‘In A Heartbeat,’ Animated Short About LGBT Love Taking Internet By Storm — Who’s Behind It?

A short, animated film from an animation intern working at Blue Sky Animation and another student who is now an employee of Jib-Jab and on her way to work as an an animator at Sony on a big Hollywood movie is getting a lot of attention online for its subject matter — LGBT love. Views for the film have grown by over 3M since yesterday afternoon on YouTube and it currently has 14.6M views since releasing only four days ago. In a Heartbeat, about a school boy crush on another boy, has gone viral and getting the attention of numerous celebrities and press across the nation.

So, who’s behind it? The two filmmakers are Beth David, 21, from Cincinnati, Ohio and Esteban Bravo, 24, from Mexico City who met at the Ringling College of Design and Art in Florida. Both graduated this year. It was their first film collaboration and they wrote and directed the sweet story together. The total budget? $5K. They began it as a $3K Kickstarter campaign and it not only hit the goal but soared past it to $14K.

Since then, the two have landed representation at Verve. “It’s four-minutes long, and it’s tapped into the LGBT community in an important way. We are so proud be in business with this team,” Verve partner Bill Weinstein told Deadline. He said once they saw the work, they signed them right out of school. “What this shows is that there is a tremendous, under-served audience,” he said. “Verve is proud to help amplify the voices of its minority employees and clientele that make up our community.”

In a Heartbeat tells the story of a closeted boy who runs the risk of being outed by his own heart after it pops out of his chest to chase down the boy of his dreams.

David will be part of the animation team at Sony this year working on Hotel Transylvania 3.