What is the film about?

“What even is a TERF?” is an animated history of the term “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists”. Taking cues from the origins of radical feminism in the 1960’s and utilizing visual metaphor throughout, this film aims to educate a broad audience to the nature and danger of the TERF ideology.

What influenced it?

When I was approached by VideoOut to make this film, my instinct was to avoid it being a character-driven piece. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic (for myself and my community), I wanted to stay away from any design that could be interpreted as caricature or in any way offend. I also wanted to give everyone, no matter their background, a visual way “in” to the subject matter, which led to me design this film as a serious of visual metaphors and vignettes. I like to think of them as graphic dioramas. The aesthetic itself is influenced by 1960’s graphic design, as a nod to the origins of radical feminism.

A little background information...

I made this film because anti trans hate and rhetoric is a a clear and present danger for me and my community. It also saddens me to see a splintering of causes between this small subset of feminists and the LGBTQIA+ community. Not to be reductive, but the zero sum game mentality that drives “us vs them”; this idea that more rights for one group threatens rights for another, is deeply troubling to say the least. I don’t identify as an activist per se, but this film was a way for me to do something in support of my community and make my voice heard using the tools that I have: design and animation.

How was the film made?

This films was made using Adobe CC. My initial design explorations and storyboards were made in Photoshop. Final designs were done in Illustrator, and I used Overload by Battle Axe to push those to After Effects (and back) for animation. I also used the Motion Tools plugin by Motion Design School. Final exports were run through Media Encoder.