Short Film 1 - 'Lovefield'

This Short Film is five minutes 29 seconds long.

This begins with the title ‘LOVEFIELD’; this is presented in white lettering over a long shot view of a corn field, this immediately gives the audience an overview to the films context. 

Starting here, and carrying out through the duration of the film, plays a piece of music which continuously changes form a low to high pitch, this may give the audience a range of thoughts varying from good to bad. For a little while, the camera keeps exploring the field to keep the audience thinking about what could be happening. 

Shortly after, the camera is zoomed into a jet black crow. A crow in films genuinely symbols a foreshadow to death. As the camera gets lost between the field, you begin to hear a constant ‘tooting’ sound which you believe is a cut off phone line, this begins to get louder. 

As soon as you see the phone, you then believe there is definitely someone in this field. This leaves the audience in great confusion and suspense.

Suddenly you begin to hear yells and shrieks from a young women that is in pain and tissues of red blood are presented to emphasize on the danger and seriousness of the situation.

The music rapidly becomes louder and the woman’s yells and all of a sudden, movements stop unexpectedly, when a man abruptly stabs a knife covered in blood into the ground, leaving the audience assume she is dead.

Immediately, we focus on 'the Killer' from a side view showing his tattoos. He has a tattoo of a skull on his right arm, the skull is another symbol that has been associated to death in this short film.

The camera work that is next used, assists the audience to assume that he is the killer as we watch the camera follow the man running back to his car in haste. At this point, the audience presume that he’s running away.
However, we get a close up of the man hastily trying to open the boot of the car, as all this is happening the crows cawing in the background becomes louder and more regular, reinforcing the representation of something bad occurring but also keeping the audience at unease.

The man carries a piece of cloth out of the boot and walks back to the lady who the audience believe is now dead. Meanwhile there are constant cuts between the crow and the man, in which at one point they match eye contact; this use of transition may be used to show that although the field is isolated there is still something out their watching him. The man returns to the woman and at this point the camera is now positioned at a low angle and the music becomes harsher with more piercing and violent strings, this may be used to reflect back to the brutal situation that the character now finds himself in. However, seconds later the audience is presented with the sound of a new born baby cry, and the audience may now be alarmed by the huge smile of the 'the Killers’ face as he carries the baby and cries out ‘it’s a boy’, the mother is then introduced in a extreme close-up emphasizing on her smile and happiness of the new born baby.

I loved the twist in this film, i thought it was well planned and the camera work and music worked well together to create the tension. Making the audience visually believe that something was going to happen when in fact the complete opposite occurred. 

I believe this video is very conventional and follows many of the conventions used in short films. for example, in this film there is a very minimal use of dialogue. By using little dialogue it is meant that the music has to create the mood of the film. Another convention used in this short film is the use of minimal characters. This means that within the duration of the film the characters have to become well known to the audience and as a result short films cant use many characters or the story will just be all over the place and feel incomplete.