The scariest part about going collaborative with a project is the realization that once you bring another person on board, once you put out that innocuous question over coffee or drinks or a BBQ sauce stained napkin, “I got this project; you interested?” is that the project doesn’t belong to you anymore.
Now you share the project with your partner. It’s a joint-venture. Doesn’t matter how many nights you slaved over the concept, or how much money you sunk to get it from point “A” to its current manifestation. The scope continues to grow, you add more pieces, you bring on more people, and you own less tomorrow than you did today.
It can be a punch in the gut, watching your collaborators rip apart your meticulously constructed project, fumble with their individual pieces, and tweak that, adjust this, turn that knob and spin this dial, then try to reassemble the monstrosity. Don’t they know?! That’s your baby they’re so callously tweaking and manhandling, with absolute disregard for the sacred “process.”
Eventually, the torture ends. The collaboration is over, and it yields a product. The product is in the can and ready to ship, and so the rights revert back to you, right? You suffered through the butchering, but at least now your baby (your bloated, misshaped baby with 13 fingers and an ear for a nose) is back in your arms, right?
It is… right until the moment you ship. The second you put your project out to the world, it doesn’t matter what the byline reads or screen credit declares or contract states: the project once and forever more no longer belongs to you. Now it belongs to the world. It’s theirs to judge, to hate, to love, to critique, to ignore. If you’re not okay with that, you’re limiting your opportunities to create something greater than yourself.
I finished working on an independently financed television series, where I met a lot of talented people, but at times the project felt like a sinking ship. Production wrapped a month early when we came up short on the money. Once the dust settled and the strike days came and went, we could look past the issues of gross overspending, creative arguments, and constant rescheduling, and see these were the symptoms of the real problem: the project was never a true collaboration.
The project only ever belonged to a single person: the creator, who doubled as an executive producer, who tripled as the financier. He struggled to keep all the moving pieces together, clutching the reigns tightly in his fist, refusing to relinquish even an iota of control. Even as the pieces slipped faster and faster through his fingers, he continued to hold onto the illusion of control, because it was the only way he knew how to respond. It was both frustrating and heart breaking to watch.
I try to bear that in mind as I plunge into collaborations: any project of mine with a chance at denting the universe was never “mine” to begin with.
Photo Credit: shindz
