Baby Driver: Mise-En-Scene

Edgar Wright's 2017 opus "Baby Driver" follows Baby, a getaway driver in Atlanta, Georgia. In order to cope with his chronic tinitus, Baby must constantly be listening to music through his iPod. As a result, Baby Driver ends up being a beautiful fusion of a musical and a high-octane car chase movie.

Setting

From left to right: Director Edgar Wright, OutKast member
Big Boi, Kevin Spacey, and Atlanta rapper Killer Mike

Baby Driver was both filmed and set in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta's prolific cultures behind music and cars make it the perfect backdrop for Baby's musical getaways. To display Atlanta's rich culture, Wright included several of the city's culinary landmarks, such as Godfather's Pizza and Octane Coffee, as well as cameos from some of the areas most high profile artists, Killer Mike and Big Boi.  

The ethos of Atlanta also helps contextualize the crime that takes place throughout the film. In an interview with Complex, Wright said “It’s a travel hub, so it makes sense that it would be the place where criminals would meet up and split again.”

Lighting

Baby Driver utilizes different styles of lighting in order to show contrast between Baby's personal life and his criminal career. Three point lighting is used in scenes where Baby is with his foster dad, Joseph, or his love interest, Deborah. This creates a warm, comforting feeling, which underscores Baby's feelings towards those characters.

Three point lighting in a scene where Baby talk's to his
love interest, Deborah, in a diner.

Low-key lighting in a meeting with Baby's robbery crew.

In contrast, low-key lighting is used in scenes where Baby is dealing with his criminal squad. This parallels the idea that this is the darker, more murky part of Baby's life.

The lighting acts as a leit motif to signal to the audience what subject matter Baby will be dealing with in any given scene.

Costumes

From left to right: Baby (Ansel Elgort), Bats (Jamie Foxx),
Darling (Eiza Gonzalez), and Buddy (Jon Hamm).

In the film, costuming is used to parallel the different personalities of Baby's criminal partners. The most notable use of this technique can be seen with Jon Hamm's character, Buddy (pictured on the far right). Buddy's all black costume design is meant to symbolize what happens when a person's life becomes consumed by their criminality. In a scene later in the movie, we discover that his character used to be a successful businessman who turned to crime to pay for drugs under the table. 

Baby in the film's climax, wearing a grey undershirt to
symbolize his plunge into criminality.

The motif of black symbolizing crime is utilized to show Baby's character arc of needing to get his hands dirty in order to break free of his past to be with Deborah. In the beginning of the movie, Baby can be seen wearing a white undershirt, symbolizing his innocence both emotionally and legally. As the plot advances, and Baby get further entrapped in his job, his undershirt becomes darker to demonstrate that he is moving closer towards being consumed by his criminality, like Buddy. 

Staging and Acting

Ansel Elgort brings the character of Baby to life with his subdued, yet expressive performance. Elgort has very little dialogue in the movie, so we are left to analyze his emotions and thoughts through his movements and facial expressions. This can be now better displayed than in the second scene of the film, where Baby gets a reprieve from his shady job to go get coffee. Baby's relief is exemplified by his lighthearted dancing down the street as he listens to the Harlem Shuffle by Bob and Earl.

Sound Design Project

The project starts out with the ambient sounds of the city. This establishes the general setting of the story, which is a bustling street. We then hear a car pull into a parking spot, as the driver shuts off the engine, closes the door, and locks the car. This all happens in quick succession, implying that the person is eager to get to their destination.  We recorded these sounds from scratch by parking Garrett's car, slamming the driver's door, and locking the door. We then hear rhythmic footsteps on concrete for about ten seconds before the footsteps switch to a wooden surface. For these sounds, we recorded Ethan walking on the linoleum school floor, and then on cardboard. Ambient bar music fades in and the footsteps stop. We meant for this to convey that the character has stopped outside a bar. A deep voice asks for a name, to which the character responds "I'm Bernie Sanders." This establishes that the bar is high profile enough for there to be a bouncer, and Bernie Sanders is the type of person that attends. We hear a door open and close as the music becomes clearer. For this, we simply opened and closed the office door and increased the volume of the music in order to convey the feeling of entering a bar. To compliment the bar setting, we hear background conversations throughout the scene. Bernie orders a "strawberry daquerie, please," and we hear the clinking of glasses, the pouring of liquid, and a thud on a wooden counter. For this, we did the exact action in real time to demonstrate that the bartender was making the drink for Bernie. We hear sipping sounds as Bernie downs his drink. Suddenly, we hear a knife unsheathe, which is followed by a stabbing sound and a scream from Bernie. Bernie Sanders has just been stabbed. The music continues but are underscored by panicked screams as the bar empties out.

Master Editing Technique Examples

Contrast

In the opening scene of Casino Royale (2006), director Martin Campbell utilizes contrast to establish two concepts, one meta, and one within the film. 
In a meta sense, the scene establishes a stark tone shift from previous installments of the franchise. Prior to Casino Royale, the Bond franchise was trademarked by campy action scenes, predictable plots, and over the top side characters. Campbell made the executive decision to take a complete "180" with the property, deciding to show the more realistic side of Bond's world. This decision is paralleled in the scene's black and white presentation, which contrasts with the series' previously saturated colour palette. Right out of the gate, we know that this is a different Bond.

The director also utilizes contrast within the scene to demonstrate the two sides of Bond's character. The opening is composed of two intercut scenes of two different assassinations: the first of a treasonous MI6 agent, and the other his contact. The former is a suave conversation between Bond and the former agent, with both characters tensely conversing while seated. Instead of killing his target in some flashy manner, Bond shoots him with a silenced pistol. This part of the scene displays Bond's ability to be calm, cool, collected, and efficient. The second half of the scene shows Bond in a bathroom engaged in a physical altercation with the former agent's contact. Unlike the previous assassination, Bond is a bit messier in this one. Punches are thrown, blood is drawn, mirrors are shattered, and the fight ends with Bond brutally drowning the contact in a sink as we see the life drain from his body. This scene is indicative of Bond's more aggressive and physical side, and sets the precedent that the life of 007 is not as flashy as we believed it to be before.

The reason Casino Royale's opening works so well is that it uses contrast within the movie to ease us into this new interpretation of the Bond character. The drastic shifts within the scene of a quiet conversation to an uncoordinated fist-fight help us to comprehend the drastic shift within the franchise of fun action flick to a dark espionage thriller.

Parallelism

In Shaun of the Dead (2004), director Edgar Wright uses parallelism to convey the slow descent of a small town from normalcy to a zombie outbreak. The film follows Shaun (Simon Pegg), a downtrodden tech salesman living in a peaceful but boring suburb with his best friend, Ed (Nick Frost). Part of Shaun's daily routine is waking up to a hungover Ed begging him to fetch him a Cornetto (a prepackaged ice cream cone) from the corner store across the street, to which Shaun regularly, but reluctantly complies. The first time we see Shaun embark on his usual walk to the corner store, all of the mainstays of a typical, suburban day are on display: a teenager playing football, a homeless man asking for change, cars speeding down two lane roads on the way to their 9 to 5's, someone washing their car, and a man going for a run. When Shaun enters the store, we can hear upbeat music playing over the radio. Shaun opens up a mini-fridge to pick up Ed's Cornetto and a Diet Coke for himself, before going to the energetic store clerk to check out. Several scenes later, we see Shaun wake up to his monotonous daily routine, and we follow him again to the corner store in a shot-for-shot remake of his previous trip. But this time, things are different.
There is not a child in sight. The homeless man previously begging for change on the sidewalk is now walking lifelessly in the middle of the street. Not a single car is moving on the road, and the one we saw previously being washed now has a hole punched through the windshield. The man who used to being running for pleasure is now frantically fleeing an unknown force down the sidewalk. When Shaun enters the store, the music is now shrill and unnerving, and the mini-fridge has bloody hand prints on it. Shaun tries to check out, but the clerk isn't at the counter. The audience is able to see him zombified in the back of the store. For comedic effect, and to emphasize his lackadaisical character, Shaun is oblivious to all of it. 

The two scenes' parallelism serves the purpose of displaying how boring Shaun's day-to-day life his, while also using it as a back drop to show the development of a zombie apocalypse within his small town.

Symbolism

In Stanley Kubrick's 1984 classic The Shining,