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Though it’s really pointless to compare filmmakers, one of the reasons I chose Danny Boyle to follow Sofia Coppola in [the films of] was because Boyle puts this enormous amount of energy on the screen. He’s tiny big and bold, and has one of the most interesting filmographies a filmmaker could have. So without further ado, here’s some more info behind [the films of] Danny Boyle.

The video opens with these enormous shots of an island, the earth, the sun.. In Boyle’s films the location is always a very big part of the story, like the desolate island of The Beach and the sun in Sunshine. These three shots symbolise that trademark.

God knows you’re lonely souls.

In Trainspotting Renton is trying to escape a boring, systemized life, yet the people surrounding him seem to embody the thing he fears. I chose this shot because the camera is real close, you can almost feel his confusion while he’s standing in the midst of all these people. Perfect contrast. The entire opening piece of the video, until about 24 seconds in, consists of characters struggling with loneliness.

Brill shot here. That’s all.

This was a very tricky transition so I just want to highlight what I had to do here. In the first segment I get a pace going, and I noticed I couldn’t just abruptly stop that pace so I had to keep it going somehow in this transition. Ultimately, I came up with the plan to mash the two songs together with a bass note, so I took the remix of the second segment’s track, Never Hear Surf Music Again, then pick a very small sample of a bassline, then sync them with the ending of the first track, add a swoosh to make the transition more smoothly, and finally pitch the note a bit higher to make it fit the second track.

The split-screen shots are a tribute to Boyle’s signature split-screen segments, like the opening sequence in 127 Hours. You’ll also notice the different aspect ratio’s of his films; I chose not to alter these, because Boyle has shown appreciation for both the digital widescreen format with 28 Days Later and the anamorphic film format with Sunshine, and I didn’t want to alter his vision.

This was the first edit I made on the video. The rising choir during this bit of the audio track worked so well with the surface of the sun closing in on Capa. I also added a bit of screaming from Capa for extra sync between audio and video.

Fairly noticable aspect ratio change here, I tried to keep anamorphic and widescreen shots seperate. For a smoother transition I chose to crop the photo Aaron makes.

Love how they totally mis-high five here.

Then we’re gonna take too much.

What better shot to accompany this line than Renton’s rehab scene in Trainspotting?

There might be some complains that 127 Hours is over-represented in the video, but really Boyle uses all his skills in his latest film and after all the video is supposed to represent the filmmakers palette, so it makes sense for 127 Hours to get some more screen time.

I loved playing around with the audio in this segment, Free Blood’s track is amazing to work with and there’s so many rythmic abnormalities and cute little moments I did my best to make it my own. In both the opening and the ending of the segment I actually play two samples of the track on top of each other.

Cue Moby’s Porcelain, what a wonderful piece of music. It really suits the visual beauty of these shots. There’s also some big chunks of The Beach here, a film I really liked and it’s the first film that really shows Boyle’s more present style.

I only noticed how similar these shots from A Life Less Ordinary were while editing the video, but it’s symbolic really to the film’s story (without spoiling too much).

Stuff about my family or where I’m from?

Aww, remember when our inboxes only used up 1.75 MB? Anyway, I chose this shot to match Richard’s voice-over here, you see an e-mail from his mom and dad with the subject ‘Where are you?’.

None of that matters.

Pretty key line here from Richard in The Beach, escaping a present situation / life is something that almost every character from Boyle struggles with.

The video closes with I Am Kloot’s Avenue of Hope from Sunshine. The opening guitar notes from this track I matched with Kanada’s imminent death in the film, because there was something fascinating about the music sample being very small and intimate and the greatness of an inevitable death nearing Kanada. Of course the song’s lyrics represent a world that will never be, and I thought the reality of Kanada’s fate versus the fantasizing about an escape in the lyrics of the song was something very beautiful.

I thought of a shot that would represent Trainspotting best and came across this shot of Renton preparing a heroine shot, you can’t get any more straightforward than that.

(…) the days stretch out beneath the sun.

Richard contemplating his life on the island here, I thought that went really well with the lyric.

No one’s born, no one dies.

Bit of irony here, seeing as pretty much everyone dies in 28 Days Later.

(…) and we wait to see just what we will become.

Two matches here, first up is Salim dropping the money in the bathtub which is a direct result of his actions in Slumdog Millionaire and Richard crying over the result of his actions in The Beach.

Possibly one of the most devestating shots of all of Boyle’s movies… I wanted to make the title disappear when the light turns on on Corazon’s face, but to do that smoothly I had to fill in a minor fade, which you can see here. If you look closely you’ll notice what I did there but if you don’t know, you’ll hardly see it.

Beautiful poetic shot here from Slumdog Millionaire.

This last shot is also very iconic for Slumdog Millionaire, it’s a very sad shot to leave you with but it’s so beautiful.

And so ends another [the films of]. I’ll reveal that next month’s filmmaker recently had a lot of success with a movie about a certain social network… Can you guess who it is?