Love Field ED

Lovefield

The short film love field follows a linear narrative and the director uses this to his advantage, I believe the director was going along the theme of misconception and has used thriller/horror convention throughout his narrative to achieve this. The film begins with a shot of an empty field with long hay/barley in it, a creepy non-diegetic soundtrack begins to play as the title sequence appears on the screen letter by letter but very slowly, this points the audience in to thinking this is going to be a horror/thriller film, however no other information has been revealed yet. Going by todorovs theory this would be classed as the equilibrium everything is as it should be however the eary non-diegetic music puts doubt in the audiences mind. After a few jump cuts changing the angle of the camera in the field the pans stops on a old squeaky sign post swinging in the wind, a raven is seen above the sign, this whole scene has connotations that something bad is going to happen, the squeaky sign post is a sound commonly heard in horror films when suspense is being built. And Ravens have connotations of death. The raven is seen on and off in the next few shots but the pace of editing is slowed right down, making the audience believe the raven has big involvement in the narrative or is pointing towards something.

In the next few scenes shots of the field are seen, a pan down the hay reveals the diegetic sound of a phone beeping as if a call has been ended or denied, this builds a sense of enigma for the audience as questions are started to be asked why is the phone in this field and why is it ringing? This combined with the earlier imagery and sound makes the audience think the worst. As the camera pans round more loose money the phone and a bloody pair of women’s underwear all point the audience into thinking the narrative is taking a morbid turn. A man is the revealed a farmer with a skull tattoo goes over to his truck and pulls out a red blanket, still the narrative is pointing towards this being a horror as the non-diegetic soundtrack is beginning to reach its climax, only once the man reaches out with the blanket and picks up a baby is it revealed that the non-diegetic music was contrapuntal and its aim was misconception, to really impact the ending and make it hit a lot harder that movie producers can use these conventions to guide audiences into thinking the narrative is going one way and at the last minute can change this. The shot reverse shot of the raven and the man as the music nearly reaches its climax is as very powerful shot as they are both in silence with their mouths open, a very nice graphic matches, this is when the suspense is at its highest right before the baby and mother are revealed, all enigma I answered once the diegetic sound of a baby crying is introduced.