Reason4Math: Selection of Short Works

A collection of short animations from my TikTok channel, working to make concepts in math palpable, beautiful, and relevant.

  • Beau Janzen
    Director
  • Beau Janzen
    Writer
  • Beau Janzen
    Producer
  • Beau Janzen
    Key Cast
    "Narration"
  • Beau Janzen
    Animation
  • Beau Janzen
    Sound Design
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Web / New Media, Other
  • Genres:
    Math, SciComm
  • Runtime:
    15 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 3, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Beau Janzen

Beau Janzen has created a unique background for himself in education and animation production.

He has over thirty years of experience in visual effects production and has served on such projects as Game of Thrones, Westworld, Stranger Things, The Walking Dead, Batman vs Superman, Man of Steel, the VFX Oscar-winning Life of Pi, and won an Emmy for his CG supervision on the show Gotham.

In addition, Janzen has a strong background in education and math with a Master’s Degree in Instructional Systems Design, nearly ten years of classroom experience teaching mathematics, and a position as guest researcher at Berlin’s Techniche Universitaet Department of Special Research Projects in Differential Geometry and Quantum Mechanics.

He has written and animated internationally-acclaimed educational videos including Bugbottle, Mesh, Quantus, and The Shadows of Alexandria.

Janzen currently serves as Education Lead for the VFX program at the Gnomon School for VFX and Animation for Film and Games, which in 2020 was ranked the #1 Visual Effects school in the world by the Rookies Awards for the fourth consecutive year

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

In October of 2022, I decided to shift my work from longer format projects and dive into creating shorter form content for TikTok. In just over two years, my channel @reason4Math has over 1.1 million followers.

Having received accolades mostly from academic and film festival circles, I wanted to bring my work to a wider audience and prove that math content can be compelling and draw hearts and minds even in the maelstrom of social media.

In my educational work, I strive to bring an artist’s sensibility of storytelling and connecting with an audience. All too often, educational media is driven by a sense of reductionism to compress information into simple bite-sized chunks to memorize. I believe that concepts in math and science, which are too often viewed as dry and lifeless, are in fact compelling, personally relevant, and hold a special beauty. Learning should not be the mere consumption of random empirical facts, but a lifelong process of engaging with powerful ideas, and I see my role as an artist and filmmaker is to draw in an audience to these powerful ideas and establish an intellectual as well as emotional connection. Ultimately, I hope the impact of my work transcends the specific topics covered and helps spark in my audience new ways of seeing the world and a broader sense that complex ideas are palpable and beautiful.