'Industrial Love Dwarf Number 7' short film analysis

LINK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A11133893

'Industrial Love Dwarf Number 7' is a short comedy film about a woman who discovers that dwarfs have the ability to make people fall in and out of love. It was directed by the company Rong.

The film's title card is in black and white, reminiscent of a film noir. The french style music also helps to support this impression. The opening shot is of a woman who is drinking a cup of coffee. Although it is mid shot, the audience is aware that she is in a cafe, due the diegetic background noises of people chatting and crockery being used. This already has set the location of the film in a simple shot which efficient, as it helps to save time and to develop plot faster.

The protaganist comes to greet her friend and begins to tell her her story. 'Over The Shoulder' shots are used through out their conversation, giving the impression that the audience is part of the coversation or a P.O.V shot. The main character's voice soon transfer to a voice over and jump cuts are used to show events from the past. This is for the audience to have a better understanding of the narrative. The next shot is another mid shot of her bedroom, in which the story begins. However, no establishing shots are used to set location, only mid shots. This could be due to the fact that these shots would of been time consuming for the film. There is also some use of close ups at moments that are key to the plot e.g the protaganist discovering about the dwarf for the first time. There is a lot of jump cuts throughout the film especially the montage of people falling out of love and slapping each other, showing how many people have been affected in a short amount of time. Towards the end, when the protagnist is leaving, there is a two shot, however both characters are only half seen from that angle, could it represent that they both have something to hide? The last shot of the film is again 'Over the shoulder' but zooms out to reveal that a dwarf had been opereating the 'friend' the whole time. It ends as a freezeframe leaving the audience with an open ending; Is the protagnist safe and what happend to her friend?

Editing in the film was mostly jump cuts, however, the sequence where she interagates the dwarf, frequeunt use of fade out shows that a large amount of time has gone by. During this time, the lighting dramatically changes to only a bright light shining on the characters face, leaving their bodies and surroundings in darkness. Not only does this creates mystery but is also a convention in crime films. However, for the rest of the film, lightning is constistnet; bright and light/ normal indoor lighting. The sound effects are often to accopmany actions, often for comedic effects (i.e; sinister music plays but it is revealed to be a man's ringtone)and there is no soundtrack present through out the film.

The characters mainly wear black/grey/white, nothing to make them worth standing out. Although, the dwarf wears red, which can easily symbolise love and romance but in this case can also represent evil and danger. Computer graphics where also used in parts e.g the newspaper spinning which temparorily distorts the audience and is another convention of progressing a plot, however this was done intentionally.