Online productions – 3 tips for your project to succeed

By: Bobby Beck

It’s been a little over 4 months since Artella launched and we’ve learned so much already it’s amazing. Some of the big things we’ve learned are around what makes a project successful and I’d love to share some of our learning here. 

Motivation:

A motivated creator is the #1 key to success on a project. If you go into a project thinking it’s just going to happen then you are in for a big surprise. Just like with crowdfunding, you have to nurture your campaign, promote it on social media, reach out to artists ahead of time (we have thousands on Artella now), let them know you like their work and build relationships. You can do this before you need them too so you’re constantly building your network. 

Small sub-tip on this point: If you don’t put effort into creating a solid personal profile and project overview page then it feels thrown together and people will not jump onto your project. They will feel YOU don’t care about it so why should they. 

Simply put, If you are not motivated then your team will not be motivated. If you’re busy, moving to a new house, half involved it will show and things will slow to a crawl. 

Small sub-tip on this point: Having a strong CG Supervisor, Co-Director and/or Project Coordinator can help in those times where you, the creator, need to be a little more on idle; i.e. vacation, etc. But don’t take advantage of that. Pull your weight and then some. Remember, this is your vision and everyone is working to bring it to life. 

Engagement:

The successful projects we see happening are those that have constant engagement. They are posting to their feed, giving comments, doing draw overs with the tools we provide and are hosting weekly team meetings. 

For instance, my project, Thistle One, has weekly team meetings on Tuesdays at 10am and 10pm to accommodate the different time zones. We can see who is progressing and who is falling behind in their motivation and then we can nurture or exit those who are not performing. The team meetings are amazing and where so much of the team building takes place.

Timing: 

We see it often where people post their project and they list every position they think they need for the entire duration of their project. 

What we’ve found is that it makes more sense to post positions you need NOW as opposed to later. This way you work on your production in phases and with different teams of people throughout the lifecycle of the production. You can overlap these teams so that you don’t finish one section THEN go into the next, but you should always have work for your artists to do if they are on your project or you are just wasting their time. 

We are currently working on some great UI features to make this process work more smoothly and organically for creators and contributors. 

These 3 tips are the biggest factors we’ve seen so far in what is making projects successful and we want to be sure to share and have a place to have more discussion publicly. 

If you have any questions and would like to interface with us directly you can send an email to [email protected]. Thanks and keep up the great work! 

If you haven’t already be sure to sign up to Artella today. it’s free and we’re working to change the way creative content is made forever. Come be part of the revolution!