This film analysis summarizes the short film "Lovefield" directed by Mathieu Ratthe in 2009. Some key points: 1) The film uses a simple title but beautiful cinematography to set an ominous tone despite the word "love" in the title. 2) A focusing black raven seen throughout signifies something sinister is happening. 3) Clean and fast editing builds suspense without dialogue in the isolated rural setting. 4) Panning camera shots and long shots create dramatic tension through the empty fields. 5) Elements like the raven and bloodied cloth establish horror conventions but the ending subverts expectations.

1. A Textual Analysis of… “Lovefield” By Kym Tran

3. Titles… The title of this film is shown in a pretty basic way but with beautiful cinematography, matching what the word of the title is, “field”. We can see a use of pathetic fallacy during the title of the film, which leads us to believe there is something more sinister about his film rather than romantic like the word “love” implies in the title.

4. Framing… Throughout the majority of the film, the black raven we can see tends to be in the centre of the frame, when it is not, it Is being looked at by the suspicious man. The raven seem to signify something bad is happening, its cawing and focus within frames shows is it’s importance. Here we see the man looking at the raven, but the man himself is not in focus. The surrounding features within this frame are the sign where the raven is perched and the field surrounding them, it makes the scene feel eerie, because apart from the raven and sign everything else is not in focus.

6. Mise en scene and location … This film is set among remote corn fields with a dusty side road running through it. I think this helps to amplify the suspense in the film because we are focusing on the nature surrounding the people. The raven, the corn, the flattened beds of corn field where somebody is laying down although we cannot see who they are until the end. Here we see the man going back to his car searching for something. He is next to a dusty road, and there is nothing to see for miles except more field, sky, hills and trees. They are in an isolated location, which helps build the thrilling aspect and tension of the film.

7. Sound… The sound we hear of the single cawing raven adds eeriness to the scenes. It is the loudest sound throughout the film and we can see that the bird makes the man in the film nervous. Almost as if the birds loud echoing sound will give away what the man is doing to anyone who is within a close enough distance to hear the animal. It adds the element of horror as it is very often a sound used in dark films, a screeching caw signifying something bad is going to happen.

8. Script and Audience… There is no dialogue in this film The typical audience for a film like this would be lovers of horror and tension, although we realise at the end that in fact horror is not the actual genre of the film. There isn’t a narrative script for this film, I don’t think the cawing eerie raven cawing counts, I think the brilliance of this film is that it hasn’t got any dialogue, the diegetic sounds tell the story for us and build up a high suspense.

9. Camera angle, Movement and Position… The film has an awful lot of clever panning and long shots. For instance the screen grab we see here is one of the phone laying in the field. The camera pans slowly down from the side of the dusty road, through the field and down to the phone, then following onto to the blood covered cloth and then a tensing foot. This dramatically adds a lot of suspense, it scares us into thinking the worst. The long shot of the fields and for the establishing shots is a beautiful piece of cinematography.

10. Genre Specific Elements; Codes and Conventions… This film totally goes against the conventions of a typical horror towards the ending, but during it has all of the elements we would expect to find in one. The raven, representing a dark and mysterious matter going on within the silence of the film, the bloody cloth laying in the field, these are all typical things associated with a horror type genre.

11. Camera and Narrative… Because this is a silent film, the camera tells the story for us. Here we see a shot of the camera looking up at the man, this gives the audience an impression of he looks nervous, scared even, maybe as if he has done something he regrets, it shows that in the story, he is the superior person. We do not know if he is responsible for the situation but he certainly acts like it and whoever or whatever he is looking down at, must be on the ground for a reason.