After Asylum Edgar Wright went on to continue to Direct in television on 6 different series, but the series that really got his name out into the industry and where he began to develop as a Director was the Channel 4 Sitcom series 'Spaced'. This is one of Edgar's famous works where he isn't the Writer and Director. With this sitcom, Edgar was purely the Director for both series of Spaced with each episode. I can see his Directional Style developing in this series, especially with the mixture of genres which he brings into his films. Spaced is about Tim and Daisy, two people in their 20's who live in London, they meet and agree to move in together. The series mostly tells the weird and awkward adventures of these two characters with their friends coming into the story such as Mike. Although during the first series we get them come to terms with their own relationships falling apart and within the second series we get more romantic tension develops between them.
Edgar's directing
Like Asylum. Edgar directs the actors in very different ways. Tim (Simon Pegg) is much more realistic and acts much calmer with his character, delivering the sarcastic lines at perfect moments. Then with Daisy (Jessica Stevenson), Edgar directs her to be very over the top with emotions very exaggerated to make her the very comical one out of the pair. She's always either very excited or very upset and Tim is always the one to call her out on it. You could argue that all the characters in this have very exaggerated performances to push the comedy forward as that was what was popular in the 90's. Edgar's love of film reference comes here,Edgar is known to be a huge film nerd and loves classic movies. He often pays tribute to them by having references in his films and in his TV Series. Although not a directional style, it is something that carried on in his following work and helped bring forward the comedy of the scenes they were in. Since these are such classics, such as the Shinning, most of the audience watching would probably get the reference and then get the joke so it works for the benefit of the show as well as respect towards the original film.
Edgar's choice of camera work and editing really develops and begins to become more unique in this series rather than his previous work which had very basic, still camera movement with the the odd steadicam/hand held shot in there to help with coverage. However, the camera with Spaced moves more and helps tell the story more. It works better than any of Edgar's earlier work as it changes constantly. Although we get recurring camera movements from similar situations in the sitcom as well.
Let's focus on season 1. Within the first series of Spaced we see a large range of camera work and editing styles. Going with the common camera work we see throughout the series, Spaced is mostly hand held with Edgar's love of track shots and whip pans coming into this series. When character are sat on the couch and watching TV, we'll always get this really nice track shot to start the scene. It's a brilliant way to move into the scene as if we're actually watching these characters.
In that clip at was, at the end, we see an example of the hand held shots we get throughout the series. Although in that scene we get a lot of close ups on the characters faces to show the emotion and create the distraction ready for the punch line about jaffa cakes. Another example is in episode 3 with the zombie theme going, we see a very shaky hand held camera when the zombie section is happening, to work with the fear that Tim clearly has on screen. As well Edgar makes the camera move when Tim does with a really effective POV with the shot gun in shot, like a first person shooter game which the game Tim is playing actually is. All this works really well together and we can see Edgar's creativeness begin to develop here and aspects which he carries on to his Feature Films.
Other than Zombies. Edgar really experiments with camera and editing in Spaced. Take the character 'Tyres' for example. A man who loves partying and loves House music, when he comes into Tim and Daisy's flat and the phone goes off. He can make all the noises around him into a beat that he can party to. The comedy of this works but the camera movement and the editing work so well to help this as well. The camera will whip pan and zoom on the items making the sound and the edit has been done to work with the beat of the song that all of these items are making. A really creative bit of sound, camera and editing on Edgar's side which he carries over with all of Tyre's scenes as it works so well a d really pushes the comedy.
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