Film Studies Blog

Trainspotting     How does the aesthetic quality of Trainspotting depict youth and drug addiction? Trainspotting was released in 1996, from director Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Johnny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle. The film focuses on the lives of heroin addicts and the struggles they face in Edinburgh being young in early 90s. The first clip I will be analysing from Trainspotting is the very opening scene which involves Renton and Spud (Ewan McGregor and Ewen Bremner) sprinting away from security guards as it would appear they have just stolen something from a shop and so run down a street to escape. The very first thing we see is a long, wide shot of a street in Edinburgh and then all of a sudden 2 legs disturb the scene and there is a low mid shot of Renton’s feet as he runs away, also Iggy Pop’s Lust for life begins to play, this is non diegetic sounds over the images of the 2 friends running away. Next we see a double shot of Re...

Film studies introduction task   The film I have chosen to analyse is Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini and Ben Mendelssohn. The movie is about a couple of small time thieves doing some jobs to earn lots of money and to frame a mobster in the process. Brad Pitt is called in to sort out the mobster and the overall result is a very bloody mess! One of the scenes I have chosen to analyse is a scene in which Brad Pitt sends some thugs to deliver a “message” to Ray Liotta’s character which only ends up being a brutal beating leaving Liotta near death. The filming style of this scene is beautiful and feels so incredibly realistic as each punch is landed whilst the rain is pouring down. From the moment he gets out of the car, the camera focus is altered and we as an audience feel more grounded to Liotta's level and we feel exactly what he feel a throughout this scene. The colours used in this scene are very dark however there is a clear contra...

The Poll Tax, also known as the community charge, was a tax fee to replace domestic rates in Scotland in 1989. It was specifically taxing people rather than homes. The Thatcher government was unpopular in Scotland because many people believed that her government was targeting Scotland which was true because she wanted to experiment on them as they would not lose voters, this caused mass resistance to the tax. Throughout streets of Glasgow, Anti-Tax poll movements took place because the poll tax was not replacing anything but in fact a whole new tax forcing some people to pay more and more money to the government. In Trainspotting, these conditions are mentioned when they all share the one home and it isn't a fancy home so there are obvious harsh conditions money wise. Also when Renton moves to London to become a house salesman, he shows off a worn house and eventually his friends move in because its a place to stay. Social realism in British cinema is a genre that focuses on top...