A Match Made in Murder
In film parlance, Rachel DeWeber and Ben Thomas have a special “meet cute.” It was spring semester of 2018, and they were both animation, film, photography, and motion design (AFP&MD) students. The AFP&MD major was new, and while their cohort was small, they had never met before.
Enrolled in a filmmaking class, they were tasked with stepping out from behind the camera and acting. DeWeber played a stalker. Thomas, her victim. And as he explains, “She murdered me.”
And while that foray into acting may or may not be the last time Thomas and DeWeber perform together, they are both thriving post-graduation with careers in their field of study, not in Hollywood or in New York, but in Grand Junction.
DeWeber and Thomas are both locals of the Grand Valley, and they both enrolled at CMU with a passion for art. Thomas arrived on campus in 2014, one year before the AFP&MD bachelor’s degree program launched. DeWeber arrived in 2015, largely because of the new major.
“When I found out that CMU offered an Animation, Film, Photography and Motion Design Program, I was like, this is perfect. It covers everything that I want to do. So, I knew that CMU was my choice.”
Being pioneers within a new major was challenging and expectation-shattering. DeWeber describes her experience as “fulfilling, empowering, and exciting,” sharing that the students and professors were “kind of like test subjects.” There was a lot of experimentation, with “everybody learning everything, all at the same time,” shared Thomas.
Thomas is now a successful 2D animator working with studios in California, Canada and Japan “on properties like Sonic the Hedgehog, shows for Netflix, for Paramount Plus, and HBO Max,” noting that he animated one of the opening shots of James Gunn’s Creature Commandos.
DeWeber, despite her love of animation, found herself drawn to filmmaking, and after taking a job with a commercial studio in Grand Junction, she decided to start a business, finding her niche in music videos, while also working on “B” movies filmed in Grand Junction (Dragon Soldiers and Dead Zone), as well as season two of We’re Here on HBO Max.
Looking at the AFP&MD major today, nearly ten years after it launched, DeWeber and Thomas are impressed with how it has grown, crediting the talented faculty and the new resources they’ve brought to the major.
“It’s so awesome to see kids with really strong work coming out of that program,” said Thomas. “I’m just really excited for what it’s going to look like in the future. I don’t think that CMU is going to have to worry about a lot of CMU alumni working in the industry.”
Cutting back to the fateful film class and staged murder, DeWeber continues the story. Although she felt a strong bond with Thomas, he was graduating. She still had another year of studies. Fast forward to 2019 and Thomas — in need of an additional 2D animator for a short film — remembered DeWeber’s talent. He called her up, praised her drawing, and invited her for coffee to discuss the project.
Over time, “we kept meeting and kept getting coffee. We just slowly stopped talking about the project, and more just talked to each other...,” he trailed off, while DeWeber chimed in, “And here we are, almost six years later. We’re married now, and we are still working on that project.”