We have the pleasure of sharing the adventures of Saraswathi “Vani” Balgam -- from pioneering visual effects in India to founding her studio, Dancing Atoms, and mentoring future talents. 

From her early beginnings in the visual effects industry in India, Vani's drive and curiosity propelled her into careers at Rhythm & Hues and DreamWorks. Vani founded Dancing Atoms, a boutique studio that focuses on representing India and Southeast Asia, with a vision for bringing culturally unique content to a global audience.

Join us as she shares her adventures in trust and transitions from visual effects to documentary filmmaking and children’s programming -- and building women’s creative leadership opportunities like the Woman Creators Program in collaboration with Epic Games. 

Guest: Saraswathi “Vani” Balgam, CEO/Creative Director, Dancing Atoms; Creative producer, Creator and Consultant; Head of the Women in Animation (WIA) India Collective, President of ASIFA India and founder of Epic’s Women Creators Program

Guest: Saraswathi “Vani” Balgam, CEO/Creative Director, Dancing Atoms; Creative producer, Creator, and Consultant; Head of the Women in Animation (WIA) India Collective, President Emeritus of ASIFA India, and founder of Epic’s Women Creators Program

Saraswathi ‘Vani’ Balgam is an Indian-born writer, director, self-taught photographer, and filmmaker. Her Indian and Southeast Asian cultural heritage and her experiences and memories from being an avid global traveler help her portray common humanity and unique journeys within her characters and stories. Her exposure to the film industry started at a young age when her father started a 2D animation studio within their family home, intending to create films that involved rich Indian culture and heritage for a global audience. This foundation of creativity is from her father, as well as her mother who is also vividly creative. While Vani started her career as a business development executive for CMM Studios Limited in Mumbai, India, she slowly rose through the ranks within the Southeast Asian film scene and was appointed as Executive Director and Founder of the Rhythm and Hues Asian Studios. While executive director, she managed employees across four studios in Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Taiwan which produced VFX for many major Hollywood films, such as ‘Life of Pi’, and ‘The Golden Compass’, which each won Rhythm and Hues Studios the Academy Awards for Best VFX in 2013 and 2008 respectively. Vani also served as the Head of Creative Management and Training for Dreamworks Studios in Shanghai, China. Vani founded Dancing Atoms Studio in 2015 to create amazing stories with unforgettable and different characters. She actively encourages community development all around the world. 

She is currently the president of Women in Animation - India Collective. She was also the president of Asifa India, a non-profit organization that has been dedicated to the art of animation for over two decades. Vani has been a mentor for several Epic Games Unreal Engine Fellowships programs and has produced over 120+ short films. Vani coined the Unreal Epic Games Women Creators Program for India & SE Asia intending to inspire and train women creators and form a community of creators. She was also the Creative Program Director of the UEFN Women Creators Program.

Links:

• Dancing Atoms: https://www.dancingatoms.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancingatoms1/ 
• Vani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanibalgam/ 
• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3752718 
• 2021 Article: https://www.animationxpress.com/animation/saraswathi-vani-balgam-delves-about-her-journey-current-projects-and-everything-in-between/
• 2023 Animation World Network: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/saraswathi-buyyala-balgam-unreal-engine-paving-way-women-creators

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Bonnie, you so inspired me at

SIGGRAPH that you had a room

transfixed with your life experience, with great

graphics for it, but also such imaginative

risk-taking to build new things from scratch

around the world. It was totally fascinating. So I'm extremely excited about having you

on the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. Gigi, this.

This is all my pleasure. Excellent.

So can you start us off and explain

what you're doing now? And is it all

in dancing Adams? Is it beyond dancing Adams now,

what are your adventures right now? So I

am running a boutique studio in Los Angeles,

and I'm focusing on telling stories, of

course, mostly from India and Southeast

Asia, to bring them to the rest of the world.

So that's really my focus, is how do I

transcend people? How do I transcend

experiences that I have had or I know people have had

in these parts of the world and bring animation

content, preschool shows, feature films,

games, but with a very strong voice,

which is mine. From India. And so

you are living a multinational life. So even though you have your studios

here in LA, we're catching you right now in India.

Where else is the footprint of your life right now?

Oh, my God. I would say Los Angeles and India are the two big

footprints right now. But if I could put another one, that would be

up in the Himalayas. Oh, wow. Okay,

can you start us backwards? Let's track backwards

in life. And can you tell us about

Vannie when she was about 16? Was she a

creator? Was she a

filmmaker? Was she a storyteller? Was

she patient? Was she adventurous? What was Vani

at 16? I think she was

fearless. I think she was

untamed and fearless. I look back and say, oh, my

God, I was so gutsy. I had no concept

of fear. I was

not scared of anything, and I

did exactly what I wanted to do. And

I didn't think too much about the consequences

of right and wrong, whether it's the right decision or the wrong

decision. But I think I was also, at the same time,

very spiritually grounded.

So I feel like I felt free. I

felt very free.

So what did the 16 Year old you think you

wanted to do when you grew up?

Oh, wow. I think the 16 year old wanted

to. I think I

just had very simple dreams, to be very honest.

I just wanted to be independent. I wanted to be

financially very strong. I never wanted to

be dependent financially on

anybody, and I was willing to do whatever it

takes. And I

didn't think a job was a good job or a bad job or a small

job. I just knew that I had to do what

was there to get moving.

And my dreams were also very simple. They weren't as

big as they are today.

They were very simple. I think I wanted a very simple life. I

wanted to be happy. I wanted to be with my friends

and just be financially independent. I think I would joke with my

friends of, when I grow up, I want to wear shorts,

and I want to have my own apartment, and I just want to listen to

music all day. Wow.

You know, being in India or growing up in India, wearing

shorts was, like, a big deal. That meant,

like, you have

was. That was a massive, big thing for me.

Were your parents creative? Did they live creative lives,

or are you stepping into their footsteps? Okay.

My father, I think from the

last memory or the first memory that I had of him

was that he was a man with colors. He would always

have sketch pens, and he would just use

sketch pens to continue drawing very

intricate little patterns that were Indian patterns. And then he would create

these forms and images around

it. And there was always paint in

the house. There's always colors in the house. And whether we were

painting walls, just even these white walls,

he would just simply continue to paint them with different colors.

My mother loved. She still

does a lot of paintings, like flowers and patterns

and stitching. And so it was filled with Arts and hobies

all the time. So what did they expect

you to do? I

think, like every other parent in

India, I think they wanted it. My mother, I would

say, wanted me to live a very stable life. Like, she would be.

Like, she would have very minimal expectations, like,

get your education, get married, and you can

be a schoolteacher and teach your kids when they come back

home. So she had very,

okay, this is going to be a trajectory in life. And

my father was the wild card. He

dreamt for us about winning Oscars. He

dreamt about us driving in multiple

cars, and he dreamt about

the unachievable. And my mother

was always grounded, so I don't know where

we ended up. But they wanted cars.

Piece. Why multiple cars? I don't know. I think

he was just always fascinated. He had traveled around the world,

and he would always be like, I can totally see you in that car

and that car and that car. And I, till date, don't

understand that fixation with cars, because I'm not a car

person.

But for him, I think the car basically

meant independence and freedom,

probably a little bit of luxury, but I thought it meant more

freedom more than anything else. For me, it

resonates because there's this great exercise. What would it

be for you to feel wealthy and successful? And I grew up in a

relatively poor family, and so the idea of having

a second car was an indication of freedom and

wealth. And so when I suddenly did that exercise,

we ended up just realizing, I just need a junker in the front that

I don't drive to feel wealthy as I was second car. And we actually did

that. So having multiple cars, totally. I grok

that entire sentiment, but from my life.

So when it came time, as school

teacher, Oscar, college life,

what were your first set of choices that you took to leave the household?

As much as my father was a big dreamer and wanted to

do a lot of great big things,

we were financially very, very strained.

He didn't have enough money to send me and my

brother to school. We couldn't afford

college. So I

think we

came to understand life and at a very, very young

age, probably too early, maybe for our

own good. But the one thing that I saw was

that my parents were borrowing money

to make things meet, to make

ends meet. And that's something that I never wanted.

I said, this is a big no.

I don't have to achieve really big things in life. I don't have to have

multiple cars, multiple houses, win

Oscars, but I definitely do not want

to be dependent or

borrowing. And that was very strongly

instilled by my mother because she

came from, I think both of them came from very

minimal backgrounds.

So I felt more the desire to say,

whatever I do, I want to be standing on my

2ft, however small that is.

So what were your first steps out of the family

home? I got a

job, probably like at 17 or

something, to leave. We were

in a city called Madras, which is currently called

Chennai, and I left home.

I was 17, probably getting close to

18 or even less. And I moved to Mumbai,

which is Bombay. And I started working

in the visual effects and animation industry as a coordinator.

So I used to go to the set,

the film set, and then pick up data for visual

effects, for green screen, or to do some

effects or very simple work.

How did that walk in your door? How did you step into

that space? I have no idea,

actually. I think it was

just more that I've always wanted to be a filmmaker, and I was never

given the opportunity to be in the direction team

because there were actually no

woman in that space in India at that time.

And it was such a scarcity that

they were very scared to take any female

chances. Like, they were worried more about the risk of having a

woman on a movie set. And so

the visual effects was the closest that I could have been

in touch with live action filmmaking. And so

I taught myself a couple of things thanks to my brother,

who was a wizard, picking up things and putting things

together. And he'd be like, this is how it's done, and this is what is

happening. And I'd be like, okay, great. Then

I can be good at collecting data. I'm not a strong

technical person, but I'm creative, so I'm going to jump into that

bandwagon. And I said, I will do this, this, and

this. And they were like, okay, great. Nobody has said they want to do that,

so come on board. So it literally happened like

that. So how did the next parts of your

journey go? I mean, you ended up at rhythm and

Hughes and helping them build a lot. What was the journey from

that starting point to that bigger

experience? I would say,

know all these experiences that happened

kind of put

actually, I really don't understand how any of this happened.

But I was in the studio in Mumbai, Bombay,

and there was an email that came from Ruthman, you saying that they wanted

to come and visit and send some work to India. And I

was, you know, and it was a dial up

connection. I couldn't see anything back then. Like,

all the little photographs were coming up, and they were taking 3 hours to pop

up on the computer. And finally, when they came,

I couldn't fathom that these were the studio that I had made

and a movie called Babe, where they had won the

Academy Award. And I was like, wait, what is all of this?

And who are these people? And why do they want to come to India?

And why do they want to work here with Indians that are not

trained or talented to provide those very high end services?

So I basically spoke the truth and asked them those questions.

And that's basically how rhythm and Hughes started. A

year later, I think when they finally

came and said, well, we want you to run rhythm and Hughes. And I was

like, are you kidding? Like, I'm not the right person?

And they were like, no, come on, and set up the

company. So why did you think that

you weren't the right person, and why did they think you were the

right person. That you need to ask them? But

I'll tell you, I had all the reasons why I was not the right

person. I

hadn't graduated from school. I was not an MBA. I

had no idea what a business is. I had

never run a studio in my entire life. I was always working

for somebody else.

I never set up anything on my own before.

I don't think anybody reported to me in that

particular way that now I, and I never set up an entity

legally before in my life. There were so many things that

I had not done before. Um,

so I don't know.

I think, I think it just happened where

they said they basically, John

Hughes and Richard Castaldo from

Rhythm & Hues back then, they

had an interview with me and asked me a bunch of questions, and they were

like, what would you do? How would you do this? How would you

run a company? And I was so

cocky.

I was so full of myself. I'd run it from my apartment and they'd

be like, are you sure you'll run it from your apartment? And why would you

do that? I'm like, I want to save the costs. I'm like,

really? Did I really think these things through

before answering those questions? I have no idea.

But the very young person

in me had seen a lot that my father had

done. And I think all the education

of the choices that I made,

I think were subconsciously coming because of

what my parents had gone through or what my father had gone through in

setting up businesses in India.

So this was about 2000. 2001,

right. So that was an era that

was just after Napster, that there was

disruption happening in various industries, but still the

early stages. And then you spent more than a decade then with

rhythm and Hughes. What did you bring to

that adventure? How much did it change you?

And what was the whole, I mean, that in itself could be an hour

long conversation. But what's kind of the nexus of

that experience for you? I think

it, on the,

on the human front, I think I understood what trust

is

and what trust can do.

So when John kind of hired me over

a phone call, and I had never been to the US before,

and here was an Academy Award winning

studio, and he said,

you're going to legally set up a rhythm in Hughes in India?

I didn't understand that. But

when I understood it, I think it absolutely

changed me, because

trusting somebody that you don't know, trusting somebody that you've never

met, trusting somebody

is no joke.

And then believing that they will deliver

is another. I mean, like, how, how do you, how

do you do all of these things in a

world where it tells you not to trust, where it tells

you not to believe? And

culturally, we were so different. I

grew up my entire life in India, never traveled outside of

IndIA, and John never came to

India. So he never met any. Never. He never

came to India before. So I

think the biggest takeaway was,

how do you reciprocate to someone who trusts you,

and then how do you expand that trust to everything else that

you build?

How do I put it? Like, when the seed,

when the foundation is trust, then

everything has to start with that and end with that.

Every day had to start with that and end with that. So every person that

I recruited after that, every person

that we welcomed into the studio,

every transaction that we made, was purely

coming from that, that I trust you, that you will do this.

And so that was the biggest.

Yeah, I think that was the biggest takeaway and continues to be the biggest takeaway

in my transactions as I move forward is I have to trust you

to do what I need to do in my life. And

that's the best that I can do, is trust you.

And that's the beauty of it. The magic that happened after

that was unbelievable because

we started trusting our next set of people and then the next set of people,

and then everybody started trusting each other. And the energy

that we shared at rhythm and Hughes India was just brilliant.

Was just so beautiful that there

was never any kind of politics, there was never any kind of

backstabbing. There was no room for that.

So we just loved doing our work, and

we continue to do the best quality of work. And

we partnered with our studios in the

US. We worked so hard, and

we ended up winning a couple of Oscars again.

So for people who don't know animation or why in the world

animation would be working in India, can you talk about sort

of the relationship and work patterns

that were of that era?

I think visual effects was very nascent, or it

was very upcoming in India. Back then, like, we're talking

2000 something, very early 2000,

there was a lot of passion. There was a lot of

art. There was understanding, but there was no technology. And

then if the technology was there, the technical expertise

wasn't there because we hadn't delivered that many films.

So to start something from scratch

and to build everything from scratch was very

hard to educate people, to

appreciate people, to value people. Those were the

things that did not exist back then.

People were so threatened if

one person left the studio and went to the other studio because

there was a lot of insecurity, and we took that out of our system. We

said, it's okay. You should be here only if you're happy. If you're

not happy, then you have the complete right to move

outside and do whatever you like. And so those kind of

conversations kind of built something

very beautiful in India, I would say.

There was also, though, a benefit of being halfway around the

clock as well for fast turnaround projects. So it wasn't

that you guys worked by yourselves, but you were

intertwined with fast moving projects that were based in the United

States. Right. It was literally, I think we were

the first studio in the entire world that

did what we did, that it was not an outsourcing model.

It was the same studio. We were one

studio. We were just, like, in two different places. And then we became

three, and then we became four. We became five eventually. So

from India, we went to Malaysia. We started another studio in Malaysia, another

studio in Taiwan, but we tried and maintained that

same thread. It was like

a pearl necklace, but all the pearls were strung to that

invisible string. So we basically worked as

one studio. And it was beautiful. Like the supervisors

that were there in LA, how much they invested their

time and energy and trust in the artists in India, and the same

way, vice versa, that the artists in India, Malaysia, and

Taiwan invested their time and energy in partnering.

And it was a true partnership in so many beautiful ways.

So how did you transition from that

experience to your next adventure?

Was. I mean, so how did that

close and how did the next open, and how did that change for

you? I think

I've spent about 13 some years at rhythm and

Hughes, and it was time for

the next big step to happen.

And so when DreamWorks had reached

out many times to come and join them and to lead their

studio in Bangalore, I was always like,

no, I'm doing what I'm doing here. I don't think I should dilute my

energy and jump places. I was very adamant about

moving, but then they finally offered a position

that I absolutely loved, which was to come and be a part

of the leadership team in the visual development and

storytelling. And I was like, oh, my God, that's exactly

what drives me. That motivates me. And

they were very amazing. They were like, come to

Glendale, come work out of here, go to Shanghai, work

with the OW team, Oriental DreamWorks team, and then keep coming

back to the DreamWorks office in LA. So I was hired to

be in LA, and then eventually they said, go to

Shanghai and help champion the Chinese talent

there. And that was such a brilliant experience

that I had because I'd already

traveled to Malaysia and worked there for about five or six years.

I'd been in Taiwan for about three to four years. But

China is a completely different.

It was completely different because,

so I would say they're so

proud of what they do. And I never felt that with other

countries as much as I felt that with China.

And the language was also another very big thing because they were

very shy and they wouldn't speak in English. We

always had a translator, so that was a challenge. But it was also amazing

that they stuck to their roots. They really

felt like they could communicate and they could get others

to listen to what they had to communicate at their terms. And I was

like, there was such a big learning experience to say,

you respect who you are culturally.

You don't have to change, you just be who you are.

And I love that. I love that about a lot of the

things that I learned from there. The one thing I do have

to say is having worked with over

2000 OD people in the visual effects, some of the top people in

the visual effects and animation industry in the world,

and traveled all these places, I believe that talent is

universal.

It just takes a little bit of love, it just takes a little bit of

trust and the magic happens.

And that is the learning that I have taken and I continue to take every

time I speak to someone because I see the potential.

I see the potential and I'm amazed, like,

oh, my God, how did this happen in five weeks? How did this

happen in such a short time? So I'm always,

so this was a. Step into Vani as storyteller

and story curator. How did that then

work its way into now? Vani as

independent voice studio

creator, how did that journey continue?

My time at DreamWorks was amazing because I was so close to

storyboard artists. And every day I was

writing, every day I was in this creative

space and it wouldn't stop. We were

constantly generating ideas to pitch, to

present, to listen. And my

role as the person that was in charge of all these

departments, I just couldn't stop thinking and writing.

And my father had passed away and I

remember I was sharing my dad's experience with somebody

at remarks, and they said, oh, my God, you got to tell that story.

That's the story I want to see on screen. And I was like, you're choking,

right? And they're like, no. And these were very senior

people at DreamWorks. And they're like, unless you don't write it,

unless you don't put it out there, how is anything going to happen?

And that was the,

I think somewhere that

spark kind of took space.

I just don't know when it happened, but I knew

I had to do something. I knew I had to

tell stories that had that original

voice and I didn't know how to do

it on my own. 2ft I have always worked for very big

studios, Academy Award winning studios, but

to say, I'm going to try this. And so

dancing Atoms happened. So what

was the first part of that journey? What was your first creative

steps?

I think the biggest risk that I took

was that I started writing for animation and I realized

that it was impossible make something in animation on

your own because it requires a lot of people. It

requires a huge amount of talent

to create anything of decent quality back

then. And so I put that aside for a

while and I said, okay, what else can I do on my 2Ft? And

I've always been a travel

photographer. I've trekked the Himalayas and I've always take

my camera with me. So I said, what can I do with my camera? What

can I do? With the bare minimum,

I did save up some money and one of the options was go to film

school and do film school and start from there.

Or the other idea was, would you spend $200,000 going

to film school, or would you just pick up

your camera and go do whatever you want to do and learn

that way? So I said, okay, I'm going to teach myself filmmaking. I'm going to

teach myself to be everything that I've always

wanted to be, to direct, to be a cameraman,

to edit, to do everything right. And

so I literally picked up by Nikon

D 80 or D 90, whatever that

was back then, and talked to a bunch of my friends

and they were like, what are you planning on doing? I'm like, oh, I want

to go do this film. They're like, oh, great, just get a bunch of good

lenses. And then I went and picked up a

few great lenses and started filming up

in the mountains. And I did my first documentary

and it was unscripted. I just went and

filmed whatever I felt like

that spiritually called me, I would

say. And so I started gathering all the material

and did my first feature documentary.

So you have, from that start, moved

through a fair number of spaces and creative

ventures. What have been the most pivotal

turns and what has blossomed the most of

the seeds you've planted on this so far?

If you talk to any filmmaker who's independent, they'll tell you

the journey is really long.

What I have done on my way as an independent

filmmaker is I think

I've given myself the permission to play

more than anything else,

because it's a process. It's not like

you're going to get it right the first time. You keep playing with

it, you keep experimenting, you fail, and then you

cry a little bit and you wake up again. You get at it, and

that's basically been the most amazing part of my

journey and then finding the few key people that trust

me on my way again.

Because anything that you do in life, I

think you are kind of

relating to the other. And that's a very important

fact that I use in my life, is who are the

people that you can support on their

journey and who are the people that can support you on your journey,

including the people that are the naysayers. Because the

naysayers are equally important

because they kind of are like the boosters that

are pushing you faster to get there because they are saying,

no, you don't deserve this, or, no, you can do this.

You can be very negative about them and say, oh, those

guys. And you can get angry

and upset, but they're also equally important.

There's a certain kind of a resistance that forms

in pushing you.

You need that booster. Think of it like a rocket, right? To

launch that rocket out into this space, you need that

pressure that kind of pushes you up. And I feel

both the good and the bad are absolutely required

to be on that journey.

That's something that in the programs we do, definitely shows up. We

call it the bounce effect, that otherwise

you would probably not change and improve. You just skim through the wall, and

instead you bounce off the wall and you build either a

different sense of direction with more speed or you have to learn how to

push through the wall. And either one makes you a better

creative than if you just cruise through.

But a lot of the time to reframe it, which you reframe. Lovely with that,

right? Which, it's not the curse you for standing in my way,

but you've derived energy from that interaction or that situation,

which is great. I mean, it wasn't like I

believed in that in the beginning, but as I kept seeing the

pattern of my own mind, I was

like, why am I getting so

unhappy about this? And

I remember being a wonderful, wonderful lady. I

forget her name, but she was at an art show,

and she said, you should put up your art here. And I was like, no,

I don't think people like my art. And then she was like,

well, there'll be 19 people that will not like your

art, but there might be one person out of those 20

that like your art, and that's the chance you have to take.

And so I was very scared. I was very vulnerable. I was very

intimidated by naysayers.

But I think having that one tiny conversation with a complete

stranger in Culver City absolutely

changed the way that I looked

at naysayers anymore. Because I now count

the number of people that are saying no to me, because I'm like, oh, yeah,

I'm going to get that one person to say yes to me. And I

think that's the beauty.

You just walk your path and just have fun,

and it'll happen. So in your more

recent adventures that you have stepped

into Unreal and epic and

programs to help boost other storytellers,

can you talk about this journey into the virtual

spaces and how that's let you be then a

bigger solo creator? So

I would say that since

2003, maybe almost 20 some

years, I've been doing a lot of pro bono,

nonprofit stuff in the visual effects and animation community,

through CFI India, through women in animation,

Sigraph Asia,

FMX, which is in

know Sony Talent League. There's just a lot of amazing

things that people are doing to build

communities, to bring people together, to share and network

and create. So in that process,

I've learned from a very, very young age that you

alone cannot be the one person.

The more you share, the more you give, the

bigger you become, the bigger everybody

becomes. And that's something that

I've been very

thankful for people to reach out to me and say, can you

do this? Can you build this? It was not just building

rhythm and Hughes, but it was also building all these little things around

rhythm and Hughes, creating opportunities for myself

and people around me. So I

realized that while I was struggling, being in Los Angeles,

pitching my animated feature films, my preschool shows,

I just realized it just takes a lot of time for people to trust

you. Whether you can deliver these projects, whether you are the

right person, you're a debutant director,

will you deliver this project? And they take

their time to make those decisions, because it's business at

the end of the day, as much as it is fashion, it's art,

it's technology, it's also entertainment. And entertainment

is about business. So while I was doing all of

that, the conversations kind of started

to say, why aren't there more

women speaking up in Southeast

Asia? Why are they not visible? Because

I know 30, 40, 50 of them.

And so that kind of questioning with the

right people, I would say, kind of led me

to coining this program with Epic Games

called the Woman Creators Program.

I had gone through the Epigames

Fellowship thanks to a wonderful friend

that I met 18 years ago.

She was like, hey, I want you to join this Epigames Fellowship. And I

was like, okay, I am not the right person. Again, I'm

not a visual effects artist. You should find somebody to do this program. And she

was like, no, you have to do it. You're a director, you're a

filmmaker. We absolutely want you to take this program.

And so after a lot of

insistence, I was like, okay, I'll do this.

And it was a game changer. To use real time

technology to visualize an idea

in five weeks

absolutely changed my mind.

It was like, what did I do?

Of course, I put in about 14 to 16 hours

during the five a program to deliver,

but it was doable.

The unattainable was attainable. Like,

you needed a big studio even to do the basic previsualization. You

need so many artists to get there. But with the real time

game technology, it was like, oh, my God,

this is so cool. This is so amazing. And so that

experience. After completing my music video that I directed

using the Epic Games real time

engine, I started writing

the Woman Creators program and really

asked for that to become

possible. And I would say it took about ten

months for that program to get

greenlit. And then we did that. And

it was a game changer, because I could see that happen to the

other creators that we had handpicked, that were all

women, and we were like, they were loving it.

They went through the same journey that I went through, which was doubt and

impostor syndrome, and not sure if they can deliver,

not sure if they can do it. But with the right amount of nurturing

and mentoring, they all created brilliant

projects. So what are

you most excited about right now?

I'm most excited about two of my projects that just got

selected. One project has been picked up by

a Canadian studio, which is a preschool

show. I'm just hoping it finds home

its legacy. It's something that my father and mother had

written many, many years ago, almost 30

some years ago. And for me to see

that happen, because I've rewritten it with a

new set of eyes and ears for younger audiences all

around the world. It's about family,

it's about dance. It's about bringing everybody together. So

I'm really excited about that show

with my new Canadian partners. And

then there's another feature film, which is animated,

which got selected into the co production market in

India, which is a big deal.

It's about friendship. I just

can't reveal a lot of the details about what the project is about,

but I'm super excited that I'm looking for

partners on that.

And I have a short film, which is an animated short

film, which has also

gotten a lot of interest in Los Angeles.

I've got a couple of really amazing, talented people that have come

on board that have been part of the Academy Awards,

who've won the Academy Awards and stuff. So

I'm really excited to partner with them and push

that short film forward as well. Some more

directing, more directing, fabulous stuff. So

we could talk probably on any of these projects for an hour or more.

You've got such a rich experience base, but we're near the end of our

episode. Thank you. What have we not talked about

that you would love to make sure we talk about before we wrap

up?

Um, I think

look to your right, look to your left. You know, look

all around and trust people around you.

Give people opportunities.

Because whatever my journey is, is going to be my

journey. But along with me are many others who are also on their

journey. So I would always say,

build that tribe, build that community, because it means a lot

when you have to do big projects. You really need

that team, you really need those inspiring,

talented people. I do.

So I always feel like

just create more opportunities for different

people all around the world.

So who would you like to reach out to you? And

how would you like them to reach out?

With a magic wand. Who would you like to reach out to you right

now? I think people can go to my website, which

is

www.dancingatoms.com.

They could also drop me an email. I'm on

LinkedIn. You can connect with me on LinkedIn

and say, hey, I heard this and this is what I'd like to do, or

whatever that they want to say and reach out. But I'm basically really

looking at producers to come on board to get my projects

to the next level. Absolutely. We'll put all your

contact information in the show notes. Thank you.

We'll try to keep your adventures updated there as well because you've got so much

going on. Vani, thank you so much for joining. Really,

really appreciate. Thank you so much for making

this happen. It means a lot to me. It does.

Thank you.