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 in early 2020, 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 premiered at Ramapo College in Fall 2020 as part of the “Here Now” exhibit in the Pascal Art Gallery.
The official posters for the film. Created in Photoshop.
Foreground, mid-ground and background elements were rendered in separate passes, and composited in After Effects. Fire and smoke were then composited in, and the video was color graded to create the final shot.
This was done due to technical limitations, though it proved to have its perks. Initially, the plan was to render everything together, but when schools switched to online classes in Spring 2020 due to Covid-19, I needed to adapt. My render farm went from eighteen iMacs to my Macbook Pro, and my brother’s desktop. Ultimately, the separate passes saved me time when compositing in the smoke and fire, since I could just add them between layers. It also gave me full control over depth of field after the render had finished.
Animatic
Storyboard