ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXReal Collaborations
10 years, 6 months ago - Kyri Saphiris
I often find people listing projects as "collaborations" but in many cases these are projects where much of the "pre-production" and/ or crewing is already in place. To me, these listings seem to be more like unpaid job offers.
On my part I've tried to find people to genuinely collaborate with, ie. starting with a clean slate (no scripts or people), so that we can all collectively work on something from scratch on an equal basis. We'd all still have a specific role to perform on such a project.
This to me seems to be collaboration in the true sense of the word. The trouble with this though, from my experience, is that it's quite difficult to get people involved! My guess then is that people would rather jump into a project that already has some direction and momentum behind it rather than create something from inception.
How does this fit in with other people's understanding and experience?
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10 years, 6 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
There's a reason dictatorships are prevalent - they work! For all the bad press dictators get, it's a very efficient model for getting stuff done ;)
When I see ads on SP, the ones that attract me are the ones that already know who they are and what they want. I agree that these aren't really collaborations so much as unpaid gigs, but am advert can tell me if the project has any chance of completion let alone success. If someone is really driven, people can buy into their vision or not; if everything is by committee it'll take ages.
There simply isn't the time in a real production to vote on stuff and resolve it amicably and democratically - you have a thousand small decisions a day to make (framing, dialogue, costume, time of day, lighting, pizza toppings), and each hour is costing maybe £1500 in fees, hires, locations, etc. You can see how coming to a consensus is expensive and will be inconsistent compared with one person just barking orders. That person is the director (probably via the 1AD to do the actual barking, but it's the director's choices).
10 years, 6 months ago - Marlom Tander
Experience teaches that such ideal collaborations are unicorns.
Usually :-
1) No one takes the reigns, project falls apart for lack of direction.
2) Someone takes the reigns and drives it the way they feel it should go. Those who disagree, leave.
Many reasons, not least that early on it's the person who ends up being the writer (and there will be one. Scripts with input is good, scripts by committee isn't) is the one putting in the hours and the commitment, while everyone else pretty much waits for them to deliver.
At which point, see points (1) and (2) above :-)
Early stage collaborations should be no more than Producer/Director/Writer, and TBH if that's more than one person, they are probably already good friends.
Once they have something, people get involved BECAUSE it has leadership.
You want to see something happen? You just made yourself Captain of the team :-)