Sound & Color | Help us reach the finish line!

Hello!

If you’ve found your way to this donation page, you probably already know a little bit about Sound & Color. The 12-minute experimental documentary follows synesthetic artist Sarah Kraning as she collaborates with our team to animate her visual experiences of sound. Check out the trailer above, or description below to get a better feel for the project.

We are on track to finish this film in the next few months, with our last shoot lined up and our team eager to reach the finish line. Most of the film is completed, including much of the animation, which looks absolutely incredible and, more importantly, is accurate to Sarah’s synesthesia. The animation process has been both technically challenging and profoundly personal, and we’ve been capturing the process along the way.

Your donation will help us finish this film, and go towards:

Our final shoot (equipment, travel, insurance)
Completing the animation process (animator, software)
Editing the film (editor)
Sound design
Color grading
Original score
Film festival submissions
Compensation for our incredible team who has been tirelessly working with little pay!

OTHER WAYS TO HELP

Can't donate? No worries! There are so many ways you can support this project. You can:

Email or text our donation link to your friends and family!
Follow us on Instagram to keep up with our team!
Fill out this form with ideas or leads for our team!

** Do you think your company or organization might be interested in a commercial partnership or philanthropic donation? Fill out the form above or reach out directly to alissafagin2@gmail.com **

THE STORY

Sarah Kraning sees a private light show every time she listens to a song. Like 2-5% of the population, she has synesthesia, a neurological trait where information meant to stimulate one sense sets off several instead. Those with synesthesia (“synesthetes”) might taste shapes, hear colors, or smell names. Sarah sees colorful, textured, moving shapes when she hears sounds, but only registered the uniqueness of her perception in her twenties.

Sarah is a prominent artist and activist who represents synesthesia on canvas through bold paintings of music. With a following of over 800,000, her work provides a much-needed platform to spread awareness about the under-researched, neurodivergent trait that distanced her from classmates and peers growing up. Although Sarah’s art effectively portrays part of her internal experience, capturing the dimensionality and movement of her sound perception is still limited on canvas. But in her lifelong quest for understanding, Sarah remains determined to more powerfully convey the inner workings of her mind to non-synesthetes. This is where Sound & Color comes in.

THE PROJECT

Sound & Color centers the unique process of creating a scene that blends footage of Sarah in a black void with striking synesthetic animations, depicting the phenomena she sees in real-time. An original soundscape that fuses musical and everyday sounds anchors this composition, acting as the launch pad for each animated moment. The black void is particularly apt because Sarah’s “mind space”—where she mentally sees synesthetic shapes and colors—is also black. So this custom environment seamlessly blends the two worlds she constantly inhabits. We see Sarah interacting with the soundscape, all the while filming the parallel process of creating this unique piece.

While the film revolves around the creation of this animated scene and culminates in its completion, it is contextualized and grounded by footage of Sarah painting in her studio. It also follows her meetings with the animator, where through their meandering, philosophical conversations, he inches closer to the enigmatic goal of representing Sarah’s subjective perceptual experience. Much like Sarah’s synesthesia, the footage takes on a rich, multisensory quality, favoring textural details over traditional coverage. An intimate audio interview with Sarah weaves these components together, providing essential background about synesthesia and musings about the significance of this animation process to the synesthesia and broader neurodivergent communities.

OUR VISION

In the tradition of documentary films like Procession and The Act of Killing, the process of creating this film is central to its story. Creating art is not just about the end result—it is a raw, cathartic process that lays bare the human experience, transforming personal expression into something universal. Focusing on the animation process expands Sound & Color beyond Sarah’s story and into an exploration of broader philosophical themes like individual perception, neurodiversity, and the human urge to be understood.

Sound & Color taps into a new wave of neurodivergent storytelling, where neurodivergence is neither seen as a disadvantage nor romanticized as a "superpower." Synesthesia is both underrepresented and misrepresented in film, so we aim to raise awareness while presenting neurodiversity as nuanced and natural. Sound & Color offers a layered representation of synesthesia and neurodivergence through its exploration of Sarah’s animation process. We hope to reach synesthetes with this film, and harness Sarah’s dedicated audience to engage those interested in neuroscience, neurodiversity, and the intersection of art and science. Ultimately, We hope the exercise of trying to understand Sarah’s mind sparks a desire in viewers to approach others with genuine curiosity and empathy.

Thank you for reading!

If you've made it this far, we appreciate you. We're so excited to make this film happen with your help!

Cheers,

The Sound & Color team