Reflective Encounters

“The near-boundless freedom of expression afforded to animation incentivises an approach of excess when it comes to colour, and so Push This Button if You Begin to Panic should be commended for its considerable restraint. Throughout the short, subtle shades of off-white allow us to distinguish between objects and figures, between background and foreground. Using papercraft animation for a story set in the banal horror of healthcare bureaucracy is both fitting and understated.

Straightaway the DIY aesthetic and story wrapped up with a subdued sense of humour brings to mind American animator Don Hertzfeldt’s 2006-2012 film trilogy It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Similar to Hertzfelt’s trilogy, Push This Button if You Begin to Panic utilises voiceover narration to tell its story, although in this case it shifts from Hertzfeldt’s third person to a first-person POV. The short emphasises the sense of individual subjectivity even further by framing the scenes within the protagonist’s head, having the cranium serve as a sort of screen. It’s as if we are physically peering into a person’s mind, cleverly tying into the climactic MRI scan. Through these stylistic flourishes in the animation, form and content become tightly intertwined, mirroring the story’s concern with the boundary between the interiority of the mind and the physicality of the body.”

— Cathy Brennan