Scene Analysis

Lost In Translation

3587, Hyeonjin

Scene overview

I chose the last 2 scenes, scene 117, and 118 (01:33:48-01:35:55, 2mins and 7secs). In these scenes, the male protagonist finds the female protagonist on his way to go back to his country, and he stops his car and goes to see female protagonist for a while and then, keeps going his way behind the scenery of Tokyo.

Scene Analysis

Mise-en-scene

Sets of these scenes are on the street for scene 117, and on the road for scene 118. These two sets tell us that female protagonist still stay on the street, in Tokyo, and male protagonist is on the road to leave Tokyo. And Sofia Coppola, the director of this movie, used dark tone of colour, according to lecture file of AIT’s introduction to cinema class, it says it is grey colour but, I would like to say it is dark blue which is one of director’s favourite colours, to express two protagonists’ loneliness and also the sets also lonely place for them because of different culture and language.

Also, Sofia used natural light to keep her dark tone of colour and natural mood of these scenes. And about actor’s performance and costume, male protagonist wear a suit and female protagonist wear casual style of cloth because this two types of fashion style show that different social position between two protagonist so that although they are love each other, there is wall they have to brake down to be together besides, despite they are being separate each other in these scenes, they smiled and they do not act like they are sad through this two protagonists’ act, we can guess some hopeful future between them the director does not show us clean ending story though.

About sound, there is only one diegetic sound is used in these two scenes, male protagonist said ‘alright.’ When he gets on his car again, and except for this diegetic sound, there is only one non-diegetic sound is used as background music, ‘just like honey’ by ‘Jesus And Mary Chain’ and again, from this music’s calm and peaceful mood and lovely lyrics, although some people say that their music is psychic and they had some violent history about some of their performances, we can guess that something hopeful future between two protagonists.

Cinematography and editing

Shot

In these 2 scenes, the most mused 3 shots are Close-up, medium shot, and long-shot but I would like to focus on medium shot because I think medium shots in these scenes are used in uncommon way of its normal purpose. I learned that long-shot is used to describe actor and environment around actor and close-up is used to show some specific description such as actor’s emotion but, in these scenes, I can see both functions in medium shot I think it is because of that since the two protagonists are separating each other, Sofia Coppola may need some environment around protagonists in a dynamic shot but, she also need to catch protagonists’ emotional acting in a same time to express that although they are separating, they still can smile each other because they know some good future will wait for them.

Movement

About movement in these scenes, I think there are two movements were used Hand-held and panning also, these two movements are shown at the same time in scene 118 when the road to go back to male protagonist’s country was shown. The reason why these two movements were used is that we can know protagonist is reminding about time he has spent in Tokyo with panning and since he left female protagonist in Tokyo, he misses her but he and she still have their own legal family so, it is not so easy for them to focus on only their love. Through panning and hand-held, we can see these kinds of reminding and protagonist’s unstable mind.

Angle

n/a

Depth of field

We can see several times of using about shallow focus in these scenes easily because main object of these scenes are those two protagonist so that focusing on them make audience’s attraction to them easily and also, by using shallow focus, director can say something to audience that two protagonists are isolated from their environment, Tokyo, so they are lonely.

Editing

For the record, I think I should say that there is no editing in these scenes but I would like to say that there are two editing skills in scene 118, Long-take and montage but half of them each. During I observe scene 118 over and over again, I found that although shots are changed irregularly but it is hard to find that unless keep watching this scene several times like me. In my opinion, since this scene is expression about male protagonist’s reminding of life in Tokyo he has had, these irregular changing of shots, just like two mixed editing skill long-take and montage, represent eye blinking when people remind something so that during watching shots, audience can be familiar with male protagonist’s mind.

Deconstructed meaning

When I learned about this movie in the class, teacher told me that Sofia Coppola, the director of this movie, said there is no certain ending story and it depends on audience’s imagination. That is the reason why I chose these two scenes to analyse because I thought that I can know a bit more if I analyse these ending scenes and I guess it works.

As I analysed above, all the deconstructed meaning of each parts are going to get hopeful future between two protagonists such as actor’s performance, shots etc. Besides, not only happy ending of this movie’s story, but also I learn something about life from analysing these scenes which is that no matter where people are in, and what kind of different culture people have, isolation from the society is happened to them so, all people are lonely but, like these two protagonists, there is always hope we called love. That’s what I learned and understood from this analysing.

Bibliography

Week1 slide.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Week2 slide.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Week3 slide.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Week4 slide.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Week6 analyse not summarise.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Script-lost in translation.pdf (http://med1915all.blogspot.com)

Information of Jesus and mary chain (http://www.naver.com)

Picture of Jesus and mary chain (http://images.google.com)