Directing and Working as a Team Member
Before starting MACA I hadn’t considered being a director at all outside of producing my own work. When you’re making stuff on your own you’re ultimately responsible for everything; animating, colouring, sound and music, editing – you’re essentially signing off all of your work and acting as your own director, and I had done this for a couple of very small projects that I produced a handful years prior to joining the course. I was really excited when I was selected to direct on our Unit 2 LIAF project but it was a bit of a double-edged sword. I really enjoyed the creative control I had on the project, and I found working as part of a group really helped me because I pushed myself as I knew it wasn’t just my individual work on the line. On the other hand it was hard for me to not be a complete control freak about certain aspects of the film while trying to keep everyone on task and reorganising when things didn’t quite go to plan and I was responsible for it.
All things considered I really enjoyed the experience of working with others and eventually ended up doing it again for a 24 hour animation challenge in November ’22. I had a really great time knuckling down for the duration of the challenge while the burden of taking charge was kind of spread across everyone. It really helped me understand that I really do enjoy working as a team, even if I don’t get to have complete control over every little detail.
I’d definitely consider directing again, but I think my priorities would have to relinquishing control a little, trying to be a bit more communicative in general, and making sure that schedules are realistic and stuck to where possible. I’ve had a really great time working with people, and although so far I’ve had the great fortune of working people I like, I can still imagine it being a good experience when I’m not.
I’ve looked for short courses and supplementary lessons on directing for animation because I’d like to be able to improve on that front in case I do want to jump into directing again at some point. Skillshare has a page with redirecting links to useful information that I’ve had a quick browse through, although the actual content of the page is a little lacking as it seems quite unspecific!
Collectives
I had a brief chat with Laura-Beth a few weeks ago about collectives, knowing that she’s involved in her own (Weird Eye), and I was curious about what that entails and how it came about. I was never under the impression that a collective necessarily meant a big company but there was something pleasantly inspiring hearing that it was her and a few friends that just banded together to work on projects after her course was over.
It’s also great to see just how impactful collectives are at giving marginalised people a voice. Free The Work has a great online database of a number of queer and POC collectives that helps to showcase their work and bring them to the forefront. Collectives like this seem like a great way to network outside of traditional avenues, and build relationships with people that you might not meet as easily in person (I think this is just a great thing about the internet in general).
Working in a collective is definitely something I’m interested in pursuing, and already a few of us on the course have spoken about working on some group projects together after graduation, purely because we like working together and have similar tastes and interests. Although we’ve not strictly spoken about establishing ourselves as a collective I feel that fundamentally we’d be working within the confines as one on paper – people working together on projects without working under the strict parameters of a studio or company (we’d essentially all be freelance). My only concern is it’s likely going to be a side-project while we do other things to make money – collectives I’ve read about tend to be a second job undertaken in your own time regardless of what media you’re pursuing (Bomb! The Music Industry was one of my favourite acts, a musical collective of musicians from New York that disbanded in 2014, the lead singer Jeff Rosenstock has written about working day jobs while producing their albums and establishing a record label that offered their music for free).
Despite the fact that this might not be a financially stable long-term solution I still think it sounds like a great idea and something I’ll be talking about with some close MACA friends. It’ll be great to be working on some fun stuff regardless of whether it’s going to pay the bills or not.