other films directed by him, but the soundtrack still does play an important role in giving the audience memorable moments from the film, from the dialogue the characters have to say, to how the punches and hits are emphasised. I plan on analysing some of the key scenes where the sound used is most memorable, such as the fight scene in the pub when they have the fast paced song by queen "don't stop me now" by Queen. This scene would be best to analyse because of how the diagetic music sets the mood for the scene and how it turns what should be a horrifying moment in a zombie film, into a funny enjoyable moment.

Item 3: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010)
I thought that this film would be useful for my research as it is another film that relies heavily on its  soundtrack. It is also a good choice because of how he managed to make the soundtrack the most important part of a comic book movie, and also makes it seem like a live action comic book by use of the soundtrack. A lot of scenes in this movie are great for analysis as each one has great examples of the soundtrack being used, such as the fight scene at the castle which features music that matches the actions going on, as well as the comic book like sound effects that occur anytime someone throws a punch or hits someone.

Internet
Item 4: http://variety.com/2017/film/news/baby-driver-movie-music-1202482594/
I picked this for my research because it features an interview with Edgar Wright where he speaks about how he was inspired by music in his past to come up with the concept of the narrative of Baby Driver. This will be useful for my presentation as I will be able to get quotes from my director explaining how music and sounds have inspired the film Baby Driver that I am also analysing for my presentation.

Item 5: Film Sound Beyond Reality: Subjective sound in narrative cinema - By Mladen Milicevic
This contains a few points from films in the past, that talks about how sound in those films created effect for the audience and made the film better. I believe I could apply this to my question in how the sound in Edgar's films does the same for the audience.

Item 6: http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/baby-driver-edgar-wright-music.html
This article is an interview with the director in question and brings up questions about the soundtrack in most of his films, especially the three films that I'm investigating, so this would be very useful for the question.

Item 7: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/12/baby-driver-cars-3-office-christmas-party-philadelphia-story-dvds-review
This article

Videos
Item 8: https://youtu.be/pRlA8RzadSs
This interview can be of some use to my my question as the interview with the director asks questions about the soundtrack and how music is important to the film Baby Driver.

Books
Item 9:  Movie Soundtracks and Sound Effects By Geoffrey M. Horn 
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6VYwU-KluD0C&lpg=PP1&ots=uZ9n2L547i&dq=Movie%20soundtracks&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
This book gives detail into soundtrack in films and its history and on page 12 gives a good quote on why music is used in films.

Item 10: Beginning Film Studies - by Andrew Dix
This book covers a lot of topics of Film and discusses what an Auteur is and also covers sound in movies a little bit too, both of which are useful to my question. I plan on using the book to help explain how Edgar Wright fits the criteria to become an auteur, based on the explanation given by the book


Rejected Items:
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/edgar-wright-walter-hill-discuss-driver/
This was an discussion between Edgar Wright and another director named Walter Hill, where they discuss how one of Walter Hills earlier films influenced Edgar Wrights Baby Driver, however it only talks about how the narrative and the breakthroughs of the Walter Hill film influenced Wrights latest, and does not mention any use of soundtrack in any detail to be useful.

The Worlds End (film)
This film has been rejected because it doesn't heavily rely on soundtrack like some of his other films. so I believe it wouldn't be very useful in my question and helping to answer it.

Le Haine & City of God Exam Question

Compare the attitudes to poverty conveyed in the films you have studied for this topic. [35]

During the scene in the art gallery, we get a good look at the wealthy people's attitude to poverty based on the mise-en-scene of the scene. Throughout the scene when the camera is focused on the the three protagonists we can catch glimpses in the background of the facial expressions of the more wealthy people. Early in the scene when Hubert and Vinz are looking at a piece of dog artwork, an old man that could possibly be the curator walks right in front of the camera allowing the audience to clearly see his facial expression, which looks like a shocked and disgusted face. This expression lets us know that the old man doesn't think that the poor should be at an art gallery and that they aren't wealthy enough to appreciate art like everyone else at the party, and it gives the impression that he wants the three to leave the exhibition. About mid way through the scene at the food stand we witness two people, a man and a women, keep glancing at the three boys as they fill their mouths with food and drink. The two people act surprised to see them eat like animals and appear to be also disgusted with their eating habits, this suggests that they are not accustomed to how the less fortunate eat their food that they get, since the wealthy are raised with an education and taught how to be polite, while those from a poor background aren't taught how to be since they had no education. This also suggests that poverty stricken people aren't a common sight in the streets of paris which could be why everyone acts surprised to see them at an art gallery. The music in the scene also shows the difference between the poor and rich, as we hear in the gallery the diegetic sound is classical music, which is completely different to the projects where the music is influenced from western culture. This could suggest that the government only cares about the rich enough to keep them within french culture but care so little about the poor that they aren't prevented from having any western influence on them. The way the rich speak to the three boys also shows their attitude to poverty as they speak down to them, resulting in vinz acting aggressive trying to defend them. At the end of the scene just as the three boys left, the host of the exhibition closes the door and says "off the estates", this shows us that the people in paris base those from the projects off stereotypes of being criminals and aggressive and having no culture of their own. The way he says it also indicates that it may not be an uncommon sight to see in paris since he says it casually and not surprisingly like it is the first time it has happened. So the movie makes it seem that the attitude people have towards poverty has built up from years of people from the projects coming to paris and support their own stereotypes against them.

In City of God during the Motel scene we get to see how poverty is conveyed in the film, we see that the tender trio who are all poor or come from a background of poverty, treat the upper class and wealthy people as scum, by threatening them and stealing from them, showing that the poor in city of god have no respect for the wealthy of the country. For example we see a low angle shot of shaggy repeatedly kicking a women on the floor, the shot shows that shaggy is in power even though he is poorer than the people he is beating and robbing

British and American cinema

US Blockbuster- Doctor Strange (2016)
Budget - $165 million
Box office - $617.7 million
Stars - Featured famous actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch
Genre - Comic book movie/action/sci-fi
Production company - Marvel studios
Certificate - 12A
Marketing - Went onto talk shows, Trailers shown in movies and on TV, Advertised itself within other films in the Marvel cinematic Universe.
Release date - Initial release 13th October 2016 in Hong Kong, UK release date 25th October 2016, US release date October 13th 2016
Reviews - IMDb 7.9/10, Rotten Tomatoes 91%, Metacritic 72%

UK production - Spectre (James Bond) (2015)
Budget - $245 million
Stars - Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz
Genre - Action, Adventure, Thriller
Box office - $880.7 million
Production company - EON Productions
Certificate - 12
Marketing - Collaboration with aston martin to make 50th anniversary car (DB10), promoted film during Mexican grand prix on cars. Released still images on blogs and other forms of media, and did comedy sketches referencing the films.
Release date - 26th October 2015
Reviews - IMDB 6.8/10, The guardian 5/5, Metacritic 60%

US independent - Popstar (Never stop never sopping) (2016)
Budget - $20 million
Box office - $9.3 million
Stars - Many famous celebrities, Andy Samberg, Adam Levine, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, DJ Khaled, 50 Cent, Emma stone, James Buckley, Pink, Simon Cowell, Seal.
Genre - Comedy, Music
Production Company - Apatow Productions, Lonely Island.
Certificate - 15
Marketing - Trailers on youtube, promotion on talk shows.
Release date - 3rd June 2016 (USA)
Reviews - 77% rotten tomatoes, 4/5 The Guardian.

World cinema production - Son of Saul (2015) (Hungary)
Budget - $1.6 million
Box office - $1.7 million
Stars -
Genre - War, Drama
Production -


US Blockbuster (2) - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Budget - $200 million
Box office - $1 billion
Stars - Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Riz Ahmed.
Genre - Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Production Company - Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Studios Motion pictures.
Certificate - 12A
Marketing - Advertisements, Cast appeared on talk shows, social media
Release date - 13th December 2016 (UK), 16th December 2016 (US)
Reviews - 8/10 IMDB, 65% metacritic, 85% Rotten Tomatoes.
Director - Gareth Edwards

Heavily dependant on visual effects as the story is based around wars in space, involving laser guns and lightsabers, and spaceships. Most of which don't exist so visual effects are needed to make them seem real.
Blue screens were used in most scenes to create the background such as the planets seen in the movie.
Tons of CGI used to make laser bolts, and the space battle scenes, and the planetary shield.
Some explosions were created in real time, but most were post production effects.
Real prop ships were used, then edited post production to appear to be flying or blowing up

Aims and Context

Aims and context

'Online' - Photo Storyboard
Genre - horror/drama
Target Audience - 15+ Teenagers for the modern era
Stylistic elements - Plot Twist, parallel storyline

Kill Bill Vol.2 Analysis

The first shot of the clip shows a women who appears to be at her wedding walking down the aisle, she appears to be happy until she hears a flute which is when she suddenly changes from being happy to being confused or shocker. This is done with a medium shot that tracks her backwards, so that we can see her expression and know how she feels, as well as seeing the background and to give us a sense of her surrounding at what her current situation is. Therefore, I can see that she must be happy since it appears to be a wedding and this makes me feel calm and happy, because I know that at a wedding there is a low chance of any trouble happening and that it tends to be rather peaceful. However, the scene is also in black and white, so when I first see it I feel quite confused and start to question if it is a dream or a flashback.

The next shot is where we can see even more of the church, and we also get to see the door to the outside. This is done by using a point of view shot with a long shot, and this is done so that we can see more of the setting and get the full idea that it is a wedding, and it also lets us know what she is currently thinking and where she is hearing the music from, which creates mystery and made me want to know what was happening outside that caught her attention and changed her mood.

After that we get another shot where we see the woman being confused and then grasp her hands together and begin walking towards the entrance of the church where the sound of the flute appears to be coming from. To create this a mid shot was used to further show her confusion and curiosity, and then another tracking shot is used which tracks her backwards again. I can see from her reaction that the flute must be something that she recognises judging by the fact that she is curious and not just ignoring it, this makes me want to more what is outside and also why she is so curious about the sound.

The shot that is next just shows the doorway again but this time the bride begins to walk past and move towards the right of the doorway of the doorway and lean against the pillar. We just see this as the camera tracks the bride forward and moves into another long shot, and I can see from the way she moves casually tells me that there is no danger, but is instead something she knows is safe.

In the next shot we see both the bride and the source of the sound which is an old man who is playing the flute while sitting on a bench, we see this through a low angle shot with the man on the right and the bride on the left further away from the camera. From this I assumed that the two people had no correlation and do not associate with each other because she does not immediately engage with the man on the bench but instead look into the desert.

The next few shots is just a series of close up reverse shots between the two people, with the length of the shots becoming shorter and shorter raising tension and suggesting that something serious is about to happen. I can see from the brides face that she does recognise the man and may be slightly scared of him.

The final shot in that sequence is when the man finally stops playing his instrument and turns to acknowledge the bride and speaks to her, we see his face through a close up so we can see that he does know the bride and probably well because he calls her 'kiddo' which means he must have known her when she was a lot younger.

In the shot after we see the bribe reply to him and ask him a question, we see this from a low angle medium long shot, which shows that she is more important than the man sitting down. We also begin to see at this point that the bride is always on the right of the camera with the man being on the left side of the camera. The bride is also still facing away from the man so I can see that you does not really feel comfortable with him and doesn't exactly want to be speaking with him. The next two shots are just more close up shots of characters in a conversation with very little movement, but I can still see that she progressively gets more comfortable with him.

The next shot we see the man finally stand up and begin to walk towards to bride which shows that he is comfortable with her presence and is familiar with her, the camera pans up and to the right to follow him as he stands and moves closer to the bride. The shot after we see that the bride is now facing towards to man so I know that she is becoming more comfortable and is directly speaking to him which shows that she does know him well. The shots once again switch between mid shots of the two people and their emotions.

The next shot we see that she begins to move close towards the man as she begins to understand that he isn't causing trouble but instead is trying to be sweet, so the camera does a close up on her face to show her reaction which is happy, while is tracks her to the left as she moves. The few shots then switch between her feet and her face, to his feet and his face, showing their expressions as well as showing that they are getting more and more comfortable with each other. It finally ends when the camera stops tracking them and shows both their feet coming together at the same time.

Next is a very long shot of a conversation between the two, it uses a close up which shows the expressions and their emotions between them. I can see from it that she is rather happy to see him and is finally comfortable with speaking with him since she got so close to him, I also see that while she is mostly happy she also has mixed emotions, while the man tends to have the same expression and emotion throughout. After the long shot ends it then proceeds onto a series of over the shoulder shots from each person, and throughout the conversation we can see that the two are very close as they know a lot about each other, and even though he is quite intimidating, he still tries to be sweet.

Horror Essay

Horror films all use similar features to convey fear into the viewer, such as using high pitched and fast paced music, or using different types of lighting to create mystery, and especially using camera angles and different types of shots to confuse the audience.

In the Paranormal Activity films the lighting is mainly low key throughout, just to give the audience a sense of fear that something dangerous is lurking in the house and is hiding in the shadows. As well as this the directors use a lot of wide and high angle shots, this is probably so that the audience has to look at a lot of things in the frame at the same time so if something was to move around it would catch the viewer off guard and make them question what just moved in the frame, creating mystery and confusion for the viewer, also used are jump scares throughout and frighten the audience suddenly. In the films you get to witness the protagonists during the daytime which is always set in high key lighting to make you feel safe since it is daytime, this relates to the usual horror stereotype that if the sun is up then the evil will disappear, during this time a lot of close ups are used too to show what the characters are feeling and experiencing while they are victims of the horrors.

In one clip of the film you get to see a dog sleeping in the same room as a baby and you get to see this from the viewpoint of a surveillance camera, the footage in dark by using low key lighting and then the dog begins to bark wildly and dominantly. This scene is to probably show that the dog is protecting the child from evil as we know that there is evil present in the house, and when the dog begins to bark we can tell that the evil spirit is probably nearby and might hurt the baby so the dog is trying scare the spirit off. The fact that the camera is positioned in the baby's room probably means that the evil spirit want to harm the baby, or that the baby may even be important to the spirit as if it has a motive. We also know from this scene that the dog may be able to see the evil spirit and might be used later on to get rid of or even defeat the spirit. The high angle of the camera in the scene shows that the baby and the dog are inferior to spirit and that they are helpless against it no matter what they try to do, and because we are unable to see the spirit there are no camera angles to show the power it has and so we as the audience have to assume that the spirit has unlimited power which cannot be shown. The camera has a slight static effect in the scene, which conveys mystery since you cannot get a perfect picture of what is going on.

Favourite Film Induction Task

My favourite film this summer was the latest Star Trek film ‘Star Trek : Beyond’, which meets the crew of the enterprise half way through their five year mission which was given to them at the end of the last film ‘Star Trek : Into Darkness’ where the crew were excited for the mission, however at the start of Beyond we see the crew rather depressed and not up to the usual standard we have seen them in the past. This caught me by surprise because I got to see the main protagonist in a different light, where he is caring and sad instead of being smart and ready to get into action, and this I liked because I got a different perspective of the enterprise crew instead of them when they are fighting an enemy. During the beginning of the film you also get to see a new artificial planet that was created by the films main faction, and I loved this because you get a sense of scale like we got in the first film when we saw Kirk next to one of the federations latest starships, but this time we see one of these starships next to this giant glass sphere the size of a moon. It isn’t soon after this that the tension begins to rise when the director makes us think that the new planet is in danger of attack by suddenly snapping to an unknown ship approaching and using a shaky camera to feel like the protagonists are in danger. It isn’t till later on where we do eventually see the first bit of action, but this time its to a scale non of the previous movies have shown before, and this is the enterprise being fully destroyed, and the director set the tone for this scene perfectly by switching from interior shots of the ship being attacked to wide angle shots of the exterior of the ship being destroyed, this made me feel sympathy for the protagonists as they face an enemy they cannot defeat for the first time. It was not only the camera shots and angles used that had an effect on me but it was also the music used during the destruction, a sad and depressing score that really set the tone of the scene, where the protagonists are defeated. After this we get to see the protagonists fight back even when they are at a disadvantage by outsmarting the enemy and eventually figuring out a way to defeat them. We see this in an action scene where the main protagonist rescues his entire crew on his own, where the camera pans around following the protagonist and also cuts between different moments of the battle. Even later in the film we get to a bit where this new planet is under actual threat and we see that they are helpless against the undefeatable enemy, and so the audience feels sorry for them, but then protagonists come in and manage to save the day which makes the audience feel joy, and want to celebrate. During this big fight the camera follows the new ship around and gives a sense of scale again amazing the audience, and the music used also conveys the sense of victory.