EDGAR WRIGHT

Edgar Wright started his career by directing many short films throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. His first two camera's came through a gift and winning a competition on the television programme 'Going Live'. In the early 90s, Wright received an ND in Audio-Visual Design at the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art.

His first feature film debuted in 1994 with the low budget, "independent spoof western", 'A Fistful of Fingers', appearing for a limited time in theatres and on Sky Movies. The film caught the attention of comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, now well known for their work on 'Little Britain' and 'Come Fly With Me'. He eventually directed the sketch show 'Mash and Peas' written by and starring both Lucas and Williams. During this time he also worked on many BBC productions and

Wright went on to direct TV series Spaced in 1998 and this was his major breakthrough in TV and this eventually led onto film successes including 'Shaun of the Dead' and more recently 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World' which despite not being a box office success, received great acclaim from some critics.

In response to whether the box office failure had a knock on effect on the way he approached movies afterwards Wright responded, "Not really because it was very critically well received. The only thing that would annoy me about it is that people would equate box office with reviews as the same thing."



The clip seen above is taken from the film 'Evil Dead 2', directed by Sam Raimi in 1987, the man who inspired Edgar Wright to pursue a filmmaking career. Wright did a feature article on his idol just last year appearing on 'The Skinny' (click for a link to the article) website.

Wright remembers watching Evil Dead 2 and thinking 'Wow, I didn’t know you could make a film like this!' referring to the culmination of genres the film displayed from horror to comedy. I wonder why most of Edgar Wrights films feature a mix of genres too? (Comedy, horror, sci-fi to name a few)



The film 'Shaun of the Dead' is arguably Wright's biggest success to date and features a very similar filming style to Sam Raimi, showing quick cut editing and what has been called a frantic-zoom style. (see both clips above)

Edgar Wright has inspired me through his skill of combining a mix of genres to create such successful films. I will try and replicate his use of quick-cut editing to add fast movement to my film trailer and this technique should allow me to expand on the variety of camera shots I can use to appeal to the audience.