Status Updates 5 - New Horizons

Intro

I’ve been working on longer shorts for a few months now, and a few weeks ago I finally finished the first one. It was a huge relief and reminded me a lot of how it felt producing short films in college. Even though the short is done, it won’t be out for a bit. The reason is that I want to be able to figure out a release schedule for this new content. In order to do that, I need a backlog and have to stagger releases so they overlap with shorts in production.

Kind of complicated and long winded, but it is what it is.

Doppio

On the subject of long form content, the short I just finished was a “Storytime” short. I originally planned to work on a new format, but a few months ago I had a very strong desire to make something closer to a traditional short film. It’s not exactly what I would want to do for artistic merit, but it is formatted in a “short story” way. More so than my other stuff at least.

So I changed up my plans and decided to do the short in my “Moment Of My Time” series. It’s a good format for this type of stuff due to it being more “in media res” than my other shorts. The premise of the short is pretty fun, and as of this writing, I’ve finished up the script, storyboards and am now heading into production. If all goes well, this short could standardize my long form production. Failing that, it would be a starting base for future work to build from (I can’t imagine what things would be like after these new puppets are complete). I would say at this rate without optimizations, the turnaround for a long form short is looking to be around 5 months or so. I think I could eventually bring it down to a month with some time, but we’ll have to see how that goes.

Ristretto

On the other side of the pond, are shorts. I will be frank: I hate this format. To be precise, I hate how the platforms handle this format. What the platform holders do change so frequently, and never get easier to work with for creators. Growth is all but dead on Instagram and seemingly Tiktok, with Youtube, fortunately not following suit. That’s not to say Youtube is doing a good job with the format, because I do think there is a lot of growth there, and the algo is extremely inconsistent.

That being said, as I mentioned a few months ago, I will be making a transition to de-prioritize shorts with content that makes more sense for the changing landscape of these websites. Currently I’ve finished a nice wave of, what I’m calling “Short Shorts” (this is how they’ll initially be categorized on playlists and on this site). These little shorts are pretty fun to make, and a lot quicker too due to their limited nature. It’s been a fun experience overall. The production time for them is maybe around 10 hours split across a couple of days. As time goes on they’ll get even quicker to produce as well. Part of this initial time is that I haven’t quite reeled in my production for shorts due to using the same pipeline for years. It’ll take some time to adjust things, and I think I’ll eventually be able to get production down to under 5 hours.

I’ve had to go back to the drawing board the past few months and really think about how I want to participate in this content game. I’m not at all afraid of investing time into these platforms to grow, however, the deal as it is currently, is not ideal. It’s not 2010 anymore, and the landscape has changed radically, while animation continues to be a timely endeavor. If I want to continue making shorts, I have to pace myself, and invest in areas with a better return. Hence the shift for “lower production” work for shorts and “higher production” work for long form. Ultimately my health and well being have to come first, no matter how much I enjoy making these things. They simply do not warrant the physical and mental toll they’ve been taking on me, so this realignment is overdue.

That said, “Short Shorts” do propose some interesting opportunities. They’re more experimental, and also allow me more opportunities to play with other characters that I’ve made up. They’re also more low stakes, and if they don’t perform well, it’s not much of a loss. I’m curious how the new format will do as I would not have chosen to go this way if the previous style of my short form content was more stable in its performance.

Outro

Last winter was decently productive and so far spring is lining up decently well. It’s always scary doing new things, but with no risk you don’t get any reward. It’s always important to be mindful of your landscape and opportunities to adapt, because if you fail to do so, you’ll never grow.

-Until next time-