Art or Money?

Welcome back after the Easter break! Time to get stuck in to the final few weeks of production time...

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During the holidays an interesting debate cropped up at the studio. We were suddenly balancing a particularly intense period of project proposals and, as the merits of each one were discussed, two long recognised viewpoints came to the front: Artistic Integrity and Money for Survival. I thought it might be good to pose the question here also, to see how you folks feel.

At this stage in your careers, about to step out onto the plains of professionalism, I'm sure you are more than looking forward to those first pay cheques coming in and beginning to make a dent in your student loans and saving up for those new bits of art equipment you just haven't quite been able to afford before. You'll be working on all kinds of different projects, for all kinds of different companies and individuals, each with their own motivations. If the work pays well, you're more than happy to do it...

...eventually though, as you get more comfortable with your routine and the novelty of working on 'real life' projects wears off a little, you begin to recognise patterns in some of the proposals you receive. Not all pitches you receive have had the experience, passion or budget to create a masterpiece idea, and you'll often be faced with a request to animate or illustrate something based on a concept that you know just isn't up to scratch.



Similarly, you might be faced with a pitch for something that has themes or elements you're not entirely comfortable with or find repulsive to some degree. Or, maybe, it's a perfectly good pitch but just not a topic that personally doesn't inspire or excite you.

Now sometimes it's easy; with smaller inexperienced clients you often just have to have a chat and discuss your reservations about the idea and ways you think it could be made better. They might really appreciate the feedback and value your creative input on making the idea stronger, win-win. However, often things don't work that way and there are many reasons you wont be able to negotiate with the idea:

• Big companies aren't usually looking for that kind of feedback, after all they already have spent money on a team of experienced people to come up with a statistically good idea - they just want to know if you can do the production or and how much will it cost... if you won't do it someone else will.
• Seasoned producers or art directors know their market, and some of them assume they will instantly be just as good in any other artistic market too - what has worked before will work again here, you are just a little fish in the creative chain and can't see the bigger picture!
• It's the clients own personal precious idea and no words can possibly convince them to see their baby's warts.
• You're employed at the studio to do what your superiors tell you - if everything had to change to fit everyone's unique opinions would anything ever get done?
• The idea is perfectly sound and commercially viable, it just not to your taste, so is it really your place to try to change it?

So now comes the question:

"If you can't change the idea, but you don't feel/think it works, do you still say yes to the project?"

It's an easy question to quickly form a strong opinion on but always ends up ultimately difficult to answer. Usually the choice end up falling prey to the set of circumstances you are in at the time, and the decision ends up feeling at times like it's being made for you.

At it's roots, the crux of the matter always seems to fall to a balancing game between:

The desire to make money to survive financially as an artist or company

and

The desire to satisfy your internal artistic sense or work-life enjoyment that you need to survive psychologically as an individual or team

Go too far in either direction and you end up in trouble. History is littered with the stereotype broke and out of work artists with heaps of passion but no homes, yet it's also full to bursting point with a noisy glut of insincere and badly thought out work that makes some of the creatives involved cringe with discordance as they produce it. Both of these are extremes and represent poor decision making at each end of the scale.

Ultimately each person needs to decide what works best for them, and if you are freelance you'll tend to have more immediate freedom to make these choices than if you work as an employee at a studio. The place where your balance point sits will be unique to you and your situation, and will certainly shift over time as priorities change.

However, the debate is certainly not something that should scare you or fill you with gloom, just be aware of the balance being something that you can control and change.

So what do you believe is the right balance?
What are the motivations leading to your opinion?

My personal opinion at this time is that, in the end, true-quality productions are valuable - so there really doesn't need to be a tug of war or a sacrifice of quality to make money. But it's a gold standard that can only be reached when every element of chain of production rises above mediocre. It's a shared responsibility to make sure those around us have the support they need to excel and that we likewise accept that support when its offered.

That support comes in many forms, both welcome and (at least initially) unwelcome:

Knowledge     Advice     Opinions     Assistance     Criticism     Tools

Ideas     Friendship     Leadership     Empathy     Trust     Space     Time

the list goes on...

I believe that everyone can excel at something. So discover what you are great at and that inspires, delights and motivates you, then go out there and show people what it is that you can DO!