The modern human experience is a world lived through cameras, screens, and an array of social media doubles. It’s an interesting but often unfortunate reality in that there comes with it the sense that we’re not really living at all, but intentionally constructing stories out of the most mundane moments to make it seem like our lives are more interesting. This reality is explored in satirical form—albeit with a retro (read: smartphone-less) aesthetic—in the short film, The Boy with a Camera for a Face.

Directed by Spencer Brown, who describes the film as a “fairy tale,” it looks handsome and features some of the sing-songy verse of Dr. Seuss, or maybe even Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. The film is pretty much what its title suggests: the story of a life lived by a boy with a camera head. The satire is a bit obvious, but it still works, moving from playful, to dark, and back again in explorations of voyeuristic love, surveillance, reality television, and the media-fueled collective hallucination that is modern society.  

The Boy with a Camera for a Face from Spencer Brown on Vimeo.

Click here to see more of Spencer Brown’s work.

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