Short Film Research: The Boy Who Cheated Death

"The Boy who Cheated Death" is a five minute long short film encapsulating love and trauma. It is a very touching short film, in which a little boy tries to hide his mother from Death. Throughout the film, the boy and his mother embark on a game of hide and seek as different creatures, as Death hunts them down in every universe. The film ends with the boy, now older running towards his mother. With each second, the boy appears to be aging down until he is the little boy we met at the beginning of the film, where his mother picks him up and embraces him. 

A very frequent movement technique used in this film was a tracking shot. Since there was a lot of commotion and movement within the characters, tracking shots were used to keep watch over and follow them. The film took place across multiple settings. Each time a setting was changed, an establishing shot of that new environment was shot. This allowed the audience to know where in the world the characters are. There were an abundance of two shots and three shots as the whole film circled around a mother and her son being chased by Death, the predator. There was no dialogue in this film and was solely told through music and the feelings it evokes. 

The lighting fluctuated throughout the film. It was mostly somber the entire time, but with hints of different lighting and color depending on what environment the characters were in. There were a lot of action matches while the mother and the son were being chased through the different environments. There were also a lot of cutaways, as the camera would show the mother and son, jump to the predator, and back to the mother and son. This adds a whole new meaning to the position of the two protagonists.

Something I liked about this short film was the different representations of the mother, son, and predator by portraying them as animals in different habitats while also using a different animation style for each new setting. For example, the mother and son are two gazelles grazing the field when they are approached by a cobra trying to eat them. The animation style is staggered and looks almost like origami, until the mother and son escape Death again and the film transitions into a new scene. The next scene shows two polar bears cuddling while they are being glared at by a hungry snow leopard. The animation style now displays the animals as fuzzy and uses more of a 3D feeling. I really enjoyed this feature because it adds more personality to each scene.