Creative Collaborations

Many people from different creative sectors must work together in order to produce most creative products we use today. No one person has all the skills and range of creativity to produce a film, or music album, or video game, all by themselves. We've all experienced group work not going to plan; someone doesn't keep to deadlines, team members didn't communicate or the product doesn't fit your expectations however, good experiences with team collaboration on a project are fantastic, being able to generate and develop ideas together, work interdependently until the final design.

Good Mythical Morning with Rhett and Link

In Good Mythical Morning, a popular YouTube channel, when putting together the most basic foundations of their weekly videos, many creative, professional individuals are involved in collaborating to produce the final product. A great number of individuals need to take ownership of their role to play in the final product, so they've developed a structure that is flexible as well as planned out. This is where design thinking comes into play, it's a flexible framework which gets the most out of creative individuals and their creative process, which is showcased in Rhett and Link's channel, because the entire team is allowed to flex their artistic freedom within the schedule of their videos.

A small number of the team help with the camera work and putting together the scenes set for filming. Another team is allocated to cut the video and edit it together, as well as adding the graphics we, the viewers, later enjoy.

The sound crew is responsible for recording, editing and producing the sound for the videos.

The kitchen team is responsible for making the various foods on the show. In addition, their team has their own schedule of videos, ever since the audience expressed an interest in Josh (the head chef of the Mythical Kitchen) after numerous food testing videos.

The most surprising collaborator of this list would be, possibly, yourself! The show has lots of influence from it's viewers. For example, in the tasting food episodes, Rhett and Link often are fed things (often really nasty things) put together by the kitchen team, that was suggested by the audience!

Taylor Swift's All Too Well Music Video

Producing a music album requires a shared vision. All professionals involved need to have a shared sense of direction, as most music albums tell a story, and those bringing all the pieces together to produce an album must be able to visualise that journey, in order to create something that is consistent throughout. Taylor Swift has always played lots of roles in producing her own music, as she writes most of her own material, as well as helps direct and gets stuck into most of what processes take place in order to finish her albums.

A lot of the creative direction comes from Taylor herself, as she is well known for having a strong vision of what stories she wants her songs to tell and how she wants her audience to be left feeling. She is a huge part of directing her own music videos, along with help from other professional directors who help collaborate with her in order to bring her story alive.

Music producers help artists record their albums, to bring their vision to life. It is their responsibility to make sure that the finished product is as good as it can be and that it fulfils the label's or artist's needs.

Then there is the singer herself. None of it could be possible without the artist who writes her own material and sings it to life. She is the inspiration and the creator.

Life is Strange

Video games are typically the most fun collaborations, in my personal experience. The closeness of a team can bring out both convergent and divergent thinking, which leads to not just the original video game concept being created, but maybe a developed version, too. A video game producer is like a manager, who handles the business aspect of the project, particularly the financials. They manage the budget and develop marketing strategies to sell the product.

A concept artist sets the tone for the project early on by developing artwork and sketches. These early visuals help form the language and overall tone of the game, giving everyone working on the project a visual guide to the overall look and feel. In Life is Strange, one of the first things that was decided on this overall feel of the game, was the majority of the game should be set in the golden hour of the afternoon, to give a feeling of nostalgia throughout the game. Game programmers help develop games by turning design concepts into code to create fully playable games.

A game designer is the creative driver of the game, and generally a cross between a writer and an artist, with some knowledge of programming, in this way, they know what is achievable within bringing an idea or a set of them to life. The game design production pipeline section involves creating stories, characters, goals, rules, and challenges that drive interactions with other characters or objects.

Fun fact: every frame of background from Life is Strange was painted by hand! That is thousands of hours of work.

Designers may be responsible for Developing the storyline, character back-stories, and dialogue. Developing gameplay, rules, and the scoring system. Setting the level of difficulty. Building environments, ledges, obstacles, and objects. World design and programming/scripting as well as digital editing.

Game animators add depth and realism to video games by adding believable movement to characters, objects, and environments. They’ll create storyboards and map out key animation scenes that align with the game’s storyline. Animators need to conduct lots of research in order to create movement to characters. Motion capture data can also be used to help create more lifelike animations. 

The sound experts develop realistic sound effects, record voice-overs/dialogue between characters, and create soundtracks that set the mood for players, adding suspense or audio cues. All in all, these skills have to come together in order to produce a beautiful product, such as Life is Strange.