Nightshift (Yövuoro) — Sampa Kukkonen, Sara Wahl and Simo Koivunen, 2004
A fun story of noisy neighbours! A bird, its chicks and a bat live in the same tree, but the bird’s daytime food collection keeps the bat awake. One night, the bat returns from one of his nightly food quests and slips into the hole of the trunk where the chicks are housed. In the morning, when the bird doesn’t hear its chicks, it assumes the bat has done something terrible…
A mixture of Claymation and puppet animation where music is used to suggest mood and add suspense.
Classroom Activities
Print All- Critical
- Cultural
- Creative
- Clip Details
Critical
- When and how do we first meet the bat? What kind of a character do you think the bat is? What words can you use to describe the bat?
- How do the characters change during the film? What happens to make them change?
- Who is good and who is bad in the story? Explain and justify responses.
- Use freeze frame and a Spot the Shots worksheet to identify different shots at different points in the story. Where is the camera in these shots? Compare the use of long shots and close-ups at different moments.
- Note the way the film uses colour to suggest character and setting. How do the colours change to show the time of day or night in the story? Which colours do you associate with the bat? The bird? The bat is black and red: how does this make you feel when you first see it?
- Discuss ways the film shows the passage of time. Look at the technique of ‘fade in/out’ and relate colour and light to the sequence or action.
- Listen to the soundtrack to 04:58 minutes into the film. Identify the different sounds. You could provide a list of sounds – flapping, sighing, tapping and so on – and ask them to tick the word when the sound is heard.) Discuss the ‘sound story’ of the film. What sounds can you hear that are made by characters or things in the story? What sounds can you hear that have been added to the film, not made by anyone or anything on screen? How does silence create an atmosphere?
- How does the music change when different characters are on screen? How does this help to tell the story? How does the music make you feel?
- Discuss the structure of the story: what happens at the beginning of the story; and at the end of the story. What are the most important events, things that happen in the story? What do you think happens after the end of the story?
Cultural
- Look for moments when we see events through the eyes of one of the characters. How does it make us feel?
- Discuss a variety of feelings suggested by the film: being angry, tired, frustrated. Discuss how you tell others how you feel. Talk about tolerance and consideration for others, and respecting differences.
- Discuss the different ways the bird and the bat could have chosen to live as neighbours.
- Watch the film to 4:58. How did you feel when you saw the bat going into the hole?
- Explore the feelings of the woodpecker. How does she feel when the baby birds do not cry out?
- How do we know when night becomes day? In your day, how do you know when it is time to get up/go to bed?
- Which people/professions/cultures have different sleeping patterns to yours? Why?
Creative
PLAY
- Play a rhyming word game. Find other words that sound like ‘bat’. Write them on the class board. Then invite children to create sentences out of the words (for example: “The fat bat sat on the mat”). Repeat with other animal names.
MAKE
- Find out about and experience the materials used in the animation: create clay, playdough or Plasticine characters for a film.
- Make a collage of the bird’s and bat’s homes, observing the shapes and patterns used in nature.
DRAW
- Create a simple storyboard, retelling the story, with captions.
- Create a comic strip version of the film using drawings or still images plus speech and thought bubbles for each of the characters.
DRAMA
- Role-play the bat and bird, or a ‘noisy neighbour’ situation in real life. Consider alternative courses of action and dialogue that might keep the peace or solve the problem.
- Learn about question beginnings (who, what, when, why, where, how). Create a range of questions to ask a partner who is ‘hot-seated’ as the bat or the bird. Create a simple questionnaire to be completed by the partner.
DANCE
- Explore the movements of the bat and bird through dance; retell the story as a dance.
STEM
- Identify features of bats and birds; find out how animals fly; different animal habitats; nocturnal animals; the importance of sleep.
- Investigate the habitats of wildlife in the local area. Create a map.
- Investigate the sleeping/waking habits of nocturnal animals; seeing in the dark.
- Investigate the nutritional needs of young animals. Discuss why the young birds might be noisy and what food they eat.
Clip Details
| Record Id | 007-002-000-017-C |
|---|---|
| Resource Rights Holder | Sampa Kukkonen |
| Project Ref | STST2-04 |
| Year of Production | 2004 |
| Genre | Comedy, Stop-Motion |
| Curriculum Areas | Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Modern Languages, Literacy and English, Religious and Moral Education, Sciences, Social Studies |
| Director | Sampa Kukkonen, Sara Wahl and Simo Koivunen |
| Country of Origin | Finland |
| Medium / Content | 3D Animation, Fiction, Colour, Sound |
| Themes | Relationships, Communication |
| Clip Length | 07:00 |
| Clip Length | 07:00 |
| Age Group | P1-P4, P5-P7 |
