How Edgar Wright Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

INTRO

In this series I take a look at the careers of different directors by comparing three of their films shot at increasing budget levels.

Edgar Wright is a director known for producing snappy, kinetic, genre mash-ups which utilise the camera and the edit in inventive and stylised ways. In this video I’ll break down Wright’s filmmaking process and approach to shooting: A Fistful Of Fingers, Shaun Of The Dead and Baby Driver, to identify the similarities between the three films and how his career has progressed over time.    

A FISTFUL OF FINGERS 

Between the ages of 18 and 20 Edgar Wright indulged his early passion for cinema by making three hour-long genre films on video with his school friends. One was a superhero movie, one a cop movie and one a western, to which he gave the tongue in cheek title: A Fistful Of Fingers. These early undertakings displayed a fascination with genre which would continue throughout his career as director.

While at Bournemouth Art College he became inspired by filmmakers like Sam Raimi and Robert Rodriguez who made their own no-budget movies. And so, he set out to produce a proper feature length version of his prior video taped A Fistful of Fingers which mashed up the western traits with satirical films like Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

“My tutor warned me not do a spoof as my first movie, and he was probably right, but I ignored his advice. They had a PC in the college library, so I holed up in there and painstakingly typed out the script. As you can probably tell from the movie, I never did a second draft. It might have been better if I did.”

To get funding to make the film he tried reaching out to celebrities such as Jonathan Ross.

When that didn’t yield any success he turned to the editor of the local newspaper. It turned out he had just come into an inheritance and he decided to use a portion of it to fund Wright’s movie as a way to reduce his tax bill on the funds. 

With the modest budget he was able to hire a skeleton film crew, some gear and pay for the 16mm Fujifilm stock over 21 days of shooting.

To accommodate catering into the modest budget he made a deal with a local pizza restaurant, which meant he and his crew ate pizza every day of the shoot.

Wright got his school friends, some of whom did drama and school plays, to act and even managed to score a cameo from TV celebrity Jeremy Beadle.

“I was a big Western fan, but hadn't quite matured into liking Howard Hawks and John Ford. My parents used to talk about Sergio Leone films a lot. And I got really into them. I love Clint Eastwood. I love the camera angles. I love the music. And when it came to picking a subject matter for a comedy film, a Western seemed doable. We could just go stand in a quarry with some toy guns. No sets required.”

Wright would maintain these core ideas of using homages to genre films, interesting camera work and a heavy use of music throughout his subsequent movies. He employed some of Sergio Leone’s aesthetic and stylistic tropes, such as using close ups and quick cutting during standoffs and a musical motif.

While he did draw inspiration from these techniques, A Fistful Of Fingers also hints at the formation of what would become his own visual style: a quick, kinetic cutting on prominent sound design beats to detailed extreme close ups.

Rather than just copying, he twisted genres to produce something which was unique.

To edit the film he was able to score a suite, which was basically a broom closet, at Pinewood Studios. 

“It only just qualifies as a feature because it’s 78 minutes long. The original assembly edit of the movie, which is the longest it can possibly be before you’ve cut anything out, was 72 minutes long.”

He learnt an important lesson in post that in order to use quick cutting in the edit he required more footage than he had managed to get during production.

“There just wasn't anything to cut to, to speed up the pace, because every shot is in there. I think I've over-compensated for it ever since, with the amount of coverage I get. You shoot more stuff to make the film faster."

Although in hindsight Wright admits that the movie wasn’t that great his debut low budget feature did: serve as an introduction into feature filmmaking, get him exposure as a young director, made him useful industry contacts, and acted as a learning curve which established some of his early stylistic traits and creative voice. 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

“When we were shooting the scene with the zombies outside the pub one of the zombies in make up came up to me thinking that I was a runner and just looked over at me and went, ‘Whooh, straight to video for this one.’” 

With the contacts that Wright made from his first movie he was able to start directing BBC TV shows.

One of those shows, Spaced, became a cult sitcom and paired him up with a collaborator he would work with for many years to come - Simon Pegg. Together they wrote a screenplay, developing it from an episode of Spaced. 

This time he drew from the genre conventions of the rom com and, of course, the zombie movie. The roles were specifically written for Pegg and Nick Frost. He secured a low $6 million budget from Working Title Films.

“I felt with Shaun of the Dead I was getting a second chance to make my first movie. I left nothing to chance.”

He therefore prepped the film as much as possible in advance and had it fully worked out by the time production began. David M. Dunlap, an established camera operator and 2nd unit DP, was brought on to photograph the project. 

Perhaps, selecting a cinematographer who was better known as a 2nd unit DP allowed the production to save a bit of money and showed that Wright was confident in communicating the film’s visual direction to a cameraman who could technically execute it.

Dunlap opted to shoot on multiple Arricam cameras with Cooke S4 lenses on Kodak film stock. 

This time, Wright was able to use the increased budget to execute shots which weren’t possible in his prior film. For example, he used a Steadicam to shoot a long take sequence of Pegg going to the local shop. 

Filming it in this way without cutting both introduced the space and location to the audience while simultaneously creating an uneasy feeling and foreshadowing the predatory looks which would later come from zombies.

He built on the kinetic editing of A Fistful Of Fingers. Cutting quickly on amped up sound effects with extreme close ups added a dynamism and humour to the mundane aspects of daily life, such as making breakfast.

In another scene he introduced one of his trademark techniques by synchronising on screen actions to popular music - something we’ll revisit later. However the $6 million budget still had its limitations. Certain scenes which required lots of zombie extras to be paid stretched the budget to its limit. 

“We saved by encouraging fans of Spaced to be zombies. I think they got paid a pound. We pushed their fandom to the limits.”

Upon release, Shaun Of The Dead found both critical and financial success.

The $6 million film effectively delivered a fairly contained zombie story with great writing and performances, which meshed different genre conventions to create a unique, creatively stylised piece, driven by an inventive camera and edit.   

BABY DRIVER 

Many years, and films later, Wright finally managed to produce a movie which he had initially imagined when he was still making his first film.

“My initial idea of a car-chase film powered by music goes right back to my flat in Wood Green, when I was 21 and first living in London. I made a music video for Blue Song by Mint Royale. I hadn’t come up with a concept so I cannibalised the opening scene I’d planned for Baby Driver, with Noel Fielding as a getaway driver. I was happy with the video but also mad at myself for squandering this great idea. But it ended up helping because years later, I had proof of concept.”

He used this proof of concept and his directing track record to secure $34 million of funding for the project.

This time his genre reference was The Driver, a crime thriller about a getaway driver.

To prepare for the large portions of action synchronised to popular music, he pre-selected all the tracks before production. He got his team to clear the rights and storyboards were created and cut to the time of the music. The music was then played on set during production to ensure that the actions on screen could be correctly synced. 

He enlisted legendary DP Bill Pope to shoot it, who he’d previously worked with on Scott Pilgrim. Like his other projects, he elected to shoot on film due to his love for its look. 

Pope selected Kodak’s 250D stock and multiple Panavision XL2s with the more modern G-Series anamorphics. He used two cameras each on both the A and B units of the movie.

“Edgar likes a second camera, because he is crazy about continuity. It offers the actors a certain amount of freedom. And his cutting is so rapid that without continuity he can't make those cuts.”

Baby Driver starts as a character study and progresses into an action movie. We see the movie largely through his eyes.

The cinematography reflects this. For example during chase scenes, when we move away from the action, it’s always Baby that we keep cutting back to in close up.

Like in Shaun Of The Dead, they used a long-take Steadicam shot in an homage to musicals that show the world as a lovely place, before things go south. In order to get the shot they spent a day rehearsing and a full day shooting that one long take. In the end they managed to get it on take 22 after almost killing the Steadicam operator.

Pope and Wright also wanted to return to the roots of car films and include as many practical effects as possible rather than relying on CGI.

“Our film is a visual and thematic rejection of the current spate of car movies that are so heavily CG'd and fantastical. We want the audience to be in those cars with the actors actually driving them.”

Baby Driver’s $34 million budget was spent on a larger crew, a larger production window and executing complex action sequences with lots of practical stunts with more expensive, famous cast members.

CONCLUSION

Edgar Wright lays the groundwork in his screenplays, executes the shoot visually by getting lots of specific coverage and then masters the film in the edit - where all the stylistic bits and pieces fall into place.

He learned an early lesson through his debut that preparation and having a definite vision for a film is crucial.

He found his artistic voice early on and played to his strengths by making genre inspired pieces that are wholly original and which worship the medium of cinema.