{"id":10891,"date":"2017-09-25T16:21:46","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T23:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogschapman.wpenginepowered.com\/dodge\/2017\/09\/25\/dodge-students-practice-what-they-preach-in-environmentally-conscious-thesis-film\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T16:34:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:34:41","slug":"dodge-students-practice-what-they-preach-in-environmentally-conscious-thesis-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/2017\/09\/25\/dodge-students-practice-what-they-preach-in-environmentally-conscious-thesis-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodge Students Practice What They Preach In Environmentally"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that thing you saw in any high school Biology class or beyond. Somewhere between early sea life and humans today, there was a fish\u2014 it had legs. Director, Dylan McGale’18 and his Producer, Sho Schrock-Manab\u00e9’18, are bringing it back to life for their thesis film, Tiktaalik<\/em><\/a>, to challenge the role that politics play in science. But this flopping, lizardy-looking fish isn\u2019t the main character of their film, that\u2019s reserved for a science-denying Congressmen from Florida. It\u2019s as if the creature flops into his life to test his creationist beliefs and before he can decide what to make of it, he must reconcile responsibility vs. power.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe originally thought the only way to pull this off was going to be a LOT of C.G.I, but we had no idea how lucky we were going to get,\u201d says McGale about recreating the fishapod for film. In the early stages of research, the two scoured the internet looking for the most convincing representation and quickly realized that the most real-looking renditions were not CGI. A paleo- artist was fabricating physical models, then taking photos of them with a regular camera. When they pitched the film to this creator, Tyler Keillor<\/a>, he agreed to help the project on one condition: the fossil discovery which informed Tyler\u2019s model was led by evolutionary biologist, Neil Shubin<\/a> and he had to sign off for the use of the model.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we had that, Tyler began working on the model and even agreed to come on as an animation consultant as well,\u201d says McGale. \u201cThese two know Tiktaalik better than anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Titkaalik\"
Tyler Keillor in his workshop.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

https:\/\/giphy.com\/gifs\/film-politics-xT9IgF5d9nIRFoB4D6<\/p>\n

McGale is adamant about advocating for scientific-literacy beyond just evolution. He says the film uses the less-debated issue of evolution to address the same mentality many politicians use to regard climate change, \u201cthat\u2019s an issue that by denying they actually screw us all over.\u201d McGale and Manab\u00e9 wanted to make sure they weren\u2019t ignoring the impact their own production could have on the environment. Manab\u00e9 was able to reach an agreement with the non-profit Bonneville Environmental Foundation<\/a> to donate carbon offsets to mitigate the entire carbon footprint of the film, making it the first-ever, high-budget student film to be completely carbon neutral. \u201cBut that could kinda feel like cheating,\u201d Manab\u00e9 said, \u201cso we wanted to go a little further.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two are really shooting for the moon, also setting it in their sights be the first student film receive the Environmental Media Association\u2019s Green Seal certification. To even apply, their production will need to reduce their crew\u2019s driving mileage, reduce the energy usage of their lights, increase recycling and decrease waste. To pull it off, they\u2019ve delegated one onset position to monitor these efforts, they\u2019ve eliminated the use of plastic, single-use water-bottles onset by receiving a sponsorship from a reusable bottle company, and will donate all leftover catering through an app called Copia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the tech company AMD came to Chapman to hold a pitch-fest, the Tiktaalik<\/em> team gave it their best and recently found out they were lucky enough to be one of four senior thesis films to receive support. But their film isn\u2019t fully funded yet, with 10 days left, they could use your help in reaching their Kickstarter goal of $10,000. You can find out more by watching their pitch video and contribute by visiting their Kickstarter Campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conscious Thesis Film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":19923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"custom_author_name":"","chapman_pin_hero_slider":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[475],"tags":[941,142,52,241,53,491,942],"class_list":["post-10891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-spotlight-2","tag-amd","tag-film-festival","tag-industry","tag-kickstarter","tag-news-2","tag-thesis-film","tag-tiktaalik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20230,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10891\/revisions\/20230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.chapman.edu\/dodge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}