Edgar Wright’s Lens Flare and Staging

On Oct. 7, hip-hop artist Pharrell released a new single from his latest album, G I R L, entitled “Gust of Wind”. The Daft Punk feature may be the most enticing part of this track for the majority of Pharrell fans given his prior work with the electronic duo on “Get Lucky”. One overlooked aspect of the music video, however, was the benefit of Edgar Wright’s unique directive style. Having directed cinematic successes such as The World’s End, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Hot Fuzz, and Shaun of the Dead, Edgar’s resume speaks for itself.

In this article, we analyze and break down two factors in Wright’s unique directive style, which features prominently in his cinematic endeavours, and in his latest project with the music video for “Gust of Wind.”

1. Lens Flare

Edgar Wright uses this fairly common and overdone technique to an increasingly larger degree as the years go on. Not only adding style and general presentation to each of these works, but the addition of lens flare also serves functional purposes.

In Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, lens flare is mostly used unintentionally. The camera picks up the occasional flare without any meaningful addition. The main exception to this is a one-off joke in Hot Fuzz in which character Sgt. Angel is blinded by a car turning on its lights at the same time that one of the underage drinkers in a pub smiles.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a dramatic shift from this hesitance to use lens flare to using it as an obvious visual element.  Besides a few comedic exceptions, lens flare is mainly used as anticipation for upcoming action scenes with climaxes of flares at key moments within these fights. While it can be excessive at points, the use of lens flare can add to the intended comic book-inspired cinematography and editing to create a unique viewing experience.

The World’s End features the best progression and development of lens flare out of any of Wright’s works. As the movie becomes more and more hectic with an escalation of tensions heightened, consequences increased, and beverages consumed, lens flares follow suit. As in Scott Pilgrim, the technique is mainly used in action scenes early on in the film, though later scenes in the film also use this in exposition scenes as the central plot and themes begin to come to a climax.

The Gust of Wind music video uses it to a purpose similar to Scott Pilgrim in building anticipation and climax for the sections where Daft Punk is most prevalent. This is also done at some points during the first Pharrell-focused verse as an initial hint, and later as a reminder that Daft Punk is moving around off-frame and still has influence.

While there is not nearly as much time to develop as The World’s End, there is still an element of increased lens flare as the video progresses. This development is minor considering that Daft Punk never takes a long-enough segment to justify anything more significant visually, and is mainly just as a visual climax before the end of the song.

2. Staging

Staging is often used interchangeably with “blocking”, which is the position of the actors on a stage. For this section, we will look at how he uses the frame and staging to add a comedic or quirky element to a scene. Rather than look at all of his preferred actor spots, this tendency analysis will look at one specific part of his directing that is rarely done by others. He has a number of examples where people off-camera will extend hands or objects into medium close-ups. This is an odd thing to point out, but it does represent using the full capabilities of cinema to add a visual or physical element to comedy.

In Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim, the uses of objects coming into the frame are used for comedic effect. Hot Fuzz’s example is a one-off joke that adds to the seemingly nice intent of those offering him the slice of cake; even though everyone in the scene and the audience knows that the actual context of the scene is selfish in nature. Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim use this to add a way to tell the story and advance the plot in a way that is more interesting as compared to simply having a person state someone has a phone call.

This develops in The World’s End as Edgar Wright is able to expand this simple technique to fit even more purposes by having more of his fights incorporate this. Using what he learned from Scott Pilgrim in terms of fairly generic filming of close-quarters fight scenes, he is able to develop these scenes to involve more of his conventional tendencies. This has an additional benefit in making scenes feel more claustrophobic as attacks can occur at seemingly any point during chaos, seemingly at random. While this is typically done by other directors by using quick camera cuts that constantly shift, Edgar Wright is able to convey this same sense of pace and chaos without relying on disorienting the audience.

As for the Gust of Wind music video, the use of staging in this regard is done as a purely visual element without any additional effect. It does not have nearly the same influence that the other examples have on the scene as a result, and is relatively meaningless. This also differs from the previous examples in using a shot in which you can see Pharrell in his entirety rather than the medium close-ups. This contain the vocal point on the center towards him while also adding additional stimuli relevant to the song on either side.

While music videos are typically quite restricted in what a director can do with it due to the requirement of a constant song, Edgar Wright is still able to demonstrate these two tendencies in particular to show his unique style.

All in all, he manages to create interesting visuals to complement the song, which is all you can really ask for in a music video.