When A Tree Falls
When A Tree Falls is my Visual Arts Senior Thesis film that I created in my final semester at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Inspired by the California forest fires, I started writing this short film in November of 2019. After the Australian wildfires earlier this year, I believe the topic of this film is more important than ever.
The story follows a squirrel desperately trying to run away from a robotic bird, who is destroying everything in its path in its pursuit of the squirrel.
I wrote, directed, animated, edited and composited all aspects of the film.
Music written by Nick Perez
The film is currently being submitted to film festivals, and is not currently available to the public quite yet.
Instead of asking, "if a tree falls," maybe we should start asking ourselves what the world will be like when it does. This is not a film about hypotheticals, but instead something that is unfortunately too real.
Official Poster
Teaser Trailer
Foreground, mid-ground and background elements were rendered in separate passes, and composited in After Effects. Then fire and smoke were composited in, and the video was color graded to create the final shot.
Breakdown of first shot of the film. A fake camera shake was added in post production to increase the intensity of the shot.
Breakdown of the first chase sequence. I decided after creating the layout that having the squirrel run at essentially the same pace would feel boring, so I had him change from a bipedal to quadrupedal run cycle to give time for the camera to move away.
Breakdown of the tree climbing shot.
I blocked out the scene without having a full setting, and just the main tree as my point of reference.
Animatic
Storyboard