"A fish and a bird may fall in love but where would they make their home?" is a proverb that long predates this film. It poses the question: can two creatures built to thrive in different conditions maintain a relationship? Abstracted further: is love enough? “A Fish & A Bird” offers an answer to this question, depicting this tragic love story as a full-blown operetta. They serenade each other in their respective languages across the hazy surface of the water, and in the other's mystery, each finds something to fall in love with. When the boundary between land and sea strains their relationship, the fish is driven to change himself to better fit his lover. When she breaks the surface and they see each other clearly for the first time, their relationship is irrevocably altered.

Director: Deanna Moorehead
Music: Julian Stuart-Burns
Performers: Fish (voice): Hannah Yan; Bird (voice): Evan Sercombe
Musicians: Kristina Roller, Katherine Marx, Artur Korotin, Anna Denfeld, Barak Dosunmu, Sohee Bae
Conductor: Peiwen Zou
Sound Engineer: Connor Simpson
Sound Supervisor and Sound Designer: West Rush Media, LLC
Character Models and Textures: Jill Smith
Animation Assistant: Ethan Oakes, Jill Smith, Liliana Cantillo, Maggie Griffiths, Mel Zhao, Troy Xia
Origin: United States
Year: 2025
Duration: 7:55
Deanna Moorehead is a 3D technical artist and filmmaker currently living in New York State. Her Master of Fine Arts thesis film, “A Fish & A Bird,” due to be produced in 2025 at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is an absurdist ode to the dramatic arts and a showcase of her technical prowess in creature rigging and real-time rendering. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 2021 with a double degree in Visual Arts and Computer Science, and draws on her background in physics and mathematics in her filmmaking approach. Her work commonly explores Romanticism and uses elements of music and nature to heighten emotion. In her spare time, Deanna is an avid NYTimes puzzle solver, a below-average runner, and an aspiring globetrotter. She can also juggle.