Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting

Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting

Danny Boyle directed the film transporting in 1996, produced by Andrew Macdonald and edited by Masahiro Hirakubo. Trainspotting film is one of the unique kinds with references to cinematography, a work done by Brian Tufano. It is a British black commodity crime movie released on 23 1996 in the United Kingdom (Boyle, n.d). Danny Boyle plotted the film in a British black community to unfold the theme of drug abuse in the economically depressed Edinburgh region. Trainspotting has other topics that reflect real life, such as urban poverty, addiction, squalor, friendship, causes and consequences of crime, and the most awesome theme of reality and perception in the life of drug users. Danny uses different film techniques to show how people sometimes end up wroth the wrong choices in life. The young people in the community chose mediocrity by taking drugs, engaging in criminal activities such as robing and other bad things. Of interest in the film is that despite the lousy life that the youths live in the Edinburgh community, they do not want to change. Perhaps Danny’s use of film techniques such as sound, scene, frame, and lighting provides further insight into how the group of young people in Edinburgh are anarchists and oppose change.

Boyle (n.d) notes that Danny uses sound to convey the message of drug abuse and its consequences among the youths in the Edinburg community. Drug addict drama film applies the use of jam-packed, manic soundtrack of several songs such as pop, electronic duo underworld, and Brian Eno hopeful (Boyle, n.d). It further adopts electronic and retro jazz sounds aspects attributed to Indian composer, A.R Rahman. As the commodity starts in the nightclub, a character Renton realizes that his addiction to heroin has increased. Renton is introduced in the scene with an electronic and retro jazz sounds. The music frequently emerges in most of the scenes to foreshadow the next happening, emphasize a specific theme or back play a previous scene. For almost every scene of the film, Danny employed Apollo atmosphere and soundtracks in the transporting scenes that entail “the worst toilet in Scotland.” The involvement of Brain Eno music pieces in the movie helps viewers to dig through their minds and think critically about the effects of drug use. At the nightclub, music, the director successfully uses music to capture viewers’ attention and emotions. The scene at the nightclub, through character Renton, has a powerful score that helps inspire audience feelings about heroin addiction. The use of “beyond the sea” in “a life less ordinary” in the film gleefully counterbalance what is displayed on the screen. The song further helps pump up the emotional context of the consequences of drug use among youths. Danny tries to be digging through the viewer’s mind by choosing a perfect song that fits every scene. The use of “Deep Blue Day” by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois’ album creates a mixture of feelings such as sadness, anxiety, scared, and hopeful (Boyle, n.d). Besides, the inclusion of the album provides viewers with a clue on how the next scene would be like. In a nutshell, from the audience’s point of view, the choice of music does not only help to convey Denny’s themes but also makes the film exciting and attention capturing. The mixture of sounds in the transporting is a unique mixture that helps to create different tones throughout the film.

Boyle (n.d) pointed out that lighting technique permeates the film and helps to explain themes such as waste and decay, causes and consequences of criminality, reality, and perception. The leading light of the scene is integrated with side, fill, practical, and bounce lighting to pass the director’s message to the audience. Danny uses natural lighting from the sun for shots in dark places. There is the use of bounce cards or flags to alter the light of the scene. The lighting director did a bright location scout and put into consideration the time of the day. Natural lighting in various scenes helps explains the physical conditions of various youths who abuse heroin.  While viewing the Edinburgh community, Danny uses bright lights and a minimum of blacks and mid-range tones. The combination of a lot of pop video lighting setups provides emphasis the level of waste and decay among the youths in the community. Those who use heroin and suffering from adverse effects such as skin color change are captured with bright light as a source differentiation. Lighting methods in transporting are one of its kind that entails mixtures that portrays criminal situations such as the red light of police siren, blue, and red light of ambulance are included. Bouncing and practical lights enhance the messages of reality and perception in drug abusers. Boyle (n.d) noted that it provides a focus on the difference between perception and what happens in real life. The contrast between white and black light backgrounds in the scenes dominated by no- drug users and drug users respectively shows the contrast between the two worlds. Danny uses the light contrast to emphasize the harmful consequences of heroin usage. In the film, the community is shown to be going through economic depression, and people suffer from poverty. The youths get involved in drug abuse due to lack of attention from the authorities. Every scene of the occurrences is accompanied by different lighting systems and styles that help in passing various messages. Denny’s application of different types of lighting techniques adds value to the theme states in the film.

Frame arrangement is used in the transporting film in that scenes show very normal objects in frame as the camera captures characters entirely. Through framing film, visual arts such as cinematography are well developed. Danny uses framing in the movie to present visual elements in various images.  Framing in the film also helps in the placement of subjects in the relation of the objects. Danny also applies frame to add depth to images and puts interest in various scenes in the film. Transporting has a well-developed thematically arranged framing related to objects being framed. Usage of the frame in the movie supports all the themes as it entails every scene in the movie. For example, the visual arts help points out how Renton ruminates the mindset of junkies and indicates that the only thing they can think of is the next crime. Through thematically organize scenes, Renton and his friends are found to be prone to committing various crimes because they are addicted to drugs. Throughout the movie, scenes are framed not to glamorize drug use and its effects. It shows that addicts sink in heroin use and live a terrible life. It further shows the effects of drug use on those around the addicts.  The representation of the visual arts outlays the use of framing in the film and also provides an insight into how it helps explore significant themes in the movie.  It can be observed that every scene of the movie has significant aspects of visual arts, and their representations prove that Denny and other directors maximized the use of framing in the film. In a nutshell, framing as a technique is well-explored in the transporting movie, which makes it one of the most exciting commodity drug drama movies.

Other techniques Danny employs in the film to explain various themes include the scene, mise-en-scene, visual metaphor, superimposition, and temporality. Aspects such as onscreen and off-screen sounds add value to the sound effects in the film. The affective response indicates the response behavior of heroin addicts such as Tommy and Renton. To highlight, Danny employs film techniques such as Foley, phenomenology, and diegetic sound. Creating a sense of drama required the application of mimesis and the involvement of postmodernism film styles. Both linear and non-linear editing techniques added flavor to the content of the entire scenes in the movie.

In a nutshell, Danny correctly uses sound, scene, frame, editing, mise-en-scene, and lighting to provides further insight on how the group of young people in Edinburgh are anarchist and oppose change. The director successfully employs techniques to show how current society is composed of a young generation that is deeply indulged in drugs. To make his point, Danny explains how dangerous and addictive drugs can be to the youths. By highlighting the consequences of drug use, Danny forwards that those who decide to use drugs made wrong decisions that may be fatal. As the film ends, Tommy dies transporting as a result of drug heroin abuse to show the deadly consequences of drug use and addiction.