Environment

This is probably more about production design than it is about environment, but I preferred this expression as it more accurately describes the reason as to why it is so imperative.

When I looked into a relationship between a character and their environment I found virtually nothing that I was looking for specifically. Therefore I decided to simply build it up in a way to felt right to me.

The boy in this short film is a centre figure, but there is no dialogue, nor direct interaction with any other other character. In fact, the only other character in the film is a reading light, of which the boy does not know it is alive. The only time this invisible line is breached is when the reading light nudges the boy in a desperate attempt to make him read again. It eventually starts moving in front of the boy as well, but because he is blind he cannot see it.

However, because we have no interaction with another character from the boy's standpoint, I wanted his room to reflect him clearly. The room is the only location in the short film and therefore lends itself perfectly to display certain information.
In the first scene, we see a slightly messy room, filled with books and active toys, such as ice skates. Following that, in scene 2 we see a clean room, no more mess, not a thing out of place. This contrast should point to a different person inhabiting this room. While it is the same room with the same furniture and the same outline, clearly the same physical person living in it, it should be obvious that there has been a fundamental difference made in that person's life. It holds signs towards the boy's blindness that only really become apparent in conjunction with the previous room and further signs along the way.

This is a not at all definitive bird's view perspective of the boy's room I made for reference:

Feel free to ignore the measurements as I put those in before finishing the drawing. They are not realistic and have been vetoed by myself.

I also found the kind of books the boy possesses quite important. Whether that is because I become overly pedantic when it comes to my own books or because of relevance to the film is questionable. Regardless, I always found that knowing these details about a film makes it more believable, no matter whether these details make it into the final version or not.
I wanted to cater the list of books for around children's books (late childhood) to young adult books. I've talked to a few book fanatics and an impressive number of them have said they had read a lot of books above their age recommendation. I also wanted to put books that are personally important to me in there, books that I grew up with, to retain a connection to myself.

This is a selection of possible titles I considered:

Lord of the Rings
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Alice's Adventure in Wonderland
Pippi Longstocking
The Red Silk Scarf
Harry Potter
Globi
The Robber Hotzenplotz
Casper
etc.