Another post on Edgar Wright. One of the few filmmakers who is consistently finding humour through framing, camera movement, editing, goofy sound effects and music.

This video essay discusses how most movies over explain. For example, if you want to show that a character is sober, most directors will have the character just say “I’ve quit drinking blah blah blah”, however Edgar Wright shows it through the pouring of 3 pints, and a lemonade. It’s simple but effective. The ability to take the most simple and mundane scene to a great one is done just through editing and staging.

Scorsese said that cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame, and whats not. If it works, it works.

Things Edgard Wright does:

Things entering the frame

Things leaving the frame

There and back again

Matching Scene Transitions

Perfectly timed sound effects (not the obvious sounds)

Actions synced to music

Super dramatic lighting cues

This videoessay on transitions looks deeply at Edgar Wrights work, and how his work makes you into a more observant viewer. The examples he uses are of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, where he will often utilise the normal ‘shot/reverse shot’, but make it into his own thing, as the first shot will be in one setting and the reverse shot will be in a different setting, this seemlessly transitions the scene into the next scene, while the characters are still in the same place. The filmgoer is involved and engrossed at the same time, through visual poetry. The movie Scott Pilgrim is about a transitioning period in the main character’s life, which is why the transitions in the movie were so important.

I decided to take this beloved catch phrase from my one true love and make it into an ad.

Update: I figured out how to get ride of the black.

Further update: I don’t know how to add the logo and not make it look horrific.

Here is another experiment. Don’t think it needs much of an explanation. Remember doing drugs is illegal, but talking to about them isn’t, talk to Frank kids.

Unfortunately, YouTube cut the beginning bit out, and to improve I need to remove the black background and making the ending longer and less abrupt.

This is an advert for River Island using a scene from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain (1973), a Mexican surreal-fantasy film. It is loosely inspired by River Island’s “Labels are for clothes, not people” campaign, and the wave of advertising campaigns and brands that have jumped on the “woke” wagon to sell products, not to fight for a cause.

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/advertising-isnt-storytelling/

This article from adweek tells us that creative advertising values insights, and to create a good story, you need unique insight to innate human characteristics and our lives. This is because the people watching need to be able to relate, and to be compelled to see what happens.

“Play is advertising’s great skill, its strongest foundation.”

“The real power of advertising is in its interactivity.”

Only having 60 seconds to grab an audience’s attention means you need to be 1. Playful and 2. Interactive. People enjoy having fun! and people want to be a part of it. This article has been good for insight into how to create something that the audience will actually enjoy and not just have their eyes glazed at the screen waiting for the end.

This documentary must be noted as one of the most monumental pieces of film this decade. A shocking portrayal of the abuser that Michael Jackson really was, and the heart wrenching brutality of the descriptions made by the victims. Leaving Neverland is amongst the most controversial documentaries to date. What I wanted to discuss was how in order to get an audience to really believe these stories, the victims HAD to speak in such blunt detail about the abuse, and how when people sympathise with an abuser due to fame and charisma, the film maker MUST use shock factor in order to make the audience empathise and take these allegations seriously.

Shock factor is a useful technique in filmmaking, especially when juxtaposed with the romanticism that was a ‘relationship’ with a pop star, and the magic of Neverland.

Here is Christopher Robin (2018) as the “Choose Life” scene in Trainspotting. Thank you Ewan McGregor.

https://vimeo.com/322248723

For this experiment I decided to play with narration. I took clips from various Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton speeches and put it together with audio from RuPauls Drag Race Untucked where the queens often have drama and tense conversations. I thought seeing as the first clip I found was for the Guardian it would be funny to link the two. Using gay culture to take the piss out of politics, and advertise the Guardian as the newspaper that really dishes all the dirt.

nuff said.