Friday, 18 September 2015

Ben Mongardini - Lovefield Narrative

Lovefield is a short film that keeps its genre and theme of the diegesis up in the air right until the end with large use of enigma and restricted narrative.
Beginning with the title shot, it introduces the setting of the wheat field in an overcast but bright natural light. The title fades in, starting with the center letters in a very stylistic way in a crane or jib shot downwards. The theme would is assumed right to perhaps be a romance or a coming together, something very jovial with drama that would end up bringing everyone closer. This can be taken from the wide open field of wheat, a popular setting in the romantic genre. This is called a syntactic code, where the narrative or theme convention helps to define genre. This bright beginning is the Equilibrium, as said by Todorov’s theory, or the Ordinary World by Chris Vogler. Nothing has happened yet as the Plot is only getting started. The camera moves down into wheat field as violin plays very long and high pitch notes. A such a sound from a violin (or similar stringed instrument) is considered ominous and unsettling. This subtle Restricted Narrative tells the audience that something bad will be happening as shown by Rick Altman’s Semantic Codes. Visual or audio cues that carry extra meaning for the audience are Semantic codes; like the violin, we have been conditioned to expect the worst after hearing such a sound. This is Restricted Narrative because there is little information to go on, all which creates Enigma. However, while there is no dialogue or actors to gather information from, the Non-Diegetic Soundtrack still provides some information about what may follow in the plot.


After several fades, transitioning from one shot of the field to a new angle or movement, a squeaky American country town sign is revealed with a raven resting atop it. This is even more of Altman’s Semantic codes with the loud, squawking raven, often symbolic of death and ill omens. One of Roland Barthes’ Narrative codes is ‘Symbolism’ as in ‘a thing that represents or stands for something else’. The raven would unsettle the audience, telling them that trouble is ahead. And trouble is manifested as a repeating dial up tone, specifically one of an open phone line. This creates suspense and enigma which is only fortified once the phone is shown resting atop flattened wheat.
As a woman is heard screaming and gasping in pain, a plot can be made sense of that follows Todorov’s theory. Equilibrium has everything happy, healthy and bright in a very comfortable position, as is typically the case. The disruption is as of yet unknown, only its consequence upon the woman is known. The conflict, resolution and new equilibrium are yet to come. As the camera moves gingerly over (presumably) the woman’s purse, money and underwear, her foot moves into frame. This creates enigma which raises many questions. “Who is she?”, “Why is she lying down?” “Why is she in pain?”. Suspense builds and builds more and more, but it is broken once her foot stops moving and a large bloodied hand stabs a knife into the ground. This shock is only amplified the silence in the non-diegetic soundtrack that preceded this.


This is used as the great time to introduce the antagonist to the audience. The bloodied, knife wielding man looks down on his victim, raven squawking hard to really thrust the symbolism in the audience’s face. From the screaming girl stopping all movements and sounds to the bloody working man, it is implied the woman has been killed. There is no enigma here, it was a knife, it was the man looking down in shock at her. This creates shock and suspense in the sudden turn of events. Our new antagonist has blocked the protagonist (woman) as is said by Vladimir Propp’s morphology theory (Antagonist who seeks to block the protagonist). It’s here that Todorov’s conflict starts or, in Chris Vogler’s Hero’s Journey theory, the ordeal. The man is met with a corpse, a corpse he must hide the evidence of. It becomes a mad dash as the non-diegetic soundtrack crescendos into high gear. He starts running frantically out of the field. He heads towards his towards his car boot. Roland Barthes’ action code helps the audience to predict the plot with what actions will take place. The audience knows that the woman died, and from the man’s outdoor farmer costume, he would keep tools in his car. By assuming this, the audience can predict that he is going to grab a shovel or anything to get rid of his victim. Predicting this action builds suspense. “Is he going to do it?” “Will he get caught?”.


All this time, both semantic and syntactic codes are being fired towards a horror thriller. The blood, the screaming and the knife connote horror and thriller in the semantic code. If it went on to show a man or woman wearing a trench coat and a fedora (Noir Detective), it could become a murder mystery. The dead woman, the panicking man and the raven also connote thriller and horror, but also a murder mystery or slasher film with syntactic codes.
During this  scene, the raven has been squawking uncontrollably underneath the non-diegetic soundtrack. Looking the iconography of raven and death, it makes sense to emphasise it during this scene. This done by the raven squawking far more often, frequent cuts back to the raven breaking up the action from the man and lastly by pausing the action altogether by moving the raven onto the car. The raven is discovered when the raven bangs his beak on the roof of the car, stopping the man in his search. At the same time, the non-diegetic soundtrack diminuendos to nothing, so the audience is able to hear the raven. It then crescendos again, but it does not continue the suspense build up the same way as before. Instead, it becomes a standoff that builds suspense by crescendoing and diminuendoing while both the raven and the man do nearly nothing but stare at each other. The raven knows what the man has done. This is shown by the man’s fear and shock. The raven is a witness, the raven is the guilt trip that keeps building suspense. All this suspense wouldn’t be very effective if the plot didn’t have elements of a restricted narrative. We know a woman was murdered, but why? Was this a random attack, or was it premeditated? Parts of the story are being kept from the audience, keeping them interested. For the plot to be a restricted narrative, the audience must know less or same amount of information as the  characters.


Tensions and suspense builds. The raven still watching as the man grabs a blanket, decisively walks to the body and with a last look at the scene of the crime, he proceeds to cover the camera with the blanket. This POV shot shows part of what he doing to the woman, but not much. More restricted narrative creating more enigma and more suspense. The audience wants to know what is happening. There is break just as the man covers the camera. A break of speculation where the soundtrack diminuendos and the raven is silent, despite the open beak shown in this MCU. But the cut back changes everything. The lighting, which had been grey and macabre, is now bright and shining with vibrant colours. The man, instead of a worried and fearful expression, is smiling. And then a newborn baby moves into frame, wrapped in the blanket. All the pieces of information given in the plot now makes sense in the story. The enigma is solved, Todorov’s resolution is reached and Vogler’s ordeal is over. Throughout the film, all the semantic and syntactic codes denote its genre as a horror or thriller. With the blood, screaming, knife, raven, panicked and bloody man and the implied death, there is an immeasurable amount of information that leads the audience down a rocky path of enigma and suspense. But all this was worth the breath out of relief they were holding onto from the start.

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