Negative Space is a 2017 animated short film (5 1/2 minutes) directed by Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter.
It's an adaptation of a poem
by Ron Koertge. A boy's father teaches him how to pack a suitcase correctly, how to keep everything neat and organized and avoid empty spaces. The boy considers that while other fathers and sons bonded over more masculine pastimes like sports or cars, he and his dad bonded over luggage. Finally, years later the boy's father dies, and the boy, now a grown man, has an unexpected reaction at the funeral.
Tropes:
- Animated Adaptation: Of a poem by Ron Koertge, which is read in its entirety over the course of the cartoon.
- Bait-and-Switch: The father has gone on a business trip of some sort. The shot shows a tropical beach at sunset. Then the next cut reveals that it's really a shot of the wallpaper of the father's laptop, which is sitting in what looks like a rather dingy hotel room in a city.
- Black Comedy: The last line, as the now grown son looks at his father in a coffin, is both sad and mordantly funny."Look at all that wasted space."
- Character Narrator: A son remembering how he and his father bonded over luggage.
- Flashback: Several flashbacks of the father teaching his son the best way to pack a suitcase.
- Framing Device: A man taking a trip thinks back to his father and how his father taught him to pack. Eventually it's revealed that he's going to his father's funeral.
- Match Cut: A surreal match cut goes from the son driving his car down the road to a closeup of a zipper zipping up a suitcase—except that the zipper is still the son's car, driving along the top of the suitcase.
- Serious Business: The correct way to pack a suitcase is, apparently, very important.
- Stop Motion: Done in a 3-D stop motion style, with puppets that have over-sized heads.
