Bad Genius
Bad Genius (2017) is Thailand blockbuster film released in May 2017 and became the highest-grossing Thai film of 2017, the film was directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya. The film’s shot on location in Australia and predominantly in Thailand. There are four characters involved in this film and they’re played by Lynn, Bank, Pat, and Grace. It is a drama and thriller genre. Lynn, the main character in this film, decides to charge and earn money from students to help them cheat and pass in their exams, but she may lose much more than she gains. What struck me the most was the plot twist at end of the film, which I didn’t like it as much as other people does but in the best way possible for this purpose of one of the character changed drastically, certainly with no expectation to spoil it, so I’m not going to spill the plot twist that occurs at the end.
This film also composed sequences of suspense and slapdash comedy. In my opinion, I thought Bad Genius was a great film, conveying the film itself from an artistic point of view in a strong, influencing way, also while watching this film, the plot of this film is believable, I was mesmerized in how they constructed the narrative and the implementation of the film brought out loads of laughter and staggering energy in its intense scenes. For this film, I will be discussing and fundamentally analyzing the editing style of the selected scene and how they complement creative visual and editing to such an expressive storyline.
After watching the film several times, the best scene for me and it’s also the scene I’m going to analyze based on the editing style, it is the third exam scene in Bad Genius that happens nearly toward the end of the film, which took almost thirty minutes of the complete 130 minutes of the film. This scene happens to be in Sydney, Australia. What is more, this is the most intense scene in this film as the lead character have to take the prevalent exam to help their friends to pursue their education by remembering the answers of the questions paper and ultimately forward the answer to Thailand via SMS. This is also the scene that slowly transforms one of the characters’ characteristics that could be one of the reasons commanding to the plot twist. This scene occurs because of the second exam scene from the film where the main character, Lynn was caught giving answers to her friends that causes her losing her scholarship.
In addition, the third exam scene help strengthen the next scene as it drastically changes the emotion of the film from beginning to the end, from where it begins to have a sense of crime happens between the character and the narrative of the film. For this reason, this scene changes the perspective and mood of the audience toward the film since it has a comedic beginning together with emotional and suspenseful expose at the end of the film.
To analyze the editing techniques of the film, the director Poonpiriya moves the narrative alongside with a fast-paced dynamic tone, and make this scene the most fascinating piece of Bad Genius, how he executes the cheating scene and play it out like a heist for the film. This is additionally the scene where the director Poonpiriya implies his creative visual style to kicks in, as he has experienced in advertising and music videos. Through a mix of unpredicted camera shots and extremely tight editing, Poonpiriya fills the exam scene with an energetic and suspenseful score together with a melodic and rhythmic style of narrating.
Furthermore, another most visually appealing and artful is the point at which the lead character uses her finger that she works on amid the second exam scene. The finger movements emulating the piano pieces when she can’t recollect the appropriate answers and the stakes increase drastically by the end. To include, the utilization of lighting and scoring of the film when she moves towards the piano, are the two fundamental sources that development the scene to make the audience to feel that the lead character Lynn is encountering something strange and intense emotion. In this particular scene, they use cross-cut editing between the lead character at the exam hall together with her playing the piano keys at difference space and the other students waiting for the answer, in the film, they keep cutting back and forth from one shot then onto the next shot.
Also, there are montage and several jumps cuts to help convey the passing of time and the context of the narrative. In this case, Poonpiriya intentionally directed the montage and jump cuts in order to demonstrate the characters’ intense expression taking the exam. On the other hand, there are significant numbers of the implementation in a different angle of extreme close-ups in this film, this is to accentuate the intense emotional moments of the character.
The variety and diverse strategies are to convey the sentiments of confusion, frustration, suspense and regret that both of the film’s characters and audience are encountering in the film. The implementation of cross-cut, jump cut, fast-paced scenes and the different assortments of camera angles give a genuine feeling of the characters’ circumstance, these are the selections of editing techniques that are being used in the film.
Other than that, in my opinion, I even observed that the editing has the resemblance of Edgar Wright’s cinematography style and directorial inspiration, with its particular vision of sharpness inside its cuts, as well as the score. The master of close-ups, a mix of using whip pan and crash-zoom transition together with speed and controlled pace have been Wright’s signature in the film industry. He is also known for directing Baby Driver (2017), one of his most prevalent movies. The manner in which they execute Wright’s style was simply treasuring as I was understanding its impression and the used of Wright’s techniques in the film. Nonetheless, it felt clever each time they pulled it off in expressing the story, especially when the film figures out how to make sense of it and execute it three times in the film’s scenes itself.
To sum up, each scene in this film is so detailed and impressive, particularly this chosen scene. This scene is satisfying to watch as the amount of creativity that Poonpiriya has implied into the film. This is the film that is very eccentric, particularly the plot twist toward the end. The impeccable cinematography and editing style of Bad Genius (2017) will interface the audience with the narrative and the characters.
