Love Is Blind from Dan Hodgson on Vimeo.
A repost just in time for Valentine’s Day!
I came across this film totally on accident on a website for an Oregon business accelerator. It won and was nominated for a bunch of awards, including receiving a nomination at the Cannes Film Festival and BIFA, winning the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival for Best Narrative Short, receiving the grand prize at the Fenêtres Sur Courts, and more. Not knowing all this, for the first forty or so seconds I’m thinking, wait, what on earth am I watching? Then you get a snippet of the first plot point: the husband is deaf. Ah, so there will be a story. It’s a classic will-they-get-caught setup for suspense. One thing I want to point out before getting too in the weeds is that I think this film highlights why diversity – in filmmakers, actors, writers, interviewees and so on – is essential for capturing new and innovative stories. How often do you see a film where a main character is deaf? Where they’re using sign language? And it’s not an aside either, not just included for the sake of being diverse; it’s what pulls the whole plot together.
In addition to being a captivating (and funny) story, there’s a lot of great things going on here in terms of composition. Even in the first twenty-five seconds of this film, there at least a dozen different kinds of shots. It opens with a whip pan which throws you right into the rush of events. Then there’s a close-up, an over-the-should point of view shot, two seconds later there’s a cutaway, more over-the-shoulder….you get it. There’s a plethora of examples of matched action, like at nineteen seconds where the guy starts to remove the girl’s shirt and then we cut to a medium shot where the shirt’s halfway off. Another example is at twenty-eight seconds where she jumps into his arms. The fast pace of the sequence works to make the viewer feel like they’re part of the, well, action.
At fifty seconds, the filmmakers use a series of cutaways to show the husband coming home that reveal part – but not all – of what the main conflict in the story’s going to be. Every few seconds it seems like there’s a new plot point that introduces a new unanswered question. At 1:13 the camera moves down to reveal a barrette, and the viewer’s asking, “are those two going to get caught?” or, “how’s the other guy going to slip out?” This is achieved in part with parallel editing, where you see the story as it unfolds for each character. The film rides on the witness point during each shot, and the viewer is jostled between the three. Part of the film’s brilliance is that I found myself rooting for all of the characters at one point or another. I think the ending is fabulous, and I hope you enjoy it, too (but I don’t want to spoil it). By the way, the director, Dan Hodgson, has some other videos that I haven’t checked out yet (but plan to soon). You can find them on his Vimeo.
-Ashley Baker