“Timothy Higgins, picked last for the team, is the saddest boy in the world. Friendlessness, suburban complacency and prescription drugs have conspired against the youngster to make this his worst year yet. Musical Chairs and birthday cake can’t save him now-at his ninth birthday party, Timothy prepares for a show-stopping suicide”
There is an indefinable quality about set design; it is invisible to the audience and is often the reason for a film’s success.
Film-maker Jamie Travis of Modern Family Productions however constructs an entire world through the precise manipulation of colour, lighting, pattern and form in his short film The Saddest Boy in the World. The styling of the set is so pronounced that it becomes a character within itself, emphasising the importance of a set in telling a story.
Travis utilises straight lines and bold colour, contrasting innocence with desperation to create a surreal world that is somehow disturbing and adorable all at once. This short film is a very successful, Wes Anderson-esque satire of the middle-class suburban experience that is perhaps not such an implausible take on reality.
Check out the short film for yourself and make your own judgements.
Parish & Co 