Black Math: “A Tale of Two Zip Codes”

What determines how long we live? The surprising thing to us was that adjacent communities can have a 15 year-difference in life expectancy. Your preconditioned brains might attribute this to dramatic factors like drugs and violence (ours did). But the causes are actually more sinister: heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, all of which can be linked to Chronic Stress and stem directly from economic inequality. So we are all implicated... and we hope you learn as much from this 4-minute video as we did.

Thanks to George Takei for lending us your voice!

Jeremy Sahlman: Creative Director
Evan Fellers: Executive Producer
Claire Pacacha: Producer
Dustin Sylvia: Editor
Kevin Laba: Music Supervisor
Lead Animator: Steve Madden

Composers: Kevin Laba, Vincent Pedulla, Keith Kenniff

Animators: Steve Madden, Louie Jannetty, Kory Demers, Chad Essley, Drew Newman, Kyle Predki, Matt Everton, Milton Ladd, Minna Choung, Jigyu Yoon, Camille Vincent, Samesha (Singletary) Dean, Sam Aprea, Soren Selleslagh, Kenneth Dahlin

Designers: Steve Madden, Louie Jannetty, Kory Demers, Brian Gossett, Mark Kulakoff, Pete McDonald, Stephen Kelleher

The Goal · Create a 4 minute animated short film about life expectancy in adjacent neighborhoods or communities and how root causes makes them different.

Strategy · During my internship at Black Math in 2016, I got to help animate various pieces of this short using the good old method of frame by frame 2D animation and After Effects. We worked closely with the designers to bring the illustrations to life and weave transitions together to tell the story.

Results · A viral health video featuring George Takei as our narrator. Also getting staffed picked on Vimeo and Motionographer.

A Tale Of Two Zip Codes