Student name: Siyu Gong
Date of post: 27/08/2015
Topic and relevant lecture week: annotate image & social semiotics analysis, week 5 lecture
Contextual information :
Title: Hiroshima mon amour
Type: Romantic comedy-drama film
Directed by: Alain Resnais
Year of creation: 1959
Collection/source: one frames in the movie
Technique: Filming
Style: Realism
Image URL / origin: http://dailybruin.com/2014/10/16/hiroshima-mon-amour-still-a-classic-innovative-film/
Content: Two people in the “Hiroshima Mon Amour” – one a French movie actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and the other a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) – embroiled in a steamy affair in a Hiroshima still reeling from the atom bomb.
This screen shows a exotic couple, the man put his lover’s face in his hand and look at her tenderly. However, the women showed a sadness expression on her face.
Analysis using visual social semiotics
Representational-Narrative:
This image is telling a story, there have something happening between this two characters, so it is Narrative. Moreover, the man put his lover’s face in his hand and look at her, so it belong Transactive. There also have reaction on the image, it shown by their eyes line.
Representational- Conceptual:
- Conceptual structures – more generalized, stable,
timeless. Define this image through iconography and visual emphasis. For example, the lighting is irradiated with natural light on two protagonists’ face, the man put his lover’s face in his hand and look at her, conventionally associate with something and show the black and white screen. - classification structure- typically symmetrically distributed
Interactive meaning- Contact:
Demands: The characters did not make a symbolic demand on viewer, the man is looking at the woman and the woman is looking out of the screen.
Interactive meaning- Distance:
Close up (head and shoulders or less), the characters touch each other.
Interactive meaning- Point of view:
The viewer perspective of the screen is horizontal angle.
The man’s view is oblique angle, because he is looking at the woman
Compositional- Modality:
This image shows a high natural modality.
Theories of Visual Communication 