How Personal Should a Personal Project Be?

Do you have a personal project that needs to see the light of day?

We all have a project in our backlog that resonates deeply. Maybe it’s based on true events, or a topic that has personally touched your life. However, many artists don’t take time to develop their personal projects. They worry they can’t find an audience, or that there just isn’t enough time in the day. Personal projects are labors of love, but often they get set aside to focus on the business end of being a designer and animator. Today, we want to encourage you to find your passion. What is the story you’ve always wanted to tell, but just never found the time to start? 

We’re joined by the wonderfully talented Sarah Beth Morgan, Taylor Yontz, and Rebekah Hamilton to share their journey in creating Between Lines. This short film explores the harmful effects of schoolgirl bullying, and the long road to recovery. Though it is based on personal experiences, you can immediately see the universality of its message. Like all personal projects, it traveled a rocky road from conception to creation. However, this team knew that their project needed to be seen by the world, and they wouldn’t let any obstacle get in the way.

This conversation is important, inspiring, and left us wanting to jump into our own projects with renewed urgency. We can’t wait for you to hear these creators share their story, so strap in. It’s time to get personal. 

How Personal Should a Personal Project Be?

Artist

Sarah Beth Morgan
Taylor Yontz
Rebekah Hamilton
Nirrimi Firebrace
Esther Chung
Thea Glad
Pip Williamson
Jennifer Pague
Luis Wes
Wesley Slover

Studios

Gunner
Oddfellows
Ordinary Folk
Giant Ant
Buck
Sono Sanctus
Psyop
Alma Mater 

Work

Between Lines Teaser
Between Lines Credit List
Between Lines Website
Happiness Factory
Into The Spiderverse Main on End Titles

Resources

Odd Girl Out
After Effects
Toon Boom
Flash
Adobe Animate
Photoshop
Cinema 4D
Harmony 21
Otis
CalArts
ArtCenter
Dash Bash
The Bloom Foundation

Transcript

Ryan: Today we're so lucky to be talking to Sarah Beth Morgan, Taylor Yontz, and Rebekah Hamilton. Three of the best people working in motion design today to discuss something a little bit different. We're talking about Between Lines, the upcoming short film that speaks to the scarring experience of schoolgirl bullying and the recovery that follows. These three amazing people have created something unlike almost anything else I've seen in the world of motion design.

It's one of the best short films, animation TV film, whatever you might think about in terms of categories, but it feels like it's something that only motion designers can make. Let's dive into ideas behind the short, the process that was taken to create it. And also the amazing crew that was assembled to see this thing, the completion. Before we get into this, you might want to go and check out the teaser for Between Lines. You can go to betweenlinesfilm.com, watch the teaser to get a sense of the work that is at play in this short film. But before that, let's check in with one of our amazing alumni.

Jason: I just recently wrapped up my fourth and fifth course with School of Motion. And I learned so much from the courses, and had such a great time doing it. Prior to taking courses with School of Motion, my knowledge of animation and motion design were very, very limited. And now a year into taking the courses, my skillset and confidence have grown exponentially, and I am now ready to start applying to become a full-time motion designer. The weekly lessons are packed with information and challenging. The TAs are very insightful, knowledgeable, and helpful. And the community is very supportive and encouraging. I highly recommend taking School of Motion. My name is Jason, and I am a School of Motion alumni.

Ryan: Motioneers, every once in a while you run into a project that you just want to introduce everyone in the world to it, but this one more than any of the projects I've seen in such a long time, really feels like something special. It's something that I talk to people all the time about in motion design. For some reason, motion designers don't really take as much time to make personal projects, but if they do, they always make a short, little, kind of one a day or once a week. They don't take the time to actually spread the wings and start creating narratives.

This project is the example of what I'd love to see more often in our industry. We're going to dive deep with this team, but if you get a chance, take a look and watch Between Lines, and then come back and listen to us talk to Sarah Beth Morgan, Taylor Yontz, and Rebekah Hamilton, because this is going to be an amazing talk. All three of you, thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to dive into this whole process and where this came from.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Taylor: Good to be here.

Ryan: Sarah, I wanted to start off with you because I know recently you've started directing. And the work that we've seen so far from you as a director, it has the Sarah Beth Morgan style, and I put in quotes, "trademark." What I think is amazing though is to see a project like Between Lines that's truly a hundred percent your vision. I would just love to know from the beginning of all this, where did the idea come from to do this? And how did you decide to take on a personal work of this size and this scale alongside all the professional work you're doing right now?

Sarah Beth: Well, I did start it about like two years ago before I was directing or doing any of that stuff. I think my workload might have been a little less ambitious. Yeah, I had a feeling I'd wanted to create a short film for a long time. I didn't really have like an idea of what it could be necessarily. I didn't want to force it if it wasn't happening.

But then at one point, I think it was like December 2019 or something, I was talking to my therapist about an experience that I had as a young girl with bullying. It's something that has affected and shaped my entire life. And I decided that it would be really interesting to see how we could turn that into a film. Obviously that's like a really heavy subject. It was a big undertaking, I think. I didn't necessarily set out to make it like this big, big thing, but it somehow turned into that, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Ryan: It's amazing. I mean, there's so much to unpack from just that statement alone. We've been having a lot more conversations on the School of Motion podcast. I think just in the industry in general for dealing with mental health, admitting to everybody that there are a lot of us in therapy, which is not like a dirty word or a bad thing, but for some reason, our industry people act like you can't or that it's like a weakness, but it's amazing to hear that this idea even sprung out of something like that.

What was like the germ of the idea? Where did it come from? Just something that affected you to becoming something that like, oh, I think I could design this, or I could animate this, or I could open this up to a lot of other people who may or may not have had similar or experiences. How did you go from just this germ of an idea to, I'm going to make this. I'm going to turn this into an animation?

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Actually there was kind of a turning point where I was reading this book called Odd Girl Out. And it was, basically like a study on different demographics and different girls around the U.S. who had experienced bullying. And I had never really talked to other people about this before. So it was definitely something that I experienced, but I wasn't really connecting the dots between like reality and my experience, like other people experiences all the time.

So when I was reading that book, I was kind of like, "Whoa, this is so familiar. This has happened to me." And wow, like I didn't realize it was so common. And I even was talking to some friends about it and they were like, "Oh yeah, I actually had a similar experience." It kind of just clicked where I was like, I think that a lot of people have been through this and don't talk about it and don't feel seen. And so it just kind of felt like something I wanted to pursue and start a discussion around. And I was like, what better way to do that than create something emotionally and visually interesting. And then maybe we can start having more conversations around that.

Ryan: I've been having these conversations with so many different artists that I admire for so long about how, for some reason in, if you talk about like feature animators or TV animators or musicians or filmmakers, they all ... It's part of the natural kind of like instinct to talk about these much more personal things or these things that you think might resonate with people in your personal projects.

But for some reason, I still haven't figured out exactly what it is in motion design that people don't open up like this. They don't find a way to do a minute long or a 30 second long short that has this kind of like emotional resonance. I don't know why. And I don't know if there'll ever be an answer why, but I'm wondering like when you reached out, I'm assuming you probably reached out to Taylor and Rebekah pretty early on, how did you pitch this to them?

From the outside, this looks wildly ambitious. The story itself, like being able to be vulnerable, like being able to say like, "This is something I went through," and put your name to it, but then take all this time to bring people in and dedicate, it feels like a lot of hours of work put into it, just because your style and the quality of the animation, the quality of design. So how did you rally this team around? Did you just give them the emotional pitch, like you just kind of said now? Or did you have a full deck? How did you bring everybody together?

Sarah Beth: I might actually have to ask Taylor and Rebekah. I can't really remember exactly how this happened, but I know that I started ... So I basically started the process by myself, like in the winter, actually, it was like right before COVID. So I think it was like December was when I had like a very loose storyboard and script. And then I started designing like February 2020 or something. And I was like, yeah, I'm hyped. Like we're going to do something with this. And then obviously everything deteriorated from there.

Yeah, I pretty much just, I did create a deck because as a director and as just like a organized human that does art, I really like creating organized places for all of my ideas. I did create like a Google slide deck. And I think I had like a little tagline talking about what the emotional pitch was. And I had a mood board and I had the script, which I developed with my friend near me. And then I also had rough storyboards. I'm pretty sure that's where I pulled you in, right, Rebekah and Taylor? I don't remember.

Ryan: Yeah. Let's hear from the two of you. I want to know if your memory matches how they were brought in.

Taylor: I think that you had, maybe you posted about it on Instagram or something. And I think I was just, I don't know, messaged you and we were chatting about it. I asked if I could see the deck, and you sent it to me, and ... I don't super remember. This has been so long ago, but I think I was just like, "This looks awesome. If you need help, I would love to help." And you're like, "Great. Be an animator." So I just started animating on the film, and I think that we only had like five animators, right, Sarah? And so it was like five animators, Sarah, and then like two other designers. And that was like it in the very beginning.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Honestly, I didn't start out thinking like, oh, I want to have creative partners for this. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I don't think I knew how big it was going to be. I was just like, yeah, I can do this. And then as I started getting overwhelmed with the amount of people on it, I was like, "I need a producer."

So reached out to Rebekah, and then Taylor was like really killing it with the animation. And I was like, "You know what? Can you just be the animation director please? Because you have such a good eye for this." She's got like an eagle eye. And she is also great at doing all different mediums. Like different programs, different styles of animation. It just fit really well. Yeah, that's kind of how it happened, I think.

Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan: I love it.

Rebekah: I would concur. I think as Sarah was kind of realizing the scope, I think there was a need present for someone to wrangle and organize and strategize where the film was going to go and how to assemble this big team. And so she reached out to me with the brief, and I was fired up about it. I was ready to go. Then that night I hung up with Sarah and I put together this proposal of a production roadmap and our plan and all of this stuff. We were off to the races after that.

Sarah Beth: Yeah.

Ryan: I think that's an amazing instinct on your part, Sarah, because I think anybody who does decide to do a short anywhere near this length, I feel like it's always like a challenge to try to do it by yourself. Like the implication is, what's my short? I have to do it myself. But the fact that you actually reached out to a producer, like 95% of the other people trying to do this would never do that. They would never admit like, I need help, or I need organization. I think it's amazing that you were able to early enough decide, I want this to happen. I want to finish. I need to pull my team together.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. I mean, honestly, Ryan, I think it was like, I started with the storyboard, and I was like, "Oh, this is a lot of frames." And then I started drawing in this new style that was a lot more complex than I normally did. And I was like, wow, I really like this, but oh my gosh, there's like 700 layers in this file, and I'm like, wow. Okay. Well, if every frame's going to look this, I'm screwed. I need help. Yeah, I agree.

And I also like, I've just been on other people's personal projects and like, they've always been great, but there's also sometimes like, I feel like they're not as organized, or I don't really know what my place is or what I'm doing. And so having Rebekah there to help wrangle people was like a blessing because I didn't want to have to do all of that and design and everything.

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I think it's very easy to underestimate how much time it takes to do all the other directing duties besides coming up with a story, designing the look, setting up the storyboards. There's still so much more work to do as the team increases. Like even if it's just you and three or four other people, like just handling the comms, like just communicating, organizing, making sure everybody's fed the right amount of material.

Rebekah, what was that process like from the beginning? How did it change as you started adding more people? Because the credits list, if you watch this film at the end, it's not an insignificant amount of people that contributed to this when you look at it. How did that team scale? I mean, I'm sure at the end it got bigger, but like what was that process like for you to find the people, to reach out to them, to get them integrated into the team?

Rebekah: Yeah, it did start off small. Then we realized quite quickly, especially with the pandemic affecting all of our workloads. I feel like all of us got just super busy as everybody kind of transitioned away from live action into animation. And so everyone in our credits list, which is slammed all of a sudden, we knew we had to scale up pretty quickly in order to make this not a 10 year project.

And so, yeah, we just started reaching out to anyone that we had worked with. Between the three of us, I think our Rolodexes were rather large. As soon as we started reaching out to folks, they started suggesting other folks to us. And so it just kind of grew and grew and grew. From there we kind of had to figure out, how are we going to approach this? We've got people all over the place with full-time jobs and freelance schedules and bookings and other passion projects.

And so we had to kind of figure out, how are we going to approach this? How are we going to organize this? How are we going to make this a really enjoyable experience for everyone on the team? Because like Sarah said, we really wanted this ... I mean, I don't know if she's said this yet, but we really did want to make this feel like a group effort and something that felt personal to all of us.

Part of achieving that goal was to give a lot of flexibility to people and what they were doing and how much they wanted to work and letting them choose shots they wanted to work on. And so as we started scaling out, we just found a lot of people that had a lot of different skillsets, and they were able to jump on in a myriad of different ways, which I think Taylor can speak to a little more.

But as far as finding them, there was a lot of searching all over the place. And then a lot of people are just coming to us and kind of seeing Sarah Beth's work and things that she was posting and wanting to help out, which was awesome. What's this credits list now, Sarah? Like 35 or something like that?

Sarah Beth: Yeah.

Ryan: It's deep. It's a deep bench. I want to get back to the crew in particular, but I want to get Taylor on. I want to hear from Taylor a little bit too. Taylor, where was this landing in your personal timeline? I'm guessing somewhere along the way, was this before or after you went freelance? This was after, right? After you started?

Taylor: No, this was-

Ryan: Even before.

Taylor: Yeah. Maybe like a year before, honestly.

Ryan: And you've been on the project the whole time as the animation director, right?

Taylor: Yeah. I started as just an animator when there were like, I don't know, four animators or something. But once we recognized that we needed to scale and like Sarah needed a lot of help because it was so such a big endeavor, I guess that's when I became animation director, which was pretty early on. But yeah, I was still directing at IV at the time. So, two years.

Ryan: That's amazing. Talk to me a little bit. I wanted to talk more about process. In terms of your role, switching from animation to animation director, the look is amazing, right? Like we have a lot of studios we all point to. We talk to Gunner, we talk to Oddfellows, we talk to Ordinary Folk, that have like a house style. This I feel like it blows a lot of those kind of house styles out of the water, just because of the density of the designs themselves.

As an animator, that's one thing for you to handle, but then also as an animation director, handing it out to all this crew, how did you manage that? Did you have to spend some time like figuring out the formula to make Sarah's designs come alive? And then did you have to figure out like how to communicate that? Like how did you manage all of that in a team that's coming in and out, that's remote, you're not sitting right next to them? What was that whole process like for you?

Taylor: Yeah. I think in general we sort of approached it a little bit different than like I've approached things at studios or have approached things with other teams. In that, instead of saying like, well, this is our process and this is like, it's kind of the 1, 2, 3 formula that everyone needs to jump into in order to hit our end goal, and not, as Rebekah said, not make this a 10 year endeavor, and then keep everyone feeling like they were contributing in a quality way. We needed to let people work on things in a way that they were comfortable with. And so our big overarching goal was hit the style frame.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. I think like a huge part of the goal of the project was to make sure everyone felt comfortable and like was part of a family and felt valued. And what Taylor was mentioning was just like, letting everyone work in their own program, no matter what. We had After Effects, we had Toon Boom, we had ... I don't know, Taylor, what are the other programs? I should know this. Flash, Animate.

Taylor: Yeah. Flash, Photoshop, After Effects, Cinema 4D, Harmony. And so it was basically more like, okay, what are you good at? What are you fast at? What do you enjoy doing? If you can make it look like this style frame, then like you're golden and we're not going to put harnesses around you.

Ryan: That's awesome.

Taylor: So we found a lot more success doing it that way rather than like ... We definitely thought about the traditional like, here's our process. This is how we know that we're going to hit it. We have more control this way. But I think that people enjoyed themselves more, and it felt more like their project too, when we let people run in that way.

Ryan: I love that because I feel like the natural instinct for a project like this, Rebekah, maybe you could speak to this too, in like a normal commercial environment, you want to make everything as efficient as possible and you want to make it not feel like a series of three shot shorts that are just like stitched together. You want to make it feel like it's a cohesive hole. So the natural instinct is like, here's the pipeline. Can you work within it? Great. If not, sorry, we can't work with you.

What was that like though? I will say like watching this, and the work in progress that you sent me, it does feel holistically like all of the same piece. It does not feel like this person did three shots in a row in C 4D. And then this person did three shots on their iPad, and then another person did it in Toon Boom. Like it feels like it's all of one thing. Is that just because of the strength of Sarah Beth's designs? Or is there something that you're doing once you receive this stuff also to kind of like tie it all together?

Sarah Beth: No, I was just going to like plug Taylor really quick, and just be like, yeah, Taylor just goes in afterwards and also composites a lot of stuff too, so that kind helps.

Rebekah: What I was going to say is like, if you had to look at the pipeline of this thing, like it ain't a line, it's a big-

Sarah Beth: It's a pipe puzzle.

Ryan: A pipe puzzle. Exactly. I love it. Trademark it.

Taylor: It's Between Lines.

Sarah Beth: Get it?

Ryan: Yeah. Did you plan that? Someone's going to think we planned that whole talk, just to land on that. That's great.

Rebekah: Right. That sounds super messy. I mean, especially for me, just being in the commercial space, I want it to be clean, crisp, efficient, all of that. That wasn't the need of the project. What it needed to be was flexible and like ever changing and quickly reactive to things. We tried not to be reactive as much as we could. We planned a lot, but the strength of it was that ability to hand little bits and pieces to all of these people in all these different places, because these tasks were just, they got done really quickly, and they were just spread out. So the weight didn't really, it didn't feel really heavy on one given person. It's not efficient at all, but it's what the project needed.

Going back to your question about making it feel cohesive, I think Sarah Beth hit it on the head is we've got a team of, I think it's like five compositors at this point. Those folks are really holding down the fort in terms of taking all of these wonderful pieces of cell in C 4D and After Effects work and putting them together and looking at Sarah Beth's frame and saying like, "All right, this is our Bible. This is our truth. Let's get it back to this." And you've got a really nice piece of work that feels like it wasn't done by 35 people. And so big props to compositors that were with us.

Taylor: Also, in terms of the like process in general, it's not like we're inventing something that's never been done before. Like sure, we are not doing one specific pipeline, but we are still doing like a motion test. Like we're shooting reference. And so we're making sure after we shoot our reference, that the timing works. And after we know that the timing works, we're doing roughs. And the roughs can look like whatever, but we're still sort of doing that traditional animation pipeline of like, we're not doing too much ahead of ourselves that's difficult to go back on.

And so we would have roughs. And then we would have color flats. And you can make color flats in any program. And so we would do that sort of workflow and then textures last, and then comp I guess is last, last. But that sort of system which is pretty traditional to most animation pipelines anyways.

Ryan: Yeah. That makes sense. The tools are kind of all over the place, but the process is traditional and nailed down. And probably, I would imagine Taylor, if you are supervising the comp or you're leading the charge, you're not just the animation director. You're also kind of like the final look and feel. Like the guardian of that. Like at each step, you're making sure that everything kind of like at the color phase, it's all matching. And at the texture phase, it's all fitting together as well.

Taylor: Yeah. I think that Sarah Beth and I are definitely attached at the hip there. I definitely will check things against her style frames like I possibly can, and then run things by her and just be like, does this look final to you? And then sometimes she'll jump in and say like, this is too warm. Can we make a light leak happen over here? Or any art direction ideas that she has obviously.

Ryan: That's great. I mean, that brings up a good question, actually, Sarah. With you originating the story and the kind of look, and the general pacing of everything, as you're starting to get in these pieces from all these different people using so many different tools, like they're all trying to match your look, but they have their own kind of things they're bringing to it as well.

Was there any part of that process that surprised you that affected the end result? Like was there something that someone did in animation or something that someone did playing around with timings or anything that you said, oh, as a director, I want more of that, that may not be what you originally intended? Did you see any surprises along the way?

Sarah Beth: Gosh, it's hard to pinpoint because I feel like all of the animators that we brought on, like brought something unique to it. I don't even know where to start, honestly, because ... Okay. For example, Esther Chung, she works at Giant Ant, and she just completely blew us out of the water because she just took on shot after a shot after shot. She did roughs, which is like the base of everything. And she's just so damn good.

I've never worked with Esther before. I just saw her work on Instagram and I was like, "Oh, she's great. Let's bring her on." And then she's like, "Yeah, give me another shot. Give me another shot. Give me another shot." And I was just like, "Okay, yeah, let's put Esther on this and this and this." It was just like, it was really cool. I mean, not everyone had the ability to do that because people want to be a part of the project, but they might have tons of other stuff they're doing, which is totally understandable.

Some people would work on one shot and just really, really like bring it home. Like I think Thea Glad did one shot all by herself. So I don't know if that like, it was necessarily like, and I don't know if I'm answering your question exactly, but I think it's been, more than anything, just like really fulfilling and surprising to work with new people we've never worked with before, and just like be blown out of the wall, honestly, because we have our go-to freelancers for directing gigs. Or Rebekah and Taylor had some freelancers they worked with at IV that they love and brought some of them on. That's all great. But just finding someone online and then just being like, whoa, you're amazing. That has been such a fun part of the project for me.

Ryan: That to me is why these projects are so essential to motion design as an industry because there's so many people out there who just ... I think you said it so well at the beginning, Sarah. Like you're trying to make people feel like a family, feel comfortable, feel like they can maybe even like stretch a little bit in a way that they weren't able to in their day-to-day job or in their freelance. It's so easy to get caught in like a glass ceiling of like, oh, this is what people know me for. This is where I fit in the company. This is what my clients think of. But being in this place and being able to challenge yourself or see how other people are changing themselves and react to it, that's what pushes the industry forward, I think.

And being able to have this place where everybody's doing that for something they believe in, something that they feel like they've felt in their past before, and they want to tell people like that. I don't know if it's fair for me to say like, oh, I'm so proud of you for doing this, but I'm honored to talk to you all about it. It's really humbling to see all of you coming together. Not just for yourselves, because this is obviously a calling card for all three of you, but it's also just these huge opportunities for people to take a turbo boost in their careers to be part of it, to be lifted up by you as well. It's really amazing to see with this big of a group of people.

Sarah Beth: Well, you can be proud of us, Ryan. I'm proud of us.

Ryan: I am.

Sarah Beth: Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think instances like that with Esther or Pip Williamson, who he brought on, just like any ... Honestly, I don't want to specifically call out people because everyone's so good. But those are just the names that came to the top of my head first. But just instances like that, I think are what encouraged us to just continue to add people. Because I'm like, "Oh, well just give them a shot. Let's just see what they can do." And then we're just like, "Okay, let's add another person."

It kind of opened my mind to the way that we can work with the new people. Because I think before that I was just like, "Oh, I just trust these few people." And I want it to look really good, so I'm only going to choose these people. But now it's kind of like, "No, let's throw them on something, see what they got."

Ryan: I hope the more you get to talk about this, Sarah, is that, I hope that comes through with more conversations because in my ... Like I've been around for a little while, and I've seen like the way like early motion design studios operated versus way those same studios have to operate now.

But there was a moment, there was a blip in motion design industry where that's what the whole industry was really about. Was like, you have your core people, your core team, your creative director, your couple art directors, but you weren't just bringing in freelancers as like warm body hires. You were bringing in people who are like, oh, you know what? That person did something cool. I saw something in their portfolio. Or, I saw something on their website. I want to give them a shot. And that's how studios grew and created whole new careers that then created whole new shops. And then those shops passed it along as well because they were given that opportunity.

And I feel like just as a whole industry, not everywhere, but the whole industry's kind of lost a little bit of that. So that has to happen in these kinds of projects now for this moment. And maybe in the future it'll change and it'll be more people like this, but that's what I really, really, truly appreciate about this is that it's doing a lot of the things that motion design always was built to do, and has kind of been lost for a little while.

I wanted to go back actually to something. We talked about the credits list. You've named a couple people. I echo your statement too about I don't want to name specific people, because I wish I could actually ask all 35 of your crew the same thing I asked you. I would love to be able to ask them all, what did you surprise yourself with on this project?

Because that's what these opportunities are great for is being able to find out like, Esther being able to just crank out roughs. You may not have known she could do that, right? Or you may not have known that you could do something to fit into a Sarah Beth Morgan design to actually animate it and make it feel like that. But to me, the thing that's amazing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the majority of this credits, this is an all woman production, correct? Or very close to that.

Sarah Beth: Yes, it is.

Ryan: To me, this is an important thing. I did not want to make this entire podcast about this, but I do want to shine a light on this, because I have encountered in my time as a creative director, so many situations where I've asked, why don't we have more animators on this job that are women? Why is it only women on everyone of my projects just, no offense, Rebekah, the producer?

What I've always had back is like, man, we just can't find them. Or they're just not out there. There just aren't as many that we can trust because we haven't seen them work on a project like this. I also spent all my time going to Otis and going to Calarts and going to ArtCenter, and all these schools, almost every time, more than half of the student population are amazing female artists, amazing female designers, amazing female leaders that just given the opportunity to work with someone like you, and then have that on their CV or on their reel, and get another shot, then they're a director.

Was that a specific thing that you were trying to prove? Because to me, when I watch this and see it look as good, if not better than all the other studios out there, and then I see your guys' credit list, it feels call to arms and a challenge in some ways to all the studios out there who say, well, you know what, we'd love to have three women on staff, but we just can't find them.

Sarah Beth: I'm going to let Rebekah start here. I mean, I could talk about it all day, honestly, but like Rebekah, you do so much resourcing and you kind of have felt the ... Like when you're on a project and you're in a crunch and you're like, oh, just hire this person because we know they're great. And we don't have time. I feel like that happens all the time in this industry. Hopefully, I mean, we've past that.

Rebekah: Yeah. I hope so too. Just because this is becoming less of a male dominated industry, but the truth of the matter was that it has been for quite long time. And so I think the first names that just jump out of everyone's mind are the guys that we all kind of know and love and work with all the time. Absolutely no shade to them. They're wonderful. But it's just been so male saturated that women are just harder to come by.

But the thing is, is like doing the legwork, it's what I do every single day. It's what I have to do to staff all the projects that I'm on. Is challenging, but I feel like once you start finding a few, then they know a few women that are amazing, and they know a few women that are amazing. So it's like, we all kind of know each other a little bit, and you just kind of have to ask a little more and do a little bit more digging to find these humans.

I hope that people can quickly reference our credit list and just take a little mental snapshot, and be like, "Okay, these are like 35 women I can hire like." I mean, there's 10 to 20 more that aren't even on this list that I can think of off the top of my head. You just have to come ask me about them. I'll tell you where they are. Please do.

Ryan: That's what's going happen with this project, I really believe from watching is just that people are going to want to know who did what and which shots were which people. Not only having this out there just as a piece will be great, but being able to see people's reels full of these shots over the next six months to a year, it will have like a resonating effect.

I think your phone is going to get busy Rebekah, just because of it. People want to know, what's Esther's email? I want to find out. I wish there was a way to make it easy for people to find every person that worked on this shot Instagram, just to be able to be like, "Oh, I saw a shot. What shot did that person do? Oh, I can find it really quickly." It's going to quickly become like a hot list for people to start saying like, okay, cool.

Almost to the point where, Sarah, I feel like someone's going to ask you, okay, when are you doing the next one to find the next round of new female talent. I hope that happens, because I feel like it's ridiculous. I mean, I even in the world of like NFTs, which is like a buzzword that some people hate and some people love, I was just seen recently that like only 26% of all NFT sales went to women, which is ridiculous, because there's a lot more women actually making work. But that just means it's the same thing, right? Like in a world where everything's about hustle and everything is about like who you know and networking, it's the same voices somehow being talked about and shared and kind of elevated.

Like there isn't a, unfortunately right now, like a female version of people, right? Not to get in a total world of NFTS, but I think that's just a good like, where the rubber hits the road, people are paying money for artwork someone helps them discover. There's still something. There's a barrier somewhere. Sarah, we've been talking about all these amazing artists and I'm betting you actually have an easy way for everybody to find out who worked on this project and what they contributed. Is there a website or a link or a place everybody should be going?

Sarah Beth: Wow, Ryan, how did you know? Yes. Please check out betweenlinesfilm.com. We're going to have information about screenings because we're going to do a festival run next year. And then we also have a full on team page, which we're just talking about finding all of these amazing women who've been working on the project. Everyone has a photo and a link to their website or Instagram. So everyone should be easily accessible, honestly, through there. Shout out to all of those amazing women.

Ryan: Great. So, betweenlinesfilm.com, that's got the directory. If you want to find than anybody, you want to see who contributed what, that's the place to go. I wanted to ask you, Sarah, specifically, like diving deep into the content itself, can we just talk a little bit just about the writing process for you?

The thing that was amazing to me about this is that it obviously is deeply emotional, right? It's something that's super specific, but to you, as you did this, I'm betting you're discovering that this is universal to a lot of people. Maybe not even just women, but men as well. There's something about this that a lot of people have gone through.

It also just pairs so well with the visuals. I had to watch it three times in a row because the writing itself has like a density that matches the density of the visuals themselves, right? There's so much going on in the film. There's metaphor. There's emotional moments. Like there's acting, something that we don't really get to do very often in motion design. Can you just talk a little bit about the writing process itself? I know you talked about like where it came from, but what was it like to sit down and write this, knowing that someone's going to have to animate all of this?

Sarah Beth: Yeah. So the process was, I think it was before Taylor and Rebekah came on. I believe I had it written before, right?

Rebekah: Yeah. Yeah, you did.

Sarah Beth: Okay. Oh man, it's been so long. Like this tells you how long we've been working on it. Yeah. So I actually partnered with my friend Nirrimi Firebrace. She's an amazing writer like poet/she has this amazing blog where she writes about her life. She's also a photographer and we did like an art trade actually. So I did a logo and some illustrations for her. And then I worked with her to write this poem. She basically wrote it, but I gave her all the context. I told her what happened in my childhood. And I kind of gave her like an overview of where I wanted to take the film.

And she kind of came up with this amazing poem. And then we kind of went back and forth on some things. Like I was like, "Well this feels maybe a little too specific. I want everyone who listens or watches this to feel connected to it in some way." So I did keep it like slightly vague. Like you said, it's not only for women. Any one can have experienced something like this, like this trauma. I was hoping that it would be relatable to most people. And I think that's something that like Taylor and Rebekah also felt when they read it. I'm hoping that carries across through whoever's watching it.

Ryan: It definitely does. I was amazed by how emotional it felt. It's one of these things that sometimes you watch something and you get it within the first three shots and you understand it through like the words and the surface level look, and it's there and you just watch the rest of it because it's beautiful or it's entertaining or it moves fast. But I really felt like I had to watch it two or three times in a row to absorb all of it, because I was just kind of like consumed by it. Like it was almost overwhelming. Which I think is kind of maybe one of the emotions you wanted to express a little bit.

I felt overwhelmed watching it where I was like, oh my God, the next time I watch this, I need to just listen to it, because I'm just paying attention so much to what's happening visually, that I know there's more to this and I want to watch it multiple times. It definitely like hit me really hard, and I didn't know what to expect coming in at all. It was obviously a complete blank slate.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. I mean, shout out to Jen Pague, who did our sound. She does the VO. She's doing the music. She's incredible.

Ryan: I wanted to ask you about her. Yeah. Where did you find Jen? Where did you come across her?

Sarah Beth: When I started searching for the film, for people, I was looking for a female sound designer because I have not worked with one. And I was looking at credits for like Buck or any website that had cool sound design in their animation. And Like I think I found one other sound designer, and she took a while to email me back, so I just kept looking. I just asked, I think I'm in a Slack channel somewhere, and I was like, "Does anyone know a female sound designer? I really want to work with a female sound designer."

And Luis Wes messaged me and he's like, "Oh, I'm taking guitar lessons from this girl on Zoom. And then like I made her an album cover, and she's awesome. She's really good at music. And I think she's trying to get into sound design. Do you want me to give you her info?" And I was like, "Yeah. Awesome." That's kind of how we met Jen.

Ryan: That's amazing. So you're pulling somebody from outside of the industry in, which is even another thing that I wish I want to see more of in motion design. Our industry is such an awesome playground for creatively minded people that don't know what the two words, motion design, mean. Like I feel like there's so many people out there that we would have so much fun working with. You literally just did that. That's awesome.

What was it like working with her? What was that process? You're coming up with the poem. You're figuring out the visual. You're boarding everything, but you know, at some point, the score and the sound design also have to drive some of your decision making as a director. What was that like with her?

Sarah Beth: It's really, really cool seeing her evolve. Because I think when she did start, she wasn't really fully in the industry yet. So she didn't do as much sound design. She's amazing musician already. She has a band. I think it's her solo band, but it's called Vita and the Woolf. So she's like already doing like poppy music. It was really cool. It was really flexible. She was just like, "Yeah, I'm going to give you like three versions, pick what you want."

And then every time she adds more, she's like, "You know what? I decided to switch it up, and tell me if you don't like it, but like I just wanted to play more with it." It just gets better and better. Like Taylor, you and I were like freaking out the other day she started adding like vocals in to the music. I would love to hear how Taylor feels about this too, because we've both been working really closely with her on how it fits with the animation. But yeah, she's incredible.

Taylor: Yeah. I feel like that vocal moment was one of those moments, Ryan, that you were talking about earlier of like a moment that surprised us. That we didn't really ask for or weren't expecting. But when we heard it, we were like, yep, that's great. And it's this like kind of eerie like emotionally hollow ... I don't know, it's like a very sad, but very like overwhelming sound that she's saying, in a really big like animation transition. And so the two of this things together like really pull you in. And we did like a few iterations of it, but honestly like when we heard it, we were like, whoa, like we did not expect that. That was really cool.

Ryan: That's amazing.

Taylor: And then there was another instance in the very beginning of the film that was also unintentional, but she has these like string plucks, and in the very beginning we didn't edit to her plucks at all, but the more that we got into cell animation, like the two of those creaks sort of like ran together organically. And like all of these like moments in the very beginning of the film, like hit on every pluck, and it became this very like musically enveloped entrance to the film. I don't know. It was really powerful.

Rebekah: Yeah. She's a very like musical sound designer. Like her music drive sound design. Kind of similar to like how Wes Slover does it over at Sono Sanctus. Kind of to your point, Ryan, just about bringing people in, it's been really cool to watch Jen bounce around different studios and do sound design work and scoring work, while Between Lines has been going on over the past couple years. Because I feel like it's just so cool to watch her grow in the space and like just absolutely thrive in the space. I feel like she's learning a lot from these other studios and then bringing it back to the project, which just makes the project get better and better and better with each iterations she sends our way. It's been really cool transformation.

Ryan: I love hearing that because I feel like that's ... Because our projects always have to be so fast, and that they're done with, sometimes, a minimal of money that you do have to just go with tried and true or whoever's available. But being able to have the time open up with these, with a much larger timeline, you get to collaborate with people and have these surprises that you would never get.

Especially when you start talking about music and sound. I'm sure Rebekah, you've done this so many times where it's like, the piece is done and it just gets shipped off to the sound house. And then two weeks later it comes back, or three days later it comes back. It's like, "Oh, here's what you got." And you might have the chance to ask for one or two changes maybe, and it's just like, it is what it is. And they almost feel like of two separate pieces.

But if you're getting tailored, like what you're talking about here where the person doing score and sound designs working while you're working, and you can kind of riff off of each other, that's where a piece that's so emotional like this ... The word I kept on hearing in my head when you're talking about is like that, it just sounds haunting, the moment you talk about what it was.

Before I ever even hear what you're talking about, just hearing and be like, oh yeah, there are these moments and there's these string pluck, and her vocals having this like ... All of that. I can already hear in my head what it might sound like, knowing that that would never have happened if it was just a normal streamlined, okay, you have four weeks to get this whole thing done.

It makes me so happy to hear that. Like you're getting a chance to, like Sarah for you as a director getting to play with. That's just another tool for you to play with then. Honestly, like as a creative director in my world, I've very rarely gotten to work with sound the way I always thought we would get to work with them, where we get to try some stuff and have them bring something back and they teach us something about music that we don't know. And then we get to play with it more. And then your next project, you have that as a skill now. You can call on that stuff that you never knew before. It's so crucial to be able to have those like just longer timelines with partners like that. It's awesome.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. It was actually really important to me before we started animating to have like some sort of musical base. So I think when we put the first animatic together, it was just my storyboard frames. And I asked Jen if she could just do a pass, because I was like, "You know what? I know this doesn't make sense. There's no animation there yet, but like here's what's happening in each shot. Can you try something?" I think she did maybe like 30 seconds.

So it was just like the beginning with like those string pluck Taylor was talking about, but it was so nice. Like anyone who was coming onto the project, we could give them this and be like, here's kind of the vibe. Like kind of get immersed in the sound and the music. She has such a powerful voiceover voice. So it just kind like makes you feel emotional, even if there's no visual. I was just like, I just want people who are coming onto the project to like feel it.

Ryan: I love that you can do that. I've used that in the past as a director, but I've had to do it where it's like, I want to make a Spotify playlist. And before you start working on this, listen to these five songs. But to be able to have something that you crafted with someone for like the specific emotion along with roughs, that's such an awesome instinct as a director to have that makes everybody feel like they're involved in a way that normally when you're a freelancer, and you just get the call like, "Hey, do you know After Effects?" "Yeah." "Okay, cool. Can we have you tomorrow?" "Okay. What am I going to do?" And then you show up and you get the assignment. You're just trying to help, but you don't know what to do. It's like the 180 degree difference as a director doing that with your artists. That's amazing.

Sarah Beth: Something else I wanted to bring up was just like reaching out to women who you might not normally. I know we already kind of talked about staffing a little bit, but like half of the people who are on this project, didn't speak up for themselves and like advertise themselves. I had to find them, or Rebekah or Taylor found them. I think that's something as women that ... At least speaking for myself, like as a woman, I've struggled with is advocating for yourself and like exuding confidence, just because you feel like sometimes you're not meant to be there or something.

Actually like reaching out and telling someone they're important and having them contribute something meaningful has been like such a big part of this project. And honestly like at this point, like I'd love to do film festivals and get recognition, but like more than anything, I'm just so happy that we built like a community, and everyone enjoyed working on the project over the awards. Like I'd rather just have a family than win something. It's been really cool.

Ryan: It's something I feel the entire industry needs. People can tell other people like, "Hey, speak up for yourself." Or if you want something, speak up for it. And that's kind of almost like glad handy. And I've seen and heard that a lot, like in the rooms when people are pitching or trying to figure out like what they're going to do next with the studio, but actually like helping lift other people up, and providing a safe space for people to excel like this, and then promoting them afterwards and showing like, hey, world, these people are here. Go and find them. Like that's the kind of thing that resonates so much longer because it lets people understand that, A, they've seen you stand up and do it, but B, they know they can as well. That's the only way we're going to end up changing the shape of the industry in the future right now.

Sarah Beth: Totally. I also don't want to like shade anyone and be like, y'all don't advocate for yourself. Like a lot of them do and like are amazing, but I think they just didn't know about my project. So I had to reach out to them specifically. I was just kind of bringing that up as like, I think that's something I see a lot in animation in the industry. Like hopefully we can help change it a little bit somehow. I don't know.

Ryan: I mean, I think this project will. Just like we said, people will very easily be able to go and see this project. I will say, and I hope this doesn't sound like I'm just grandstanding a little bit, but there are only a handful of projects in my head that are like what I consider like classically specifically. Like something can only been done in motion design. Like I think of like Happiness Factory from Psyop way back in the day. I think of Buck's Goodreads. I think of like what Alma Mater did with Into the Spider-Verse titles. It was something you'd never seen before, and now everyone's trying to catch up to.

Not just because of the fact that this is a all woman production, but in addition to the fact that this is stunning work. It is emotionally resonant. It looks as good if not better than almost anything else you can find. And it was done by these people. In my mind just seeing it, work in progress, what I've seen so far, it fits in the same pantheon of those types of projects to me.

And I think because of that, it'll draw the attention to these people and other people like them as like, oh my gosh! I think you're going to hear a lot of people like, "I never heard of that person, I'm going to go call her." "I never saw that designer, I need them on my job." Just because of them all being together in this one project, the way you're going to promote it once it's all put together.

Sarah Beth: Totally.

Rebekah: I already do it. They're already starting to get booked up.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Same.

Taylor: It's a trickle down effect too, because hiring these women, they know women and there's just a lot of talent that's unseen and unheard of. So trying to sort of lift the cover off of that a bit.

Ryan: And getting them into the positions of leadership as well. Don't just hire the designer to finish off the deck that already has three designs. Bring one of these in as the lead on a project. Let them establish the style. Let them direct the other men in the studio on how to make this look the way they see it, not just a compliment, but the lead.

Rebekah: Oh, man! These women are absolute powerhouses. I can't stress that enough. The amount of like, I mean, tech directors, art directors, animation leads, et cetera, et cetera, that exist in this list is just incredible. Yeah. There's a lot of leadership ability here. Not just potential, but just straight raw talents. Fantastic.

Ryan: And Hopefully we'll see a lot of people come out of this and do their own shots and then pull up more people that are two years behind them to do a short the same way you've done, Sarah Beth.

Taylor: I think also to just like flip the script on the advocate for yourself mentality that people sometimes have, and they're like, well, women should just advocate for themselves. I think it's helpful to flip that script a bit and say like, we should advocate for other people. Like we should see these people and say, "Hey, hire these women. They're very talented. Take a shot. It's not even take a risk, take a shot. They're going to blow you out of the water." And so sort of changing the mentality to just opening the door because they're going to like fly through the door.

Ryan: Exactly. Yeah. They'll knock it down. A big part of it to me too is I always try to imagine what would I do if I was in a studio or if I was running my own shop. And for me, the mentality more is like invest early and invest now in someone that's been on a show like this, because someone else sooner later will because good talent motivated people. Almost always went out.

You want to get on their boat. You want to join them as early as you can, and help promote them and have them be within your system and help everyone else around you. I always hear that so often like, "Oh, I can't take a risk on this project. I can't take a shot right now. This one has to be done well." But I feel like it should be flipped. It should be back to the old mentality of like invest in someone because it may change the entire future and direction of your company when you do.

Sarah Beth: Totally. And like if you're taking a shot on someone, a lot of times those people want to prove themselves and show you that they're really good at what they do. So like of course they're going to put in a bunch of effort and you're going to get an amazing project probably. I can't speak for everyone, but I think like, in general, that's kind of what I've discovered, along this project at least.

Ryan: I want to ask you, Sarah, because I should have asked this at the beginning, but I feel like we know now. I wanted to ask you earlier on like, what were your goals with this? Besides just making something beautiful that's finished. That's your vision. I feel like we got a good idea of what those goals were, but do you feel like you've achieved them? Or you're getting close to achieving them as you finish this out?

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Rebekah and Taylor and I have been talking about festivals next year. Obviously the full film won't be online for quite a while because we need to do our festival run, but Rebekah was just like, "Well, what's more important to you, like going to a really cool festival? Or like going to like an easily accessible festival?" I was like, and I think we all agreed on this, like, of course I want to go to Annecy, France, and like lay on the beach, and show my film to Europeans. Like that's awesome.

But like at the same time, it's not going to be accessible for people on our team. I think like to me, it's a little bit more important. Like let's all meet up in New York and have a little premier and I'll hang out. I think that's like one of our biggest goals is just creating that community and just celebrating the people who are working on the project.

So I definitely think we've been doing a decent job of that, I hope. I don't want to like come off as like, oh yeah, I'm awesome. I advocate for everyone, blah, blah, blah. I just really enjoy working with these people. And I just want to hang out with them and have like a party and like a big sleepover or something, and just like giggle and eat food. I don't know.

One of the things that was a big part of our talk that we just did at Dash, actually, Dash Bash, was kind of going into, this project was built out of trauma, and a lot of the women who've worked on this project have experienced similar trauma. And we're kind of like doing a little bit of healing as we're working on this because we're also, everyone's so warm and welcoming with each other. I'm just hoping that this project can be healing for people who are working on it more than anything, I think.

And then on that note, we've partnered with a nonprofit in California called The Bloom Foundation. Their whole goal is to work with girls in middle and high school and teach them how to take their trauma from bullying and understand it. I need to look more into their actual curriculum, but they have this whole curriculum that works with young girls. We're going to do like a screening with those girls and stuff like that. I think we're hitting all the goals. I don't know. Rebekah and Taylor, do you feel like we're hitting? I'm just rambling.

Taylor: No, honestly, from the outside, it's like really beautiful, not to get too cheesy, but it's really beautiful to know that your goal was to create an intimate and safe space where people create something together. And like through the means of creation can like heal past wounds, either personally, like regarding bullying or just things that we resonate with in the film, alongside you as you're healing too.

I think that you have created a really safe space. And I think that our team feels tethered anytime that we do big team calls or anything like that. It feels like a celebration and a safe place. And like everyone has lifted up. So just as an outside for your own personal goal that you had, like I would say you definitely achieved that.

Rebekah: Definitely.

Sarah Beth: Oh! Thanks.

Rebekah: Yeah. I mean, Sarah, you've just done such a good job of reminding us of the purpose of this film. I think you've done an incredible job of just joining us all together. It's just amazing. And it's also so cool to see, you've said this in our talk at Dash Bash, but you were saying that this whole thing was just born out of this trauma that you had as a kid. And then now it's like evolving into something that's directly healing that trauma in some ways, because like you were once separated from these friends, and now you have this entire community that's just around you and that you support and support you. It just kind of feels a little bit like a full circle moment for you. Is that how you feel or am I putting words in your mouth?

Sarah Beth: No, I think you're right. I mean, obviously trauma's sticks with you for much longer than all of us can hope for. But I definitely feel like so, just like warm inside. Thank you all, everyone's working on the project. It's been really rewarding. I was talking like, oh, I'll be excited to not have a side project anymore, but like that's not true. Like I'll miss this. This feels like a backbone of all the other work I'm doing. I don't know. It's been so rewarding.

Ryan: From the outside, I can tell you, it feels like an important moment in motion design for this to come out. I will be very excited for you to watch this with your first audience that isn't motion designers. That doesn't know anything about you or your journey and your career, and it's just a film. It's just something, telling a story. I'll be excited to hear how you feel after watching that and hearing from people after they've seen it. Because I think that will be a very unique moment for you to experience it.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. Like obviously I'm really excited about festivals, hanging out with friends, all that. I'm so excited to sit down with some middle school and high school girls and watch this with them and just like see how they feel. Obviously I don't want to create any trauma for them, but I'm hoping that if they're experiencing something like this, like they can kind of look at like this team of women who've worked on it together, and see some of those successes and how we've moved past some of our trauma that hopefully it can inspire them too.

I mean, I'm sure there's some artists in there, but they're not career artists at this point. So I'm just very excited to see that. That's just like mind blowing. It's like a full 180 or 360. 180, 360, one of those. 180. So yeah, I think that's so true. Like I'm very excited to see that. That's great.

Ryan: I definitely think you'll achieve your goals. I can't wait to see this finished. Rebekah, Taylor, I didn't want to leave you out on this. So I want to just ask you before we close, just one question for each of you. Is there something through this process that, from my point of view, seems very different than your day-to-day working for a studio. Is there one thing from this process that you've learned that you didn't expect that you're going to take with you on your next project or for the next stage in your career?

Taylor: I think something about me personally and that affects my work because I'm deeply a perfectionist, and something that I've learned on this project is to loosen my grip on those tendencies, and see people coming out with incredible work and just sort of, instead of looking at it with a critical eye first and thinking like, oh, how could we improve this? Like looking at it as a non animator first, and just saying like, oh, that was a really amazing choice. I wonder why they chose that. Or, I'm surprised by that.

Like I really like it in sitting with something, which has, I think influenced my directing tendencies and my taste and my criticality. I don't even think that's the word, but yeah, I think just taking the harness off of artists that we can put on people to like ... In the stress of a moment, especially on like studio gigs rather than passion projects. It can be like, oh, we have to do it a specific way. And it has to look like this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like kind of taking a step back and seeing like, well, with the product that we just got, what's amazing about it?

Ryan: That's amazing. Rebekah, anything on your end?

Rebekah: I talked a little earlier on about this big roadmap that I kind of put out in front of us. And hopes and dreams of following. None of it turned out exactly the way that I planned. I think for me, there's this gratitude of things not going according to plan, and allowing them to take shape as they go. That was just such a pleasant experience for me as a producer that is so concerned about making sure that things go according to plan. It was just such like a freeing and exciting experience to have just like super loose expectations of how this thing should go and allowing people to do their best and to do what they want.

I don't know. Like as a producer, kind of our job is to provide this little playground that has little boundaries around it so the creatives can play, but we also have like some deadlines. We have things to do, and clients to impress and all of these things. It just felt nice to watch people play a little bit more uninhibited as they would before. And then on top of that, I just feel like I found some incredible friends throughout this process as well. And personally just feel like a better human being because I know them now. As corny as that is, but it's just Sarah Beth who just collected a wonderful bunch of human beings.

Sarah Beth: Yeah. I will say, sorry, really quick. I will say, Taylor and Rebekah, we weren't really close friends before this. I feel like now we're like best friends. I'm just going to say it, we're best friends now, right?

Taylor: We're definitely best friends.

Ryan: I don't want to put words in your mouth at all, but I was trying this whole time while I was listening to you all three working together and seeing the work, talking with you, I was like, man, what would be a good studio name if the three of these people just decide to start a shop together? I think Best Friends is a really good shop name.

Taylor: Best Friends.

Sarah Beth: Best Friends.

Taylor: We actually have a paper doc that has like made up studio names if we would ever have one, and it has like 50 things on it. We are not planning on making a studio. I don't think that you should put this in the...

Ryan: Yeah. We'll take it out or we'll make sure, we'll put a disclaimer there, not starting a studio.

Taylor: Disclaimer.

Ryan: But if they did, if they did, it would be-

Sarah Beth: Best Friends.

Ryan: That's amazing. Well, thank you all three so much for all your time. I really do think just from seeing it now and knowing what the final look is going to be, I do feel like this is going to hit, at least for me personally, that kind of like very small club of projects that when someone says, what is motion design? Or what can motion design be? There's a very select group of things that I will tell people or send to people like, oh, you don't know what this is? It's not animation, it's not filmmaking, it's this other thing. I definitely feel like Between Lines is going to be in that list whenever somebody asks me.

Sarah Beth: Well, I'm very honored. Thank you.

Ryan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much all for your time. And betweenlinesfilm.com, you have to go and check it out.

Sarah Beth: Yes. Thank you so much for having us.

Rebekah: Yeah. Thanks, Ryan.

Taylor: Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan: I cannot wait for the rest of the world to see Between Lines, Sarah Beth, Taylor and Rebekah, along with the team that they've assembled, have really put together something special. So while we wait for the full piece to come out, please go and check betweenlinesfilm.com, and check out the teaser. Look at all the contributors, and spread the word about this really incredible project that really shows off what motion designers can do when they step away from the day-to-day grind of just working on a project that helps sell a product for someone. This is the kind of project that we love focusing on with this podcast, where we always try to inspire you, introduce you to new people and just make the day-to-day a little bit better. Until next time, peace!

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