The Fall

How did The Fall happen? No, it's not a rhetorical question - someone please tell me.

The idea came into my head fully formed, a real Harry-Potter-on-a-napkin moment. It was borne unto the world via Titmouse's "5-Second-Day", where they let all their employees spend one work day making something and then screen it at a theatre. My submission was the animatic for The Fall. It was far from polished, but it made people laugh.

And then there it sat, for a good while.

It took a stay-at-home pandemic and three angsty ambitious women to decide to take The Fall from silly animatic to beautiful (and still silly) animated short. That's where Phillapa Tanner, our producer, and Shai Wallach, associate producer (and my future sister-in-law) come into the picture. We knew the story had good bones. I was ready to direct it, and Phillapa and Shai ready to make it⁠—but we didn't know who would want to join an indie project with little to no funding.

But before we knew it we had an art director. Then an animation director. Then a crew of artists. It turns out a lot of us felt cooped up, and wanted to make something we could all be proud of together. The production truly felt charmed from the beginning. Brian David Gilbert, a prominent Youtuber whose work I love, responded to a cold email and agreed to do voiceover. Toon Boom offered us Harmony licenses. Things started happening, and then just kept happening. How would we record child actors during a pandemic? Don't worry, your producer has a friend with the exact setup you'll need. You don't know anyone in music? Your new voice actor has a friend, who is also a brilliant composer. It turns out, all we needed to do was ask.

We set out to create something to improve our skills, and get our minds off a very tough, and lonely year. We could have never imagined the result⁠—a beautiful, hilarious short made by a dedicated crew of over thirty people working remotely all over the world.

How did The Fall happen? We made it happen.