Rachel Mensah

The film Day & Night is a Pixar animated short film, written and directed by Teddy Newton and produced by Kevin Reher. The short brilliantly combines 2D and 3D animation as it follows two personified characters, Day and Night. The outlines of both characters are hand drawn and animated in 2D, while the scenes inside their silhouettes are in 3D. This allows them to act as windows into the 3D worlds (the daytime and the night-time).

 

The film begins with a 3 dimensional wide shot of a farm and immediately a rooster’s crowing is heard, which signifies that it’s the break of dawn. Furthermore, the sound of cows mooing and birds chirping as the camera tracks backwards across the landscape of the field communicated the idea that it is the early morning. The camera zooms out to reveal the establishing shot of the main character, Day, sleeping on a pitch black background. This allows the audience to understand where the original environment is in relation to the characters and the background suggests that nothing else exists outside of them. The film cleverly uses environmental sounds to communicate the personified character’s thoughts and feelings; the storm clouds and thunder is used to represent his grumpiness, whilst the singing of birds suggests he’s in a happy mood, a flowing waterfall resembles the action of him urinating and the blowing of trees may be him breathing a sigh of relief.

 

The camera tracks Day’s movement towards the other main character, Night. When ‘Night’ is discovered the sound changes to a spooky piano melody, which connotes a sense of suspicion and fear. As Night sleeps, a shot of sheep jumping over a barn fence in the night can be seen inside his silhouette. Because this references the idea of ‘counting sheep’ (a mental exercise used to fall asleep), the audience can infer that he, dissimilar to Day, is the animated personification of night-time. Additionally, Day’s light blue appearance is juxtaposed by Night’s dark blue colour. The preferred reading is that the first character is Day whilst the other is his complete opposite, Night, and the both offer a different window into the same world. Perhaps the message behind it is about leaving your comfort zone, embracing new ideas and seeing the world from the perspective of others’.

The two-shot of Day and Night together shows how the characters interact for the first time. The proxemics between them in the stand-off suggests they are cautious and suspicious of each other. The use of sound is prominent throughout their conflict; when Day chooses to blissfully ignore Night upbeat summer pop music is played, whereas Night’s anger is accompanied by heavy metal/rock music. As there is no dialogue between them, the filmmakers chose to imitate an argument via the use of animal sounds (i.e. the crows, the bees and the pack of ducks quacking which sounded similar to patronising laughter). Tracking is also used to follow them as they fight and incoherent lyrics are introduced as the conflict intensifies.  The mise-enscen used to tell the narrative makes the film more humorous – for instance when Day is punched and collapses a tree inside him collapses simultaneously, and birds circle inside his head when he experiences dizziness (which the audience may recognise as a common occurrence in cartoons). 

Key concepts are presented using sound effects like the crickets' stridulation (chirping) which is often used to emphasize silence, creating a comic effect. Contrastingly, the volume of the music played from the radio noticably increases when Day moves to reveal more people. A single bellring - at the same time that a lightbulb turns on inside the house - symbolizes that Night had a sudden realization or "light-bulb moment". Music is also used to highlight the the change in emotions - for instance the slow pop music increases in pace and tempo as they become excited. The combination of colourful visuals (the shot zooms into the characters showing the explosive fireworks inside Night and Day's glowing rainbow) and upbeat music (jazz and dance) create a sense of celebration. 

One shot begins with a big close up showing a full-screen wideshot () of the planes