BEFORE THE FALL - MAKING OF
COMING JUNE 2026
LOGLINE
A man who has already decided to end his life finds a creature worth caring for—and chooses a different way to fulfill his purpose.
SYNOPSIS
Before the Fall follows a man moments away from suicide, standing on a rooftop overlooking a vast, indifferent city. A faint cry pulls him back. In a nearby alley, he discovers a small, injured creature and chooses to help it. He brings it home. Over time, caring for the creature reintroduces structure, light, and warmth into his life. He laughs. He connects. For a brief period, he lives again. One night, he discovers it has given birth—its offspring emerging fragile but hungry. As they begin to feed on him, there is no struggle. Only a quiet acceptance. The man, who had already decided to die, instead chooses this ending—one where his final act is not self-destruction, but selflessness.
PRE-DEVELOPMENT
Kicking this project off, I knew I wanted to hit three main points: Live-action integration, 3D Sculpting/Organic Modeling, and collaboration of a multidisciplinary team, so I could learn as much as possible from the people around me. The hardest part was coming up with a cohesive story. I am not a writer, I have zero budget, and it's a student film; there's only so far I can go with the plot. So I kept it simple: a suicidal man finds a creature in an alleyway and befriends it. This wasn't enough to capture an audience, though. I decided to switch the ending to be more gruesome and horrifying. Why not? I'm in art school after all, I can be weird with no consequences.
Original animatic with images to help plan for our shoot
Storyboad concepts
Plotline development
Visual development moodboard
THE CREATURE - PRECONCEPTS
The creature was conceptualized by me using Procreate and many sketches. I wanted it to have a feeling of strange, out-of-this-world anatomy, but still somehow recognizable as something kind and warm. I went through many iterations from too alien, to not alien enough. It was also a challenge to design a creature with its motion and musculature in mind, rather than a one-off concept, which I had done previously. Now I had to keep in mind that this creature would be animated and move in certain ways that my team and I would have to figure out.
Creature sculpting references.
Creature concepts/ideation
THE CREATURE - FINAL
I sculpted the creature in ZBrush with a lot of help from my lead animator, Aimie Bissonnette, to figure out how it would move, breathe, eat, etc. Once retopologized in Maya, the normal + displacement maps were baked, and I handed the model off to talented lookdev artists Pia Thorton and Aiden Perry. They textured the model as an incredibly great rigger, Oscar Stec, gave the creature bones and skin weights. Oscar, Aimie, and I collaborated to bring this creature to the finish line and prep for animation.
FILMING - 3 DAYS
As the creature was being created, I collaborated with a film crew to scout locations, plan production design, rent equipment, etc. This was a zero-budget film, so I painted my own grey matte ball and downloaded a free app called HDREye to capture lighting reference on set. When shooting week came, I directed and supervised the VFX on-set, then checked the footage ASAP to make sure it was usable. We took as many measurements and captured a ton of HDRIs on set to help with layout and lighting later. Problems always arise, for instance, we got rained out of SCAD's backlot alleyway, which we had rented. We had to push the shoot back by three months, for just three shots. In the end, I was happy with our capture, and the footage turned out great thanks to my lovely film crew, particularly Sutton Szoke, the Director of Photography.
Day Two - Habersham Apartments, Savannah, GA
Day One - Greenscreen Room, Montgomery Hall, SCAD
Day Three - Savannah Film Studios, Back Alley, SCAD
*BTS photos courtesy of Victori FX's Emily Kraus
Quick look at the compositors pipeline/schedule tracker
HDRI captured on set using an app called HDR Eye
Matte and chrome sphere reference photos
POST PRODUCTION
After recruiting seven animators and two compositors, we were ready to tackle post-production. I handed layout for each scene and proxy footage to my animators to complete their work as smoothly as possible. Aimie did a great job with the entire animation pipeline and staying on schedule. Once each scene was animated and approved, I lit each shot using the data we gathered onset. After some experimentation, I came up with a solid pipeline to render and easily composite shots. I shared this pipeline with my two other compositors along with the footage, renders, and other assets through a collaborative drive.
Sound was figured out by my downstairs neighbor, Trey Harding, who did a fantastic job collaborating with me to find a score, secure ADR, and record foley.
After lighting, rendering, compositing, editing, and coloring, the final output was complete! I created a press kit, a poster, and other promotional materials (like this blog) to fully capture the entire process of twelve months and submit to festivals.
Thank you so much to my lovely team. I had a great time working on this project, and it's all because of you guys. Great job!