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Clip description
Jay ‘Spasm’ Filkins (Sean Kennedy) is caught adjusting his skateboard in class. The teacher tries to humiliate him with a maths question but Spasm has all the answers – and a quick getaway. He bolts on the board, pursued by teachers and cheering classmates, but the headmaster (Bob Baines) delivers an unexpected revenge.
Curator’s notes
The music for the film is by expatriate Australian musician Johnny Klimek and German composer Reinhold Heil, who have collaborated with Tom Tykwer on the music for several of his German films, including Run Lola Run (1998). The influence of that film, in which forward momentum became the dominant script idea, can be seen in this clip. There’s no real reason for Spasm to flee the classroom, but it delivers instant pace and a chance for the kind of anarchic comedy that young audiences sometimes enjoy (complete with a ‘naughty’ shot of the gym teacher’s knickers).
The director uses a lot of different techniques to keep the pace moving – a fast-tracking camera as Spasm glides through the gym, increasing the film speed as crowds follow, then breaking into animation as Spasm realises he has come to a dead end. The animations are Spasm’s hobby: he uses decks of Post-it notes to make flipbooks, in which he is the skater with a dog’s head – the deck dog.
