Viewinder Film School, Reviews

Film School: ‘The Plan’ Montage in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (2004)

A case study in thrilling, bite-sized, visual storytelling.

In this sequence from horror comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004), director Edgar Wright has created a montage made of three smaller montages. As Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) devise their plan to rescue their loved ones from the zombie apocalypse, we see their brainstorming play out before our eyes in a sequence of shots designed for the edit:

In under two minutes, we’re shown four whole stories: three plans, plus the story of making the plan. It’s a wonderful example of efficient, elegant visual storytelling.

Pan vs Tilt (via empireonline.com)
Pan vs Tilt (via empireonline.com)

• Each shot contains two camera moves: for example, a whip-pan then a push-in.
• Each shot also begins with a move that complements the shot which preceded it: if Shot A ends with a whip-pan to the left, Shot B begins with a whip-pan to the left; if Shot A ends with a tilt away from its action, Shot B begins with a tilt into its action.
• Each shot sets up the one which follows it – right down to the whip-pan away from Shaun as he begins to describe the latest version of the plan.

Another in-camera trick Edgar Wright utilises in Shaun of the Dead is the Texas Switch (via CinemaHow, clipped from their longer video):

Try It Yourself

In-camera transitions aren’t just a trademark of Edgar Wright’s film-making – they also offer creative possibilities for no-budget films.

They don’t require large crews, expensive resources or production value – only planning, storyboarding, and careful consideration of how much story can be crammed into how few shots. Vimeo Video School‘s tutorial “3 Tricks For Your Impossibly Small Film Crew” not only shows how to create such shots, it actually uses these tricks to transition between examples:

Further Viewing

Shaun of the Dead also utilises repetition and variation in its storytelling in other ways (via Universal):

Edgar Wright explains the “tooling up” montage, and how he subverts it in Hot Fuzz (2007) and Shaun of the Dead (clipped from the full podcast episode, via HBO):

Archer Green looks at how sound is utilised in Edgar Wright’s filmmaking:

As Michael in Lessons from the Screenplay tells us, comedy is “usually best when it is used to reveal character.” He posits that, in Shaun of the Dead, “the main source of humour comes from how the characters react to the story world“:

Edgar Wright uses different yet equally effective techniques in ‘The Move To Stanford’ Montage in Hot Fuzz (2007):

Film School: ‘The Move To Stanford’ Montage in ‘Hot Fuzz’ (2007)

Ok, so some in-camera transitions do require more resources – but where less visionary filmmakers want to show you where the money went, Wright is more interested storytelling effects, as evidenced by his explanation of this seemingly subtle, yet monumental example from Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010):

In fact, Edgar Wright shared fascinating production details about the entire film in his live-tweet rewatch of the film – and we collected them all here:

Film School: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)