Edgar Wright Breaks Down Scenes from 'Shaun of the Dead,' 'Last Night in Soho' & More

Hi there I'm Edgar Wright.

And with this handy marker,

I'm going to break down some of the details,

some of the tricks and some of the choreography

from my favorite scenes in my career.

[groovy music]

Ahhh!

You're outside.

You mothers.

This is a scene from Spaced, the TV show that I made in

1999.

And this is how I first worked with Simon Peg,

Jessica Hines and Nick Frost.

It's as a payoff to this episode where they go out for a

night in Camden.

You set up earlier in the show that they have these

telepathic gun battles and they take down these thugs.

[intense music]

Let him have 'em.

[imaginary guns cocking]

One of my favorite things about the sequence is that the

actors are doing the sound effects themselves.

And then we dubbed on a whole bunch of other real gun sounds

as well.

So that was something that came up in the edit and the sound

mix.

It was just funny having both of them together.

And you could just tell what utter joy everybody is having,

making, not just the sounds of the guns,

but like Simon Peg doing like the sound of his own Squibb

going off is just hilarious to me.

But you can hear the actors going.

[indistinct]

I don't remember like story boarding much of the show.

Everything I've done since then,

I've story boarded every single frame,

but I'm pretty sure I story boarded, this one.

The storyboards would pretty much be like Tim's face.

Maybe like, kind of like, ah,

that would pretty much what the, oh, maybe I would draw

Simon's kind of like strange widow's peaks.

That is pretty much what a space story board would look

like.

[dramatic music]

But this shot is my favorite shot in the sequence

because this actor whose name is Alex Noodle was just doing

his like squirting throat and doing the noises for it.

Tumults, Alex Noodle for stealing the entire sequence

with one cutaway.

[dramatic music]

The next scene is from Shaun of the Dead.

This is the scene on the Sunday morning when Shaun goes to

the shops, oblivious to the fact that there's

a zombie apocalypse happening.

[gate opens]

This was actually the first shots of the entire movie that

we did.

And we really wanted to start with a very complicated shot.

I think we maybe did about eight to 10 takes of this.

It was a very challenging shot to start with,

but I felt it was a good thing to do something really

ambitious on the first day of the shoot,

which involved the whole crew.

And also kind of like signals to everybody,

people making the movie.

This is how we mean to go on, where this is what the

movie's going to be.

When we were doing the location scout for the shot,

my director of photography, David Dunlap, he said to me,

this shot is going to get cut out of the movie.

And I said, it's going to get cut out of the movie?

Why?

He goes, you'll never use this shot in its entirety.

I bet you any money it's going to get cut out.

And so I was kinda so annoyed about that comment,

that basically I went away with both my production designer

and Simon Peg.

And I think we like tripled the detail in the shot.

So all of these things, like you've seen a guy

washing that car window.

Later, you see him as a zombie.

So we just added all of these details, like having Simon,

like trip over twice, he does it in the early version

of the shot.

He does it again.

We have other gags like this.

A jogger who you see earlier in the film running past,

and now you see him running away in terror.

This is actually Chris Dickens,

the editor of the movie, making his cameo.

I just didn't want this shot to be cut out.

So I just kind of crammed it full of as much like sight gags

and payoffs as possible.

You also see earlier in the film, you see this road sweeper,

and now you see his kind of discarded cots.

You can't see this very well, but actually,

this is Bob's Pizza, which is a reference to The Amazing

Zombie and Day of the Dead played by Howard Sherman.

And when you're making a movie, like if you have to make up

businesses, it's always like, well, this is a great way

to cram in lots of like film references.

So this is our kind of like little tribute to

George Romero's Day of the Dead.

I always liked the idea that Sean takes a diet Coke there,

cause this is the point where he's been dumped by his

girlfriend and probably decided to get his shit together

and his one concession to maybe being a grownup

is stop drinking full fat Coke.

Simon Peg is such an immensely skilled comic actor that he

can fake a slip on some blood, which is not actually there.

If you're trying to pick holes in the movie,

when the shot continues, you can't see any blood on the

floor.

I always thought Simon likes sort of like faking a slip,

which is not easy to do, is really, really great.

So when we are shooting a shot like this,

there's a whole army of PAs who were trying to stop people

from walking into the shot and try and hold traffic.

And some takes were ruined by people,

right at the end of the shot,

like a drunk guy walked through at the end and went

go fuck yourselves and like ruined an otherwise perfectly

good take.

It's worth pointing out that the reason that he eats the

strawberry Cornetto is when I was at art college,

and I was very hung over, I had a hankering for some

ice cream in the morning and it really helped my hangover.

And after that, for a very long time,

the Cornetto became my hangover cure.

I don't know if there's any medical basis in that idea,

but I like to believe that its true.

[spooky music]

[car alarm]

This was another late-breaking addition to the scene.

When the DP said that we were going to cut the shot

out of the movie, he's going to walk past this door,

so let's put a dead body on the floor.

[car alarm]

So then we come full circle.

Like this guy is like a, sort of a homeless guy

who's asked Shaun for money earlier in the film.

Shaun just assumes that he's still asking for money,

but essentially he wants to kind of eat him.

You can also see in the background,

the groom who is basically going to be the zombie that

actually gets into their house in a later scene.

And then the show ends exactly as it started with him,

kind of pulling the gate, and that was the first slate of

the first day of shooting on Shaun of the Dead.

Next out, we're going to look at a scene from

my third movie, Hot Furs from 2007.

[fast music]

Me and Simon are both from that area of the country

in the Southwest of England.

I never intended to shoot it in my hometown because I was

worried what they may think.

And then as it happened, it was just, ended up being the

best place to shoot it.

So I had the very strange and amazing experience of shooting

this movie about like a corrupt neighborhood watch in my

actual hometown.

[fast music]

This particular shot, we basically tried to do the shot from

Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones like runs

into the market, trying to look for Marion in a basket.

So essentially this was our little tribute to

Indiana Jones.

You mothers.

[Wright] I don't know why.

It's probably one of the sillier jokes in the movie,

oh, you mothers, and it cuts to these

mothers with prams blocking his way, which means he has to

go a different way.

But this actually is where I used to walk home from school.

This is right around the corner from the comprehensive

school that I went to.

So there's the film that couldn't be more close to home

for me.

It's very sort of funny to watch and then make like a

big American style action film in my hometown.

[dramatic music]

[kid cries]

Cut through there.

Come on.

Through the gardens?

What's the matter, Danny?

You've never taken a shortcut before?

This is like a payoff to the fence gag in

Shaun of the Dead where Shaun tries to jump over a fence

and fails.

And we thought Nicholas Angel would be a lot better at it.

I've taken a shortcut before.

[crash]

It's worth pointing out of the, in this shot Simon Peg

performs the first three jumps.

So that's Simon, that's Simon, that's Simon.

And then now, here, an acrobat takes over.

We call this the Texas switch.

I've like, done Texas switches in all of my movies,

but this is like a good Texas switch where Simon Peg

is going to magically turn into an acrobat.

An Acrobat.

He also, actually, we did a Texas switch in Shaun of the

Dead where he sort of played sort of Simon's like jumping

double.

Mom!

[suspenseful music]

I'm coming!

[Edgar Wright] So he's on a trampoline and he goes over.

[rock music]

And then this is Nick Frost actually doing this bit.

And I told Nick Frost to look back right here.

And he says, why would I look back?

And I said, if you don't look back,

people won't know that you've done the stunt.

You have to take the glory of doing this stunt.

So just make it look like you look back at the damage that's

been done so that you can see that Nick Frost actually did

that stunt and not a stuntman.

And now we're going to look at a scene with another Texas

switch from Scott Pilgrim vs the World from 2010.

So Scott Pilgrim, like the coward he is, does not want

to see his recently ex-girlfriend Knives Chau right now.

And what he is going to do is get out of the apartment

straight away.

Yeah?

You're outside?

[knocks on door]

[door opens]

Is Scott here?

Uh, you know what?

[window crashes]

He just left.

Now, if you watch this shot, this is Michael Cera here

and then.

Uh, you know what?

[Wright] In the same shot, Michael Cera is now hiding

behind this door.

And this is the stunt man, Chris Mark,

who jumps through this very narrow window.

And I think some people assume that it's like a digital

trick or that we're doing something fancy with the editing.

But all that happens is Michael Sarah runs to the one side

of the room and Chris Mark runs and launches himself off a

mini trampette through this very narrow window,

which as I recall, probably had foam around it just in case

he caught himself.

But if you actually watched the shot, Chris Mark,

an amazing stunt man, goes through the window without

touching the sides.

It's quite incredible.

I don't think we did too many takes of it.

My recollection is that Chris Mark nailed it every time.

There's probably only three takes of this shot.

One of the absolute joys of that movie and the main memory I

take away from it is what fun the cast members had.

And I think that chemistry is infectious.

And you can just see in that scene,

the fun that Michael Cera, Ellen Wong, and Kieran Culkin

are having, and that, it's something to this day

that I have immensely pleasurable memories about that movie

because of the cast.

So the next scene is a big old brawl from my movie,

The World's End 2013.

[lady screams]

[man falls to the ground]

[alarm goes off]

[indistinct]

This is a scene in the movie, in the kind of a pub called

the Beehive, where a sort of middle-aged drinkers are trying

to recreate this pub crawl from their youth

and have stumbled onto an alien invasion.

It's worth pointing out, all of these stunt men in the

background are wearing these like LED goggles.

And also they've got lights in their mouths,

which, when you shoot the scene in anamorphic,

they kind of flare out in the background.

And Pierce Brosnan here.

I'm not sure that he had, he definitely didn't have the

goggles on, but we may have done a take-away.

We made him put a light in his mouth.

So I'd like to say apologies to Pierce Brosnan.

[alarm blaring]

If you will not join us willingly, we will be forced

to use other means of persuasion.

Now.

[dramatic music]

Ahh!

[Wright] So this is a tribute here to Sammo Hung,

the famous Hong Kong action star.

The stunt coordinator who designed all of this action,

Brad Allan, passed away this year,

like an amazing talent sort of taken from us too soon and

worked with Jackie Chan and come from the Hong Kong School

of Filmmaking.

You've seen his work in other movies, like

the Kingsman series and more recently in Shang Chi.

But this is one of the many great scenes that he

choreographed.

I really knew that Nick Frost could do this action,

so one of the real pleasures of The World's End is seeing

Nick Frost let rip.

I fucking hate this town!

[groovy music]

Ugh!

Ahhh!

[fighting sounds]

[Wright] I really liked the idea of Nick using stools

on his fist.

I thought, cause we've got to set up the idea

that Andy Knightley used to be a big drinker

and he isn't anymore, he's teetotal.

And then he gets drunk during the course of the film.

And suddenly like his legend is a big brawl that comes out.

He's basically wearing these kind of stills,

but now they're foam, so he can literally thump stunt men

in the face with a foam stool, which is always fun.

[fast music]

So what you're seeing here is like a great

kind of combination of practical stunts and digital effects

because this is a stunt man who's being pulled on a wire.

And obviously, in reality, his head is there,

but the wizard's the double negative.

It did the digital effects, delete his head and also add

this kind of like Lego stub at the top of the neck.

I, we liked this idea that the blanks would like

break apart like action figures.

That all the limbs and heads were all detachable.

[fast music]

[fighting sounds]

In this scene, it's just worth watching Simon Peg try to

finish his drink.

That to me is like the funniest bit is where we try to

combine, much like the master Jackie Chan himself,

but I love in the middle of all of these punches and blows

just seeing Simon do like a spit take in the middle of it

all is fantastic.

[fast music]

[fighting sounds]

What me and Brad Allan would love doing is trying to make

what looked like continuous shots.

And something like this, going behind somebody's body,

is like a stitch.

So this is where like you can cut from one section to

another. They usually the stitch is to hide the next rig.

So I think in this case we had a stitch going behind the

body because in the next shot,

the stunt man is going to go flying through the doors

And there he goes, prep to smash into those doors.

I think there's probably about three or four stitches going

on here.

Every time there's a whip pan or like a sort of a frame

white, it's usually a invisible edit to get to the next

kind of set up or some new stunt rig.

[fast music]

[fighting sounds]

[someone screams]

Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry?

[Wright] This is a little tribute here to

Drunken Master Two.

As I said, Brad Allan, he basically came out through

Jackie Chan's stunt team and we wanted to pay homage to

Jackie.

So this little bit of choreography is straight out of

Jackie Chan's Drunken Master Two.

I absolutely love Simon in this.

He's just trying to finish his drink.

This was a bit of business that one of the other fight

coordinators, Damian Walters, came up with.

Spilling your drink and then catching it again.

And I remember seeing Damien Walters do this of like

kind of throwing his drink and then catching the liquid.

And I was like, wow, that's going to be one of those things

gets to get to take 200 takes to get on camera.

But Simon, to his credit, he really wanted to get that

gag in and he did it.

So I just love saying that the Gary King spills his drink

and then catches the beer back in the same glass.

So now we're going to have a look at my film from 2017.

This is Baby Driver.

This opening sequence, I basically like wrote

the entire thing to the song Bell-Bottoms

by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

And I started imagining a car chase to go with it.

So I had this idea, what if it was a getaway driver that he

had to listen to music the entire time?

♪ Bell bottoms! Hu ♪

♪ Yeah Hu ♪

♪ Bell bottoms, bell bottoms ♪

♪ Bell bottoms, bell bottoms ♪

♪ Bell bottoms truly make me wanna dance ♪

I always really love this reaction from Jon Bernthal.

And it's like the first big laugh in the film.

It's him pointing forwards and Baby reversing back out fast.

[Bell bottoms plays]

It has to be said that that is a truly monumental stunt.

If you watch that shot again, it is incredible.

And I remember Darrin Prescott, the stunt coordinator,

and driving in the car is Jeremy Fry,

who was like Baby's driving double.

That idea of doing this kind of like big sort of 280

around a corner, and then coming so close to camera.

I remember when we had this take, like we all excitedly

watched it back on the monitor over and over again.

What are those stunts that you thinking,

oh my God, that looks so cool.

It's such an incredible shot.

[Bell bottoms plays]

This whole sequence was not only edited to the music and

choreographed to the music, basically had to

reverse engineer the entire car chase to the song.

And then on top of that, we kept adding little things

just where you've put in time with the music.

[Bell bottoms plays]

It's like for example, we added some extra struts

to these sequences.

[Bell bottoms plays]

So basically we would make even things that were wiping in

front of the camera go with the song.

So everything is real photography.

And then occasionally there's little things that happen

where you say, hey, what if we added extra stress

to put them in time with the beats of the song.

[Bell bottoms plays]

So we kept finding things that happen in the frame

and then we put them in time and the music like.

So even this flare, which did actually happen

in the real photography, and we decided to accentuate it

all in time with the music.

[Bell bottoms plays]

This was a stunt, which we agonized over a lot because

Darrin Prescott, the stunt coordinator knew that

Jeremy Fry, the driver, could do this kind of

180 in 180 out.

And the stunt looked very impressive.

Like Jeremy is really doing this kind of like 180 turn one

way, 180 turn the other way.

And then the one thing that we needed to do afterwards,

we'd shot the stunt and Bill Pope, the cinematographer,

had said, you need something to make him do the first turn.

So actually, this truck is entirely digital

and this truck is just reversing out to give a reason for

like Baby to swerve the first time.

And then this truck is reversing.

That's really there.

And so that gives him reason to swerve the other way.

But it was like Bill Pope's clever idea to add

an extra vehicle reversing to give a reason

for Baby to do the first turn.

What's also crazy about this sequence is for people who live

in Atlanta, the geography of his route is actually pretty

dead on.

In this first part of the chase, he's pretty much going in

exactly the right order of streets.

So I hope people in Atlanta, Georgia appreciate the

fidelity to the geography.

So now we have a clip from my new movie.

This is Last Night in Soho.

This is the first dream sequence in the movie where Eloise,

played by Thomasin McKenzie, goes back to the sixties

and appears to inhabit the body of Anya Taylor-Joy

in her dreams.

[crowd chattering]

Hello, there.

What's clever here is that Thomasin is actually really

standing next to Anya Taylor-Joy.

I thought it would be really bad if Thomasin was separate

from Anya because the whole point of the movie is that

they have a connection in their dreams.

And it was really important for the two actresses to be in

the same shot.

So what you're actually seeing here is like half a mirror.

There's a mirror right here because obviously you can see

Matt Smith's real reflection.

And that's Matt Smith.

On this side, there is a green screen behind

Thomasin McKenzie so that she can be standing in

like a hole in this set next to Anya Taylor-Joy.

So everything that you're seeing here is real,

except for this part where basically the wizards in the

digital effects department, led by Tom Procter from

Double Negative.

We have to shoot the reverse play of the nightclub and put

it into this section here.

So essentially it looks like one seamless shot.

The bartender said I should get to know the handsome

fellow standing next to Cilla Black.

You should.

And you are?

The next Cilla Black.

Oh, you know, we know she started out as a

coat check girl.

She is actually standing there.

So this is not something where we've shot Thomasin

separately from Anya.

And I think that really helps the performance.

If that sounds complicated, even me describing it,

then you're not alone.

A lot of the crew members on the day were sort of going

wait, but how do we?

And then when they see us kind of do a couple of takes and

say, ah, now I understand.

This is a song by the Green Bond Organization,

their cover of Wade in the Water,

which is one of the first songs I thought of for this movie.

And I would imagine this scene or whenever I would

hear the song, long before I wrote the screenplay,

I just would have a movie version of synesthesia where I

would imagine this scene happening.

[Wade in the Water]

Now this shot here.

A lot of people think that there's some nifty edits going in

here, but in truth, this is one uninterrupted

steady cam take.

But there's one little addition, rather than a cut.

Does this little bit here where Thomasin comes into it,

which basically we did by repeating the steady cam move at

exactly the same place.

But it's not a motion control shots because it's such a

long, steady cam shot.

Our amazing camera operator, Chris Bain, has just basically

repeated the same move.

And the reason that it looks so slick is because the

performers, Matt Smith, Anya Taylor-Joy

and Thomasin McKenzie, replicated their moves exactly.

A lot of people are saying, wait, how did you do that?

Is it motion control?

Is it green screen?

It's neither.

It's basically having a absolutely shit hot camera operator

who can replicate the move.

So basically you're like saving thousands and thousands of

dollars by him being able to have the muscle memory of doing

the same move.

But now from this point on, in the sequence,

there are no cuts.

What you're watching now is an uninterrupted take.

So it's both simpler and more complicated than it appears

because basically what you're watching is a succession of

Texas switches.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie are basically

switching places.

There's nothing more to it than that.

It's just like amazing choreography,

like an amazing steady cam shot.

[Wade in the Water]

So I'm very proud of this sequence because it's essentially

like five Texas switches in a row.

And so there are no edits in the sequence.

You're watching essentially like one uninterrupted

steady cam take right through to the end.

That's really like a testament to so a great choreography,

great camera operation, and three amazing performers

who were able to pull off the dance moves.