Edgar Wright made short films as a young teenager and directed a no-budget feature film t the age of 20 years old. He continued to work in tv from there mainly in Britain where he directed an array of comedy shows including Merry-Go-Round, Is it Bill Bailey, Mash and Peas, Murder Most Horrid, Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes, Asylum and French and Saunders.
He’s won several awards over the years: 2004, Rondo Statuette, Shaun of the Dead – Best Movie 004, British Independent Film Award, Shaun of the dead – Best Screenplay 2005, Chainsaw Award, Shaun of the Dead – Best Screenplay 2005, Bram Stoker Award, Shaun of the Dead – Screenplay 2011, SFX Award, Scott Pilgrim VS The World – Best Movie 2011, Empire Award, Scott Pilgrim VS The World – Best Direction 2011, Inspiration Award 2013, UFCA Award, The World’s End – Best Writing, Screenplay, Written Directly for the Screen. He is best known for directing a specific trio of movies which consist of: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim VS The World.
According to www. imdb. com his “trade marks” include, “fast action style editing, usually of mundane tasks including whips pans and crash zooms, depan humor is fast-paced moments, repetitious use of character sharing his love or action movies and video games, repeated lines or snippets of dialogue for dramatic effect”, he frequently works alongside Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and commonly casts Bill Nighy, rafe Spall and Paddy Considine. Because this movie shows an intense love of video games (one of Wright’s alleged “trademarks”).
This whole film is centered around the idea of a videogame with small quests (breaking up with Knives), gaining achievements (the powers of “love” and “self respect”) and taking on bosses that get progressively harder (Ramona’s 7 evil exes). Showing the progression of the movie and it’s link to the gaming world is shown through subtle “easter eggs” and special effect overlay. The split screen used throughout this excerpt is meant to imitate that of a multiplayer video game.
This mean that all characters that feel that have a part in whatever is happening at that time can be recognised and have facial expression/opinion towards said situation, expressed. This is a direct link to the video game tendencies of the movie, and a representation of a trademark of Wright’s, that being his characters sharing his love for said video games. Edgar Wright uses a mixture of diegetic and nondiegetic sound through this scene. The final duel between Scott and Gideon, takes place in the Chaos Theater, which is a parody of a locale in Earthbound, a Japanese role-playing video game .
Once Scott completes a certain task he is able to learn more abilities and qualities that may help him through his battle, this a similar concept used in most video games and is portrayed through a booming, announcer-like voice. A similar voice is used to broadcast that Knives is also fighting with the words “two-player mode”, this references earlier in the movie where Scott and Knives are playing a game similar to ‘Dance, Dance, Revolution’ called ‘Ninja, Ninja, Revolution’.
When Scott enters the Chaos Theatre there are diegetic sounds of people talking amongst themselves and the music made by Scott’s former band, Sex-bob-omb. As Scott confront Gideon, several in character actions made are amplified and/or echoed, such as Scott banging the tray off the nad of the waitress, Scott throwing his jacket to the floor, and Gideon jumping down a stair and landing with a thud.
When Scott “earns the power of love” and a flaming sword appears at the ready in his chest, the sounds of fire, the “ring” sound from Sonic: The Hedgehog, some lovey-sounding-tweeting-birds and then the clang of the sword being removed from Scott’s chest. The background music for the battle is seen to be played by Sex-Bob-Omb, this is initiated by Gideon. Throughout the entirety of the scene where Scott is fighting Gideon’s minions, the clanging of swords to other swords and bodies, the swooping of sword and people flipping, and the enemies being disintegrated to money, is heard repeatedly.
There is an quickening wind sound as Scott runs up the stairs towards Gideon and there is a series of sounds as Scott and Gideon jump at each other, clang their weapons together and fall to the ground including a loud and echoed “argh! ”, the whooshing of them jumping and loud thus of them falling to the ground. As the two characters fall, there is a small tune that mimics a sound that would play if you failed to achieve something in a video game. Edgar Wright seems to rely a lot of sound, specifically background music which is used to set the mood.
