The Answers - Character Analysis

The Answers is an award-winning short film that plays with the idea of death and the afterlife. The film's perception on the afterlife is that you get to ask all the questions you've had about your life and get answers to them. There is no clear marking as to whether they go to heaven/hell. However, our film also is going to toy with the idea of finding out what happened to you. In our film, we have the character finding out when and how they died, as well as being able to go to a place that is most significant to them, and then a message from someone that knew them. This allows us to get an insight into their character, and this film does the same thing.

This film is essentially a character study. You have this one character that you see throughout and you get to see snippets of his life, and how he spent it. The focus is always on this one character, and you get to see a bit of some other characters that he spent time with. In River, we don't go into as much detail on the characters. In The Answers, by the end of it you can come to a pretty concise conclusion about the character that you were watching; you know what he's like, what he's done, what his tendencies are, his character traits, etc. In River, we wanted the film to be much more interpretive so that the viewer could come to their own conclusions about the characters. We showed a good and a bad side to Kevin, so it was up to the viewer to decide whether the good outweighed the bad or vice versa.