This Earth Day, Watch Neighbor Ted Schaefer’s Film About A Post-Apocalyptic World
What if on Earth Day, there was very little earth left to celebrate?
Neighbor and filmmaker Ted Schaefer, whom you may remember from his comedy web series “Nik & Ted,” explores this idea in his newest film that was just released today, “Singing to the Earth Until a Tree Grows.” The short film, which was written by Ted and Patrick Lawler and produced by neighbor Doree Simon, explores climate change through a post-apocalyptic world in which two people try to navigate their new inhospitable land.
Sponsored by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the film features the couple as they “face the struggle of everyday life as possibly the last two humans on Earth.”
The filmmakers described the two main characters, writing:
The man, who wishes he were a standup comic, spends his days exploring the post-apocalyptic cityscape, where he discovers an old VHS camera. With it he decides to create a reverse time capsule, a chronicle of the world that now exists, for the past. The woman, an artist, is pregnant. She struggles with finding meaning and attempts to capture that struggle in her new painting — a giant canvas spread on the floor of her living room, which she is painting for her unborn daughter.
Throughout the film, the main characters wonder, what could have the earth been like had humans acted just a little differently?
“We didn’t listen — the frogs told us, the bees told us; we didn’t listen,” the man says. “The wind told us, the coral told us… The storm surged; the rising seas drowned cities. It was our OK; it was our normal because nature still survived on the internet.
“We should’ve listened to something other than ourselves,” he continues. “…The saddest thing about the apocalypse is that it can happen without you even knowing it.”
You can watch the video above, or visit SUNY’s website to see it.
