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By Renee Batti

In the opening scene of the short film "The Fenceline," an aging ranch hand is seen repairing a fence stretching out across an expanse of hilly open space.

Lanky and unbent, Ayden is at ease, comfortable in his weathered skin, as he twists barbed wire around wooden posts, and hefts up downed fencing to put things right on the land that has been his world for decades. He's the picture of the rugged individualist whose heart keeps time with the essential rhythms of the natural world.

As he nears the end of his project, at the far boundary of the cattle ranch he oversees, he's caught short: Just yards away over the barbed-wire fence he's mending, a toddler sits in his suburban backyard, watching him as if he were a strange animal.

That visual encounter sets up the conflict that's at the heart of the 21-minute film: the struggle of an old cowboy trying not to cross the "line between what will be and what was," in the words of the film's writer and director, Brian Rasmussen.

Mr. Rasmussen and his friend, Travis Schoen -- who made his first films as a student at Menlo-Atherton High School -- set out to explore this theme with "The Fenceline." Mr. Schoen produced and edited the film, which has met with considerable success on the film festival scene, taking the Audience Award at the California Independent Film Festival, and the Best Student Film award at the Tiburon International Film Festival.

Earlier this month, it was an official entry in the Swansea Bay Film Festival in Wales, and in the fall, it will be screened at the Sapporo International Short Film Festival in Japan.

Just last week, the filmmaking duo learned that the film was accepted by the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, which is "a pretty darn big festival, so we are super excited," says Mr. Schoen.

The two men met in a film production class at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. When Mr. Rasmussen conceived the idea for the film that would be his master's thesis project, "I was always expecting Travis to be involved."

Shot mainly on the Reinstein Ranch in Livermore, the film centers on Ayden's response to the news that economic realities have forced the owners of the ranch, a young married couple, to sell it to developers. This is the world in which he has lived and thrived since being hired by the young woman's father, and now, he will have to find his way in an essentially foreign world.

"Like many of the classic Westerns, it is about the struggle between nature and civilization," Mr. Rasmussen writes in his director's statement. "Ayden works outside, his life revolves around the changing of the seasons, births and deaths.

"The forces that act upon him derive from man's attempts to bring reason and predictability into a world of uncertainty, money, time, and society. His enemy isn't an outlaw, but the realities of our modern times, and against these forces he is powerless."

Growing up in Virginia, Mr. Rasmussen saw "a lot of farms taken by development. ... I watched cows disappear," he says. The story of suburban growth, and the toll it takes on open space and farm land, is one that plays out all across the country, he adds.

"We didn't want to vilify anybody in the movie," Mr. Schoen says. "There isn't a bad guy. We show that (by portraying) the child across the fence in the backyard. But the reality is that someone is losing."

"It's a natural process -- an unfortunate but natural process," Mr. Rasmussen adds.

His intent, he says, was "to explore both how people change the land, and the human effect of those changes."

Mr. Schoen says he was drawn to the project "not only because I have tremendous faith in Brian, but because he was setting out to make a movie with a social conscience."

While at M-A High, Mr. Schoen began making films in his freshman year, and was involved with the school's La Mancha Film Festival since it was launched by a couple of his friends. He and two other students took charge of the festival during his senior year.

After graduation in 2002, he studied filmmaking at Boston University, but left after one year because "I didn't like being away from California," he says.

The filmmakers launched an intensive effort to find just the right actors for "The Fenceline," and say they were particularly thrilled to find Nick Scoggin, an experienced film and stage actor, for the role of Ayden. The cast also includes Zehra Berkman, Ryan Ward and Pete Opdyke.

More information, and a trailer for "The Fenceline," can be found at www.fencelinemovie.com.