One of the common genre in cinema today is comedy, however, I feel that they are missing one very important element in their work. Visual comedy. The dialog has nothing to do with their style of comedy, but what I’m talking about is the filmmaking. The use of picture and sound to deliver a joke.
I’m not saying that movies these days are bad, but what you find funny is funny. But these movies to me are lightly edited improv. Everyone stand stills and talk to each other in close up. Almost none of their joke comes visually. They are mainly in sound; and not even in full range of sound, but merely dialog. This is really bad because it’s just a fraction of cinema. Apart from animation, visual comedy is moving backwards. If you love this kind of stuff, Edgar Wright’s work is very recommended! He’s one of the few filmmakers using a full range of what is possible in this genre. He finds humour where people don’t look for.
For instance, a transition scene from a location to another. Usually in movies, they include panning from left to right, include obvious landmarks and signs, mix in generic helicopter footage and include upbeat music so the audience don’t get bored.
Wright recreates the same idea but in a different perspective. He uses a series of quick cuts yet with good storytelling.
The taxi shots tell where we are going. The shots of the phone tells we are moving away from civilization, the main character always faces forward or to the right side so the screen direction is respected, turn down the music so the sound fx up is funny because the cut is jarring and some nice performances from the actors.
