Hotfuzz -- Montages

Hotfuzz the first in the Cornetto trilogy and one that in my opinion is the better of the three. Today I want to talk about the two very different montages that the film uses in the start of the film.
First let's go over what a montage is. To start, yes the most famous montage is probably Rocky's but most people think that's the only type of montage (one where there is music and the character trains in the time and gradually becomes better at what he does) when that's not the case. The two montages i'm covering in this blog are rhythmic and tonal montage.
Rhythmic being something cut to a the continuity of the shots (this is montages like Rocky and Ant man) and Tonal being that there's an emotional meaning to a shot.

To start lets talk about the opening of HotFuzz, We start with a wide shot of the main character walking up to the front desk turning to a close up, from this we can tell this is a very determined character from his posture and marching towards the desk. We then start the montage with the character talking over the scene telling us information about himself and how well he's done in the academy, this is achieved well in the montage because the shots that are used back up what the character is saying so the audience then perceives him as the amazing police man who manages to be the best at everything he does.

The second montage on the other hand is more of a tonal montage showing us two thing, the character's emotions and the change of location. So through out the 35 second montage we can clearly tell that the character is almost depressed with the situation he's been put into, but there's alot more we can pick up on too, the whole thing show is move away and this is shown by a few thing in the montage, two taxis show very different styles symbolizing change. This is also the same with the train going from a upper class and clean train to a very basic boring train. Another little change that we see only for 2 seconds is his phone going from full bars in London to next to no bars in the countryside. All these little details add to the montage making for a funny intro to the change of the character's life.

Two of the Cornetto trilogy down, one to go!

Here are the two montages referenced:

Opening Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lqd-UwZmJ4

Move To Sandford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8dFK5nI1YA