Paperman Themes

Whether a director is creating a full length feature film or a five minute short film, they face many decisions about the best way to communicate a character’s thoughts and feelings and convey their themes and messages in the film. There are many techniques used to convey these themes and noticeable examples in the short films Paperman by Disney and Partly Cloudy by Pixar are music and colour, which can both be used very differently but very effectively to convey the themes of friendship and romance.
The musical scores in the two short films are quite different and reflect different things but both work to communicate their themes well. The music in Partly Cloudy doesn’t generally effect the mood of the scene, it is in fact, the other way around.

As the music stays mostly the same throughout much of the film, it is what the audience is seeing that changes how the music effects them. Throughout the film the feeling the music gives changes from happy, to whimsical, to sad, and finally back to happy. This is due to the changes and developments that the viewers see in the friendship between the storm cloud and his bird. Occasionally a total silence is used to emphasise moments of tension or importance between the two characters. In contrast to this, Paperman’s music is heavily reflective of what is happening in the scene. It starts off slowly and is almost boring but begins to quicken as the man and woman meet for the first time. It then continues to quicken and swell throughout the film as the characters travel their emotional journey and as the plot develops. It gains an almost hurried pace towards the end before ending similarly to how it began, with only a few piano notes played: but now the music feels more content and happy as opposed to slow and boring. The music in Partly Cloudy is generally more upbeat and consistent, compared to Paperman’s variety of speeds and emotions. Within Partly Cloudy this works to further show the friendship between the cloud and the stork in the film, whereas Paperman’s music clearly shows the overwhelming amount of emotion both characters feel throughout their romance.
The differences in the director’s techniques are never clearer between the two films than in their use of colour.

In Partly Cloudy everything is coloured so the director uses shades of black, grey and white to contrast with the rest of the clouds and birds. Everything around the characters is the same as everywhere else which was done to show how much they stand out. The storm cloud is obviously different from the rest of the clouds, who are all happy shades of pink and yellow and other sunset shades, whereas he is dark grey or black depending on his mood. At first the bird doesn’t seem that different to the rest, colour wise, but his white is darker than the other birds and has a generally darker, colouring, showing his connection and friendship to the storm cloud. In Paperman colour is used sparingly. Everything in the film is black and white except for the girl’s lipstick which is a bold and bright red. This serves to show the romantic connection between the two characters and also how she is a break from the black and white world and people all around them. The red of the lipstick is also used to mark a paper, which is also his only connection to her. Red is commonly associated with passion and love which is exactly what the director used this red for, ending the film with the paper plane with her lip mark leading the couple together. Colour was used to make a point in both films, however the statement was given more impact in Paperman with the general use of black and white and the bold statement of the red. The colouring used in Partly Cloudy was more relaxed, using it to solidify a point rather than make

one.
Overall, the two film directors choose very different ways of employing cinematic techniques like music and colouring but both decisions were made to convey their respective themes and messages of romance and friendship. The choice in Paperman to use the music more than the colour to communicate made it more emotionally impacting and the black and white contrasting with the red worked to show the romance developing between the characters while the music and colour in Partly Cloudy felt more relaxed and friendly as it was focusing on a friendship rather than a passionate romance. The colour helped to connect the two characters and the music reflected how the characters felt and what the audience was seeing. Although different, all the choices the directors made was to convey their theme in the best way possible and their music and colour choices definitely worked towards that.