 Since his career began, Edgar Wright has proven himself to be one of the most creative filmmakers working in the business. Looking back to his earliest work, his style technique and presence has always been felt, and that comes from his great use of music, clever editing, homages to early cinema, and most importantly, creative ways to make overused tropes feel fresh. But where I feel like he is always improving from film to film is in his storytelling, how he develops characters, introduces information, and creates conflict. Over my money, his latest film, Baby Driver, manages to do this the best. The film can be split into two different types of scenes, the chase scenes and the other scenes. And what's so impressive about Baby Driver is how Wright manages to tell the mass majority of the story and introduce a lot of the characters exclusively through the chase scenes. In preparation for this video, I ended up reading the screenplay, and the first thing that stuck out to me is how sparse the dialogue is. It's something that you hardly notice when watching the movie, but there are sections of the script off in four or five pages long, where the dialogue is non-existent. Here are the first four pages of the screenplay. It takes us up through the first heist into the opening credits. The only spoken words don't come from any character, instead from the song. In fact, the only line of dialogue in the first six minutes of the movie is... And despite that, the movie never feels like it's being held back. Already from the opening, we have a pretty good idea of who our protagonist is. First he isn't anything like the people that he drives. There is a huge contrast between our regular looking protagonist and the rough looking criminals he associates with. He is also opposed to violence, which is why he chooses not to look into the bank. We can also tell that he likes to have fun, but at the same time never lets that get into the way of what he is supposed to do. And most importantly, we learn that he can drive, and that he can drive well. All of this is conveyed to us visually. Edgar Wright has always believed that film should be a visual medium. It doesn't look exactly like real life, and I sort of want to go to the movies and feel sort of that I'm looking at something that is somewhat like a magical experience in terms of it feels not quite like real life, it feels like sort of like the movies. And throughout the entire movie, he tells the story using visuals, even in the scenes outside of cars, he still uses the visual language of film to help tell the story. Be it clever editing to make what could be a standard transition seem smooth and fast, or even a simple shot reverse shot to convey meaning. And what's important to note about all these techniques is that they're nothing advanced. He's using the fundamentals of narrative filmmaking in order to tell the story. These are techniques that have literally been used for over a hundred years. Despite that, Wright always finds new ways to use old techniques. And I think that's what we should take away from this, is that there are no rules for filmmaking. There are some things that consistently work, but that doesn't mean they always have to be followed. And Baby Driver shows us that by tweaking those, you can still come away with a great film. During these second hikes, we continue to learn about Baby, but also start to get to know some of the other characters. The most important thing that it shows us is Baby's moral compass. We already know that he is opposed to violence. This is confirmed when we see him inch his car forward to avoid seeing the robbery itself, and later when he chooses to risk his own life and jeopardize the mission. To save the life of the good Samaritan trying to stop them. This shows us that he isn't completely committed to the cause. He does what is asked of him, but ultimately, he is in charge. After these second hikes but before preparation for the third one, we get another sequence with limited dialogue. We watch him and Deborah falling in love. Wright does a lot to separate slower scenes like this from the chase scenes. The rapid-fire editing synced to lab rock and roll music is instead replaced with long sweeping camera takes set to much slower classical music. This serves to build contrast between the world he wants to be a part of and the one that he is forced to be a part of. In between these heists he wants to get away to leave his old life behind and to start a new one. The trouble is, that's easier said than done. During preparation for the heist, Wright breaks another rule. Up to this point we have been following baby exclusively. Whatever he sees we see and whatever he misses we miss. And thereby like the whole movie you essentially sort of see the movie through his eyes and you hear it through his ears. While buying guns from the butcher this changes. The camera is no longer exclusively on baby. We also follow Bat's buddy and darling. This shows that his world is starting to fall apart. The control that he had earlier is starting to slip away. But instead of trying to run he needs to face his problems. Just on a quick side note if you want to know how great the use of music in this movie is pay attention to the song that is being played earlier. Literally telling us that baby is being trapped. Small details like this are littered throughout the entire movie and they're the lifeblood of the movie. They make it feel real tangible in a world that is being lived in. We just tried to kind of like I suppose it was like having our own version of SimCity we tried to create our own little world. Here's Edgar Wright discussing his writing process. Absolutely plot it all out kind of like we try to plot it out on one sheet of paper. So we actually made this kind of like line of like the sort of this is the X structure and these are the 12 pubs so this is going to happen at this point and this is going to happen at this point. So a very sort of methodical mathematical about it. Everything is carefully planned out and structured and it works. By the end of the movie baby ties up all of his loose ends, redeems himself and gets the life that he deserves. The final chase sequence helps him cement this in that he never breaks his morals. He is just trying to do what he needs to do in order to survive. In my discussion of Back to the Future I mentioned how almost everything we see in that movie has already been set up. But this set up is also sort of the purpose of moving along the current storyline. Something similar happens in Baby Driver. All these small acts of kindness that we see Baby do throughout the movie. And he threw my purse right at me and he actually said I'm sorry. He looked at me and he shook his head like he was warning me somehow telling me not to go inside. Serve to develop his character but also eventually shorten his sentence. He didn't get a shorter sentence because there was a detail that was written into the story. He got a shorter sentence because he is a legitimately good person. And he is a character who has stayed loyal to who he is from the beginning of the movie until the end. That is good storytelling. Even though the movie deviates from a lot of what people expect in storytelling it doesn't mean that what we are seeing is random or simply being thrown together. I write the script and usually it stays pretty sort of tight to the script. So I don't do a lot of improv at all. We are being taken for a ride by an expert filmmaker who is cool, calm and collected behind the wheel. Hey everyone I hope you enjoyed. I've had so much fun with Baby Driver. I've seen it three times now and have loved each and every viewing. There are so many details that I'm sure I missed so be sure to drop a comment and tell me what some of your favorites are. I know the graffiti contains a lot of small stuff like that. Anyway between this video being a new release which substantially cuts back on the time I have to write and edit and my last video on True Detective being a bit longer than I expected I have fallen behind so there won't be a new video next week. But I am working on a ton of videos and I'm excited to share over the next month and a half. If you haven't seen my last video on True Detective be sure to check that out. I've also liked my playlist two other videos in the lesson and storytelling playlist. Thanks for watching and I will see you next week.