We All Need Some 'Privacy'

Everyone needs personal space.

The animation setting in my project is a bus stop which is public area so research about personal space is vital for my project.

Dr. Hall (1966) discovered the need for people to have personal space and he divided the zone distances into intimate zone, personal zone, social zone and public zone.

Fig.1 - Personal Zone distances

People feel uncomfortable if someone has invaded their territories and they will react to regain their space. I found this concept very interesting and I decided to demonstrate it by having a parent and child relationship in the story. While the other characters, who are strangers to each other, are different in ages and sex. According to Allan and Barbara Pease (2006, p.204), people who live in cities where the population density is higher has smaller personal space. So, I had my bus stop at a town instead of big city to emphasize this invisible air bubble. However, I did not play around with the cultural differences which is also an important element so that the audience won’t be confused. Plus it was harder to show the culture side of a character through visual.

To enhance my research, I took photos from bus stops for further research. I also asked help from my friend who is currently in China, to send me some photos of the bus stop near her working area. This also proved that basic cultures are the same even in different countries.

By analysing the photos above, I got the idea of how the ‘arm-length’ relationship worked and the minimum comfortable distance for strangers when they are waiting for the bus.

References:

Pease, A. & Pease, B. (2006) The definitive book of body language. 1st edition. London: Orion. (read by: March 15, 2017)

(2014). E. T. Hall – Proxemics (Understanding Personal Space). Available at: https://laofutze.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/e-t-hall-proxemics-understanding-personal-space/