L change the world analyses

L change the world is a Japanese film based after the events of the 2 films that came before it Death note and Death note 2: The last name, both in the thriller genre among other things. A short overview of this film is that after catching Kira, the detective L has only 23 days left to live due to him writing his name and fate in the death note, he uses these last days to solve all his existing cases and take on one final case involving a group of bio-chemical terrorists and the daughter of the professor who created the only existing antidote.

Sound

One of the first things that can be noticed in this film is the use of music as there is a low ambient background noise that is thumping, possibly to create the idea of a heart beat, also a low metallic sound that adds more of a cold feel to it, this music is often used when the protagonist L is doing something, this is a good use of music as it seems to fit the character perfectly as he is very anti-social and distant from people seeing as he has never actually grown up along side anyone and it makes him hard to communicate with, the music also has a mysterious feel which as said goes with L as not much is known about him, it is only at the start of this film that the viewer actually learns his last name so after 2, 2 hour long films does make him quite a mysterious character.
Towards the start a town in Thailand is destroyed by a bomb explosion, as the people look up at the quickly descending object the sound of possibly a cello or violin begins to grow louder to build tension to the inevitable explosion. Towards the end L chases a plain in a van as he tries to get on the plain to stop the antagonists, here the music picks up speed, drums play in a quick regular rhythm and cello’s and violins play and the single notes get extended as he gets closer to getting in the plain. Overall for the sound it all matches perfectly with what’s going on in the film with all the music being ambient and such, but the soundtrack is actually used quite sparingly through the film.
The dialogue of the characters is also quite well done due to two things, one being that it is well written to begin with because the actors say their lines very convincingly and sincerely. The actor who plays L (Kenichi Matsuyama) says all his lines in a way that makes him seem as though he’s constantly deep in thought and analysing everything that’s going on around him, making him seem distant and almost in human though complaint that is to be said about this is that when he speaks languages other than Japanese such as English and French his voice seems to seem distorted and hard to understand, this also destroys the viewers immersion in the film world as it becomes blatantly obvious that the actor can’t actually speak the language and is doing a fairly bad job of mimicking the languages.

Camera

In the first scene L is watching one of his agents perform an operation for him on a laptop, the footage is made to look as though it was created on a cheap kind of handheld camera as the frame is rather shaky and the image quality is poor. Also the agent is talking to the camera behind the camera probably to imply that this is just like a home video with the occasional close up, wobbly handling and the focus slightly going blurry. As this is going on shots of L watching this come up then goes back to what’s on screen, but in these shots the viewer isn’t actually shown the face of L which in itself is good for building tension if someone has come to this film without knowledge of the prior two in the series. The camera work through most of the film is quite standard with regular things such as panning, crane shots, tilt shots. At one point towards the end of the movie the tracking shot is used for the third time but in this scene there L is in a van chasing a plain that is about to take off here he jumps onto a set of stairs to get onto the plain. As he’s in the van the camera is level with his face but as he climbs up the steps the camera seems to show him from a low angle to show two things, 1 that he is empowered or that he is doing a selfless if not heroic act, much like in films that contain super heroes. 2 is that as he’s scaling the steps it shows how high up he is and that if he misses the jump onto the plain, when he falls it is almost certain the fall would be fatal.

Mise en scene

The film is centred in Japan and for the first half is specifically set in Tokyo which is a good choice of location as its very built up and the capital of Japan so anyone watching it will be able to recognise where its taking place. Props vary from stuffed bear that the girl called Maki Nakaido (played by Mayuko Fukuda) that contains a syringe with a fake antidote to the deadly virus also the van that L drives around in is disguised as an ice cream/cake truck.
The costumes are quite straight forward as the school girl Maki wears a girl’s school uniform and the FBI agent Hideaki Suruga (played by Kiyotaka Nanbara) wears a black suit with a collared shirt and tie. L though stands out as he is the greatest detective in the world he actually wears unassuming clothes as he wears a plain white long sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans, his hair is quite long, jet black and wild looking making it seem unkempt, this gives the idea that he doesn’t care much for his exterior, in terms of body language again everybody plays there parts as they should and again L stands out because he does not particularly show much emotion through the film at all also he stands and walks around with his back hunched over, he also has an odd way of sitting because unlike everybody else who sits normally he appears to crouch down with his legs right by his chest almost in a foetal position.
The lighting and colour through the entire film is high-key as everything looks natural and nothing in the frame looks as though its gradient doesn’t fit in with everything else in the film world.

Editing

The pace of the movie is quite slow at the start as nothing much happens to begin with so naturally each scene has long extended scenes to begin with but as the film goes on the speed of each edit picks up and evidently makes the pace of the film go quicker. Often in an action sequence the camera will keep swapping between the people as they talk and when actions are performed in close ups, fast editing such as this could make even the most boring conversations seem interesting, when there doesn’t seem to be much going on though the shot will be from further away to get everybody in the frame and the amount of time the frame stays like this will be extended. Through the entire film there are about two bits of montage, one being early on in the film as L goes through all his case files solving all his crimes and the second being when the professor is trying to create a new antidote for the deadly virus, in this montage it has the camera constantly panning right over the experiments the professor is performing with different types of equipment, and every time the image changes here it is through a dissolve.

Things to take away from this

Some things that were used in this thriller that we could use when creating our project is that we should make the character seem odd but interesting in just his appearance other than him being like everyone else as our project is only 2 minutes long also, to further illustrate a character that is different would be to use low-key lighting to make them stand out. A good idea for the music is that it could keep the same beat throughout the project but as action takes place increase the tempo and maybe bring in other instruments to increase the effect and impact it has on someone watching, One last thing is to not go over board with the amount of props that should be used in the film but instead just have a few that play essential roles or have actual purposes to what’s going on instead of some random stuff that happens to be in the background.