Love Field- Analysis

Love Field

-Media Language

-Genre

-Audience

-Representation

-Narrative

Love field is a short film directed by Mathieu Ratthe with a hybrid genre including thriller/romance, this is due to the many thriller conventions you can observe, including many semantic codes such as: the black crow connoting death. The way the film maker generates the hybrid genre is extremely intelligent and creates immense surprise response from spectators. Watching this short film inspires me to be original and not always only use one genre and to explore with different genres combined. 

This film, like many other stereotypical thrillers heavily stimulate the spectator’s moods giving them a high level of anticipation, uncertainty, surprise and anxiety. Also the convention of a plot twist which you find in both thrillers and short films is used at the end. The film received good reviews and won best short film at the Tremblant film festival in 2007. The target audience for this would be people are the age of 12 plus this is due to its slight use of blood and the hinting of a murder at the start; also due to it being a short film you would expect mainly adults to take an interest and watch it because adults are the most likely age bracket to have an interest in short films.

The film opens with the title ‘Love Field’. The way it is presented is very simply shown with white lettering over a long-shot of a dried cornfield, this is also the establishing shot for when the titles fade out to show the audience where the film is set, on location in a cornfield. Incidental non- diegetic soundtrack plays through which varies from slow and low pitched sound too fast and high pitched depending on the scene; this incidental soundtrack is used to surround and compliment the action taking place and to build up tension, for example: the sudden crescendo of non-diegetic soundtrack increases when the bloody knife is stabbed into the ground to provoke the audiences to a state of surprise and tension compared to when the gentle soundtrack is used at the end once the baby is born to show happiness and peace. Diegetic sound is also used for example with the swinging sign at the start with the crow sitting on top to give off an eerie feeling and then again with the crows squawking throughout connoting typical thriller conventions. These iconic sound effects are used to make spectators feel spooked.

A close-up of the crow is used to foreshadow death and therefore gives the impression to spectators that something horrid is going to happen. As the camera pans throughout the field the diegetic sound of a mobile phone becomes more prominent. Eventually the camera comes across an abandoned phone which is shot using a close-up, this heightens the tension as you begin to wonder why there is a phone randomly abandoned in a field. Suddenly we hear crying and shrieks of a woman to then see a hand clutching the dried corn, it is clear the woman is in pain due to the shrieking. We then see a bloody rag which generates enigma codes, as we can begin to wonder if the lady is being murdered. The camera continues to pan until we see what we presume is the lady’s foot which is bloody, bare and is clenching to show the pain she is experiencing. A close-up of the foot becomes steady and suddenly the foot stops moving and the incidental non-diegetic soundtrack crescendos and becomes high pitched to then suddenly stop along with the stopping of the foot, making the soundtrack and action codes to be parallel. A knife abruptly slams into the ground covered in blood leaving the spectators questioning whether or not she is dead.

A tilt is then used to show the ‘killer’ which seems to look like a hillbilly with the camera specifically focusing on this skull and cross bone tattoo giving spectators a deeper impression of him as a murderer, using syntactic codes of a typical murderer character in the narrative, this can be evidenced through Rick Altman’s theory of film genres. Then a long-shot of him in the field alone is used to show the isolation of the location and setting. We then notice the camera tracking the man running to his car, this makes us as spectators presume he is running away from crime scene.

Throughout this short film the camera constantly cuts back to a close-up of the crow, this is called cross-cutting. This is to use a crow as iconography as it foreshadows death positioning the spectator into a deeper belief that a murder has just took place. Once the man gets to his car, he rummages through the boot of his car open, during this scene the diegetic squawking sound of the crow is still heard to reinforce the idea of murderer and to make spectators feel confused and tense.  The man grabs a bin bag, however then decides against this. Shot-reverse-shot is then used between the man and the crow, whilst they look at each other intensely, creating continuity editing. The man then grabs a piece of pink cloth and makes his way back to the crime scene. As spectators we guess that he is carrying these items because he is going to clear up the evidence.

As the man is back where he started in the same setting, a POV shot is used to put us into the lady’s perspective as if he were covering us up, suddenly the non-diegetic soundtrack gradually becomes more of an abrupt tone. Until we are revealed with the diegetic sound of a baby crying and spectators then notice that the woman had given birth, meaning the man had helped deliver the baby. However, before the reveal it cut to the crow again, connoting death, which makes spectators worry for the baby and mother, as they are not in the typical sterile environment to give birth. The mother is introduced to spectators through a close-up to emphasise the happiness and relief she is feeling. The change in the non-diegetic soundtrack before we realise the true story, makes us as spectators extremely confused and surprised, however, this generates emotions of relief for the mother making us become more connected to the man, making him a protagonist, rather than an antagonist according to typical syntactic codes of characters by Rick Altman.

You can notice the lighting changes from a distinctive dull colouration from a high-key lighted shot reinforcing the happy and proud moment of the mother and father. 

The shift in genre also shifts spectator’s moods through the use of non-diegetic soundtrack and visual imagery that we do not associate with thrillers. The frequent use of thriller iconography made us believe it to be a thriller, however, the intelligent shift represents Love Field with originality and more likely to stick out in all short films as it uses a hybrid of genres. 

Watching this short film inspires me to be original and use the intense plot twist into my own short film, however experimenting with two different genres, for example: tragedy comedy. It teaches me to not only use one genre and to explore with different genres combined, creating a hybrid themed narrative.