 If you think you're gonna just kind of sit back and relax while Amanda speaking, she draws you in. It's what a presence she has. It's almost like she radiates wisdom and at such a young age. While we might be all alone, we've never been more tightly tethered because we'll only weather this unknown together. Hi, my name is Linda Rayfoss and I'm an executive producer with Strawberry Frog. My name is Tyke Arbaugh. I'm senior brand consultant at Truist. I'm Tyler DiAngelo and I'm at ECD of Strawberry Frog. My name is Frederick Bowland and I'm a director. With this particular effort with United Way and Truist, it definitely made great use of a really powerful voice. Can you tell us a little bit about the inception of the idea? This was sort of the very beginning of 2020. You know, the country was sort of figuring out what was going on at that moment. With the onset of COVID, with George Floyd, it was just a time of great change for the whole country at once. Our purpose here in this whole project was to help drive engagement donations to United Way because, wow, what a time that the country needed help and what better partner than United Way to help deliver that message. As COVID hit, everything went out the window because the world changed practically over, you know, within overnight. So that's where we began. We were doing WebEx meetings with a three-way team and that three-way team included United Way partners, Truist partners, and of course, Strawberry Frog partners. I think what helped us succeed was everyone had a point of view and in many cases that helped make the work better. It was a natural partnership that came together with a shared message. It was good because the message was so similar. And from there, we said, well, who is best to deliver a message about unity? We were looking for a voice that would rise above that and find a way to unite people together. I remember reading the script and thinking, wow, this is encompassing a wide range of personalities and famous people. And it was still a bit of a work in progress of who we could secure and who was the right fit for this message. Scott and Tyler called me up and said that they had this young poet that they wanted to do something for United Way with. We found Amanda, who obviously is a brilliant writer, of course, and represented the youth. It was a little bit uncertain on how we were going to be approaching it because we knew we had the poet, but we did not know really how we're going to visualize her poetry. Eventually, we landed on this idea that we hear Amanda's beautiful poem through the speakers of these different environments where people from all walks of life are meeting her words. Somewhere another mom pays her bills somewhere. Another child eats this bill. We are the world's neighbors. Can you tell us a little bit about the pre-production process? We went back and forth via email with Amanda and her agent to secure dates. Amanda was her mother and her twin sister. Amanda felt most comfortable doing it in her house, not leaving her house. And so we worked with her and her sister, who's extremely talented. And we sent them a big kit of a lighting package. And we actually just sent a couple iPhones. It was really interesting because they weren't allowed to even open the door at the time. Everything had to be sanitized and put outside the door, and they would open it, and then they would take it in. So every piece of equipment had to be delivered in a very unorthodox way. We had an amazing technical team on the other end, who was in with us. And we shot in her bedroom with her mother, basically as the A.D. and her sister was our D.P. There's two pieces of this film. There was Amanda Gorman herself, and then there was the film that was that served as the visual narrative to the poem. We had a little bit of a trial and error, not even so much error, but we had trial to sort of say, how do we hone this skill of producing remotely? So we had a remote production in New Zealand. For me, I get to look through the camera, the lens of the camera, with this thing called QTIC. Then with Zoom, what we were able to do is talk to people. It sort of opened up the door to being able to be on the other side of the world and shoot something on the other side of the world and not having to travel there and of course we had quarantine issues. So this was the only way we could perform this production. Did you have a favorite shot? Certainly the last one was one of my favorite shots because you felt the power of her words the most. But what I did like is there's a shot of the little girl on a three-wheeler. She's pulling a wagon with a boombox behind her and Amanda's spoken word is coming out of that boombox. And in the garage of a house that she's peddling by is a woman who glances back out at her. That moment of exchange is without question my favorite part of it. I think you connect with those characters really well and the sort of the generational shift between these two individuals, I think is really beautiful. What has the response been like? Initially it was tremendous just because it's a great spot and it had a wonderful message. Especially at that time, when it came out it was a comforting pillow. I think people were just blown away by Amanda and then Amanda blew up. Amanda's course was very well known because she's the first youth poet laureate but this was pre-adaguration. When we heard about the inauguration it was a wow experience of course but I can't say it was very surprising because it was clear when we were filming with her and we had to deal with her that she was a star. And now I think that she is like of course gone viral, viral, viral in everyone in the world. It's like a household name now. So I think our timing was really pretty great. She's just continued to get all kinds of exposure and visibility and she's the ticket. She's the real deal and it just felt right for the moment. Felt right for the moment.