"A present" View and Respond

 Are there particular moments  that stand out to you as particularly powerful or effective? What image elicits the most emotion from you?  What theme or message (s) do you take from the movie? How do the filmmakers convey that message visually and/or verbally?

1. This story starts with a boy sitting on the couch playing video games. The boys mother comes in and gives him a present to open. The present is a 3-legged dog. At first the boy is happy, and then he sees the missing leg and throws the dog on the ground. The dog struggles to get up, and then he goes back to the boy holding a ball. The dog continues trying to get the boy to play with him, and eventually the boy relents and gets up. At this moment we see that the boy also only has 1 leg. The boy and the dog become a team and the short ends.

2. This short was powerful it made me sob. When the dog is first presented to the boy, it was powerful when the boy throws the dog to the ground. It shows the problem with people adopting a puppy because it is cute, and then getting tired of it and throwing it out on the street. When the boy stands up and only has 1 leg, that was truly powerful. You are able to see that the boy and the dog will form a strong bond because of their similarities.

3. When the boy threw the dog on the ground because he had one missing leg, I started to cry. Some other moments that evoked emotion in me were when the dog was playing with himself and flopping on the ground because it was so cute, and when the boy stands up and both the boy and the dog only have one leg. 

4. The theme is the idea that sometimes people don't want to relate to people who are like them. The boy rejects the dog because he is missing a leg and so is the boy, and sometimes it can be hard to acknowledge that we are different when we are.

5.  The filmmakers conveyed this message by making the kid and the dog very cute. It makes you have more sympathy, and evokes more emotion. They also did this by not including very much talking, to really focus on what was going on visually.