In 2020, I was awarded a prestigious Breakthrough Foundation Award to make a short documentary on the late great Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg. Weinberg is quite a legend in the field of theoretical physics, having discovered key findings about forces in the universe and laid the foundations for the Standard Model. On top of that, he was also a prolific writer and science communicator. I was tasked with the impossible challenge of fitting all that into a two-minute film! How does one begin?!

Well, I started by researching the man and reading his books. I wanted to shed light on him in a way that no one had ever done before. When I felt I had enough common knowledge of his contributions, I conducted weekly Zoom interviews with him.

Steven wanted control over his image and requested that he only be represented in photograph form. The more we talked, however, the more I realized how prominent themes of time and lifespans were to our conversations. I wanted the leniency to show a person growing through life, and so I opted to depict a suggested femme “student” or “colleague” of Steven’s. Despite Steven and I sharing the same hometown of the Bronx, I decided to name this new character Brooklyn.

Drawing from collected transcripts of words actually spoken by Steven, I collaged his statements into a short, structured ideation that summed up as much of him as I could.

3D modeling by Daniel Xiaobo Ma.

Final character designs by Ann Lee. 2D Character Animation by Emily Halaka.

Concept Art, Design, & Direction by me.