No voice, no awesome

In some ways collaboration is a waste of creative time

Gimme a person

People relate to people. What people want from entertainment is people. They want the things they like, the things they don’t like, the flaws, the achievements, the opinions, the fears. People are imperfect, but they feel concrete to us. A person’s opinion could change, but their story doesn’t change.

When we look at the great films, bands, books, they each have a voice and a personality – usually the same as the creator.

A great thing about variety entertainment, is the production value is low, so a team isn’t needed to create it and we feel we can tap in directly to a personality and a voice. We get a person!

Collaboration is great

… it’s a way to source the creative power of tons of people. It means we can have things like films and plays and spectator sports. Even collaborating with an audience is an incredible way to find out more about what an entertainment product’s value is and how to create more awesome.

Collaboration is terrible

Mediocre is the opposite of stupendous. Consensus leads to the middle. The middle is not a person. It doesn’t have flaws. It doesn’t have a story. It has a flat line.

Trying to run a creative venture by committee leads to losing the voice. This is what we see with corporate stuff and community theaters. Even when they speak up about something, it just gives us a gross feeling, like “ew, we didn’t ask and what’s your plot to benefit from me?”

The battle is on

Let’s not ditch either. We want to make big impactful stuff and we want it to be good. Collaboration and Voice will fight for power non-stop. If you try to make peace and stop their conflict, the production loses.

My co-producer of Scot Nery’s Boobietrap, Meranda, is better at the collaboration thing than me. Sometimes she puts her foot down for better community support and sometimes I put my foot down for a stronger messier brand. It’s hard each time to live with that uncomfortability, but Boobietrap has benefited immensely and has become the #1 show in L.A. because we have so many people that work together and because the show speaks up for itself in a genuine way.

An approach

It’s helpful to recognize that…

1. the group will not replace or create a voice
2. the buck (final voice decision) needs to stop with someone
3. the individuals in a group want to be appreciated for their strengths

Thing one is to unify a mission. Get everyone enrolled in an idea of what we’re trying to do. This is an internal brand for the team.

Thing two figure out who makes the final decisions. Make sure this person is ready to do hard things by themself and put their flawed heart into it.

Thing three take input from people (audience and team) in a specific way. Don’t ask “how do we transform the show?” ask smaller questions and have the person with the voice establish the ground-rules before asking.

Thing five accept input from people not as the rule of God. If the input comes from a place of understanding the voice, it is really valuable. If the input obviously doesn’t understand the voice, the question is, “where did we go wrong sharing the voice?”

Thing four give people projects with scope so they can be maximum impactful and creative in their sandbox.