Sarah’s Backstory

Some people find filmmaking.

Sarah Cogan spent her childhood chasing it.

At eight years old, after seeing a production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Sarah decided she would spend her life making theater and movies. She assumed that meant becoming an actor, so she trained horses, learned mixed martial arts and boxing, studied singing, practiced archery, and collected every skill she imagined would help her perform her own stunts.

In high school, Sarah studied acting with an LA casting director who taught character analysis from different acting methodologies. Learning to understand characters from the inside out became second nature—a skill that still shapes how she approaches every script, costume, and visual world she creates today.

Discovering Design

While performing in school productions, she fell in love with what was happening behind the scenes.

She painted scenery, made costumes, built sets, and even tore down a wall to create a free performance space. Without realizing it, she was already thinking like a designer.

Then everything changed.

A surgical complication caused Sarah to lose her voice.

The career she thought she was building disappeared overnight.

She entered the University of California, Santa Barbara convinced she would leave entertainment behind. Nothing felt right until her father asked a simple question:

"Why don't you find out who designs the costumes and sets? You've always loved doing that."

That conversation changed everything.

Sarah realized she'd been designing all along—hand-dyeing lace to match her prom skirt, making one-of-a-kind jewelry, and obsessing over every visual detail long before she knew design was a career.

She enrolled in theatre, immersed herself in costume, scenic, and lighting design, and discovered she wasn't simply learning to design productions.

She was learning how stories are built.

She continued to the University of California, San Diego, earning an MFA in Theatrical Design with an emphasis in Costume and Lighting Design, where she also discovered another passion: teaching others how creative choices shape storytelling.

Learning to Think Beyond One Department

In 2012, Sarah moved to New York City.

Her first professional job was as resident lighting designer at Le Poisson Rouge, lighting concerts for artists including Amanda Palmer and other Grammy Award-winning musicians. With no rehearsals and no safety net, every show demanded quick thinking, decisive problem-solving, and bold creative choices—skills that continue to serve her on every production.

As her career evolved, producers stopped seeing Sarah as just a costume designer. They asked her to cross departments—designing costumes while overseeing production or lighting design, building worlds while shaping characters, and solving visual challenges wherever they appeared.

Today, that multidisciplinary perspective is one of her greatest strengths.

Sarah doesn't think in departments.

She thinks in visual stories.

Over the past two decades, she has designed feature films, television, commercials, theatre, concerts, and live events. Her work includes Oscar-eligible productions, a Cannes Silver Lion-winning commercial, collaborations with Billy Zane, John Heder, Gina Gershon, and Willa Fitzgerald, and the 2024 Best Costumes award from the Mystic Film Festival for Knead.

Bridging the Gap Between Directors and Designers

Along the way, Sarah noticed the same challenge again and again: directors struggled to communicate their creative vision, while designers often felt they weren't being given enough direction.

To bridge that gap, she created Text to Moving Images and additional workshops that teach filmmakers how to think visually, communicate with designers, and intentionally use design to strengthen story.

Championing Creative Visions

Today, Sarah champions filmmakers' creative visions through costume design, production design, investor-ready pitch decks, and education. Whether she's designing a character, building a world, or helping a filmmaker communicate an idea to investors, her goal is always the same:

To help great stories become unforgettable films.

Because after two decades of designing stories, she's come to believe one thing above all else:

Design isn't a luxury.

It's a necessity.

When every creative choice works together in service of the story, audiences don't just watch the film.

They feel it.