Key Elements: Editing

Editing In Baby Driver

The Film Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) opens with a wide shot of a bank which then is disrupted by the wheel of a red car which comes into frame. This is then followed by four shots of the people in the car and then there is a rapid sequence filled with cuts showing 3 of the characters robbing the bank and the other singing and dancing to the diegetic music playing.

What then follows is more rapidly cut shots of a car chase with the cuts synchronised to the music before the car then pulls into a car park where the rapidly cut shots begin to slow down. What makes this sequence feel so quick is that there are many motion matched cuts therefore it can show how quick the car chase is. In total, there are around 220 cuts in 336 seconds of film which means there is roughly a shot every 1.5 seconds.

The quick-cut shots are continuity edited (we see shots in order of when they happen) as opposed to contiguity editing (where we see two different point of views in the same sequence using cross-cutting). This car chase scene sets the pace for the rest of the film and shows the audience how fast paced the film can be using the 220 different cuts which make the sequence feel extremely fast.