Scene Analysis

Sullivan’s Travels

John Sullivan and the girl are going out to learn what it is like to be poor and have to live off of what they have. Sullivan is out to do this so he can make a movie. Although this movie is during the great depression Sullivan is a wealthy filmmaker who turns his life upside down when he goes “undercover” and is “poor” so he can make a movie out of it. The scene of them jumping on to the train and going on an undercover expedition shows how some people really had to live during the great depression and that to get somewhere they had to use a cargo train to travel where they wanted to go. The theme of this scene is for the main characters to set out on their journey to develop a plan for the movie Sullivan wants to make, but also to discover what it was like for some people during the depression. They don’t have it as good as Sullivan and now he is going to find that out first hand by giving up his film making life to go undercover to help him make a movie. Sullivan has a friend with him that is going to help him on this journey so he won’t have to face this hard time alone. There is a variety of uses of cinematography, they shoe close ups of the characters and they also eye-level shots when they are watching them trying to jump on the train. The camera pans as the train is moving and Sullivan and the girl are trying to find a place to hop on the train, its almost as if the camera is on each car of the train as it passes them you can see their face. They way they show their faces as the train is passing also has to do with the editing.
The editing in this scene is somewhat hard to tell what is cut because everything in the scene flows, it is “invisible” cutting because the editing is not jumping or confusing. The only scene that the editing would be jumping is the train scene because they have to jump from car to car so to speak to catch their faces as the train is passing and they are looking for a car to jump in. The shot of them