RE: Collaborations and Private Submissions
There's been some constructive conversations going on about how hitRECord's collective creative process could grow more efficient and productive. First of all, thanks everyone for your thoughts! Here's my thoughts on one of the main suggestions that's being talked about: a way to submit project ideas privately for approval. First I'll describe how it's intended to work...
I love the notion of proposing an idea before doing a bunch of work on it. That's what Collaboration pages are for. Anybody can propose their idea, describe it in words, make some initial contributions, and see what happens. If the community jumps on board and the idea takes off, awesome. If I see the Collaboration page and I think it has potential, I'll direct our community's energy towards working on it, first and foremost by contributing to it myself, or by featuring it, or by talking about it in a Regularity or REMARK video, etc.
Whoever started the Collaboration has the power to curate it by picking which Contribution to feature at the top of the Collab page. In the past, I have also tapped sort of "co-directors" for certain projects, like Cat for Nebulullaby, Nathan for the Morgan music, Teafaerie for They Can't Turn the Lights Off, Tori for Train Now Leaving polish, and of course, LawrieBrewster for Morgan visuals. This has worked great, and I hear the requests that I do this more often. I think you're right -- I should! Of course, if somebody else wants to come out of left field and do something different with any of a Collaboration's RECords, they're welcome and encouraged to do so.
Now, I can't guarantee that the result(s) of any given Collab will be a part of any future hitRECord Production until that Production really comes to fruition. We didn't know EXACTLY what we were going to screen at Sundance and SxSW until the audiences were already lining up outside! But if I Feature something (Pocket Autopsy, Herringbone Hat, Everything Is On Fire, Must Love Harry Potter, Make Space For Me In Your Coffin, to name a few examples), that's because I think they're coming along really well, I hope they end up in future hitRECord Productions, and I have every intention of working towards making that happen.
Okay, so that's how it's meant to work. So. Regarding the suggestion that we add a Private Submission function, here's what I think. Making this process private would undermine so much of hitRECord's strength. Think about what would happen if ideas were submitted to me privately instead of publicly as described above. Marke and I have been emailing back and forth about it, and this was his response:
<< The reality is, if we put a button on the site that says "SUBMIT A PRIVATE COLLABORATION IDEA TO JOE" then we will have an email inbox somewhere *flooded* with uncountable ideas. In effect, it would be a sort of "shadow-site" that exists behind the real site, but with no accountability, no transparency, no community involvement or recommendation system, etc. etc.
And if Joe spent his time reading through it, there would be no time left over for him to be on the site.
We have a public, transparent, democratic system for proposals here in the form of collaborations – and this is the place that Joe, along with the whole community – reviews, recommends, features, and produces those ideas.
The immediate effect of implementing a system like that would be to tear the rug out from underneath the collaboration process here. No one would ever start or participate in a collaboration that hadn't been "greenlit" on the shadow-site. It would completely undermine the open, accountable, user-recommended, and user-participated system we are endeavoring to create. It's admittedly not a perfect system, and we are committed to making it better. But we don't want to undermine it and replace it with a closed-door, truly sycophantic, private system of pitching ideas secretly. I know nobody is suggesting replacing it exactly – but that will be the unintended consequence. It robs the integrity and openness from what we do.
There are countless production companies that accept pitches, greenlight them, guarantee salaries and production credits in advance, etc. We are experimenting with a new system. >>
I hope this shines some light. As Marke says, our system is still far from perfect, and that's why I really do appreciate you guys thinking and discussing how we can improve it. As long as the discussion stays positive (which it mostly has, although I'm disappointed in a few of the remarks with nastier tones), I'm open to it.
thanks again
<3
I love the notion of proposing an idea before doing a bunch of work on it. That's what Collaboration pages are for. Anybody can propose their idea, describe it in words, make some initial contributions, and see what happens. If the community jumps on board and the idea takes off, awesome. If I see the Collaboration page and I think it has potential, I'll direct our community's energy towards working on it, first and foremost by contributing to it myself, or by featuring it, or by talking about it in a Regularity or REMARK video, etc.
Whoever started the Collaboration has the power to curate it by picking which Contribution to feature at the top of the Collab page. In the past, I have also tapped sort of "co-directors" for certain projects, like Cat for Nebulullaby, Nathan for the Morgan music, Teafaerie for They Can't Turn the Lights Off, Tori for Train Now Leaving polish, and of course, LawrieBrewster for Morgan visuals. This has worked great, and I hear the requests that I do this more often. I think you're right -- I should! Of course, if somebody else wants to come out of left field and do something different with any of a Collaboration's RECords, they're welcome and encouraged to do so.
Now, I can't guarantee that the result(s) of any given Collab will be a part of any future hitRECord Production until that Production really comes to fruition. We didn't know EXACTLY what we were going to screen at Sundance and SxSW until the audiences were already lining up outside! But if I Feature something (Pocket Autopsy, Herringbone Hat, Everything Is On Fire, Must Love Harry Potter, Make Space For Me In Your Coffin, to name a few examples), that's because I think they're coming along really well, I hope they end up in future hitRECord Productions, and I have every intention of working towards making that happen.
Okay, so that's how it's meant to work. So. Regarding the suggestion that we add a Private Submission function, here's what I think. Making this process private would undermine so much of hitRECord's strength. Think about what would happen if ideas were submitted to me privately instead of publicly as described above. Marke and I have been emailing back and forth about it, and this was his response:
<< The reality is, if we put a button on the site that says "SUBMIT A PRIVATE COLLABORATION IDEA TO JOE" then we will have an email inbox somewhere *flooded* with uncountable ideas. In effect, it would be a sort of "shadow-site" that exists behind the real site, but with no accountability, no transparency, no community involvement or recommendation system, etc. etc.
And if Joe spent his time reading through it, there would be no time left over for him to be on the site.
We have a public, transparent, democratic system for proposals here in the form of collaborations – and this is the place that Joe, along with the whole community – reviews, recommends, features, and produces those ideas.
The immediate effect of implementing a system like that would be to tear the rug out from underneath the collaboration process here. No one would ever start or participate in a collaboration that hadn't been "greenlit" on the shadow-site. It would completely undermine the open, accountable, user-recommended, and user-participated system we are endeavoring to create. It's admittedly not a perfect system, and we are committed to making it better. But we don't want to undermine it and replace it with a closed-door, truly sycophantic, private system of pitching ideas secretly. I know nobody is suggesting replacing it exactly – but that will be the unintended consequence. It robs the integrity and openness from what we do.
There are countless production companies that accept pitches, greenlight them, guarantee salaries and production credits in advance, etc. We are experimenting with a new system. >>
I hope this shines some light. As Marke says, our system is still far from perfect, and that's why I really do appreciate you guys thinking and discussing how we can improve it. As long as the discussion stays positive (which it mostly has, although I'm disappointed in a few of the remarks with nastier tones), I'm open to it.
thanks again
<3
