Sep 3, 2013

Late Night Work Club premieres 38-minute compilation "Ghost Stories"

Today, the Midnight Work Club announced its first project, "Ghost Stories," a collection of 38-minute animated shorts by up-and-comers in the animation world. The films and their creators include: "I Will Miss You," directed by Dave Prosser; "Jump," directed by Charles Huttner; "The American Dream," directed by Sean Buckeye; "Mountain Ash," directed by Jake Armstrong and Erin Kilkenny; "Caleb Wood. Loose Ends" directed by Louise Bagnall "Phantom" directed by Alex Grigg "Limb" directed by Alex GriggAsshole by Conor FinneganOmbilda by Ciaran DuffyPost Personal by Eamonn O'NeillLast Lives by Scott Benson

With more animated shorts being produced than ever before, it is increasingly difficult for individual short films to get noticed. The Late Night Work Club's curated attempt to create a "mixtape" of animated shorts is an interesting attempt to bring more attention to the work of independent filmmakers.

The project is ambitious in scope and length, especially considering that it was produced without any commercial intent. The filmmakers self-funded the entire project without any crowdfunding or other sponsorship. The filmmakers hope to recoup some of their costs by offering download packs and Uncanny Mystery Packs. Uniquely, the film has also not been taken offline to be screened at film festivals. It was released on Vimeo today, just five days after its theatrical release in Los Angeles.

To learn more about LNWc and the unique creative and distribution strategies they are exploring with Ghost Stories, I interviewed filmmaker Scott Benson, one of the founders of the Late Night Work Club.

Cartoon Brew: Late Night Work Club began in 2012 as a collective for animated filmmakers who wanted to make non-commercial work. Collectives of this type have existed in some form before, but most do not present a single project around a specific theme, such as Ghost Stories. Scott Benson: I think the thematic anthology was directly inspired by NoBrow; the general idea for Late Night Work Club had been bouncing around between Charles Huttner, Amin McNamara, Eamon O'Neill, and myself for several months. It had been bouncing around on Twitter. At one point, I was reading one of the NoBrow books and said, "The cartoons in here are like the cartoons I like and my friends are making. Why isn't there a place like this ......?" And. It's not self-conscious highbrow or lowbrow, just creators with strong personalities coming together to create variations on a theme. I was fascinated by that stuff, we discussed it, and the idea grew.

Cartoon Brew: How does producing a 38-minute film, as opposed to a regular short film, increase your exposure? We are making this one up as we go along. We didn't want it to feel like a film festival; it's one album with a lot of different bands on it. We find bands that we like and find them individually. If we released them all separately, there would be one or two pieces that would be talked about here and there, and many of the others would get passed over, even though they might not have been featured on this blog or that blog. By working together we are one group without competition. We will all rise and fall together. We are all colleagues and many new friendships have been forged through this project. It is one group project with many distinct voices and that is so cool. Personally, I hope that by doing it this way, it will be more of an event and not just a curated list of affiliated short films. We'll see how it goes.

Cartoon Brew: I'm surprised they haven't done crowdfunding. Scott Benson: I didn't have to convince anyone. We just said, "Hey, buddy. Won't you join us? There was nothing more to it than that. Everyone understood immediately and many seemed eager for something like this to come (myself included). Invitations were never outright turned down, only a few people who had no choice but to decline for the sake of their livelihood, or who could not attend this time but wanted to attend the next one. No one mentioned the word "kickstarter". Maybe they will in the future. We just did it because we wanted to do it anyway. If we raise enough money from donations and the sale of downloads and mystery packs, we can split it among the 14 of us and each buy a pizza and have an international pizza party at the Google Hangout.

Cartoon Brew: How much interaction was there between members? For example, did everyone have to propose their ideas to the group for approval? If you wanted to make a short film quietly with minimal chatter, that was fine. If we wanted to engage with each other or with the project in a broader sense, that was cool too. We could look at each other's work, give each other reactions and encouragement, and chat about the project and our own lives. We also had some cross-short help. I did the snow for the first shot of Alex's (Grigg) short and he made the Photoshop brushes. There were a few occasions where all of us presented rough ideas, mostly to keep it from sounding silly to the rest of us. The suggested length was no longer than two minutes. Other than that, there were few guidelines and, for the most part, no discussion of content. This was because this was a group of adults who wanted to make something personal and fun and stretch their creativity, so with very few exceptions, no discussion of content was necessary. We said, "Look at this R-rated animation. Look at the chaos of this R-rated animation. Those things are so tired, so silly, so small. We just made what we like.

Cartoon Brew: One of the reasons I found it strange was that nearly all of the shorts produced in color used the no-outline style that is so popular these days in digital animation. Scott Benson (Benson): As far as style goes, everyone just did what they wanted to do. Much of it follows the style of our work prior to "Late Night Work Club". For example, if you look at the first three shorts, the three individual voices flow very much from what we have done elsewhere. My shorts are unashamedly in my wheelhouse. If there is any similarity, it is that we are doing it individually and we each got there in our own way, no matter where we go artistically in the future. And if it is trendy, we may all have a date at prom this year. Fingers crossed.

Cartoon Brew: Another unconventional distribution plan is to premiere the film online before showing it at the festival. What kind of release strategy do you hope to accomplish? Although our films have screened at festivals, neither Charles Huttner nor I have ever been to a festival. We both live in Pennsylvania and we are probably about 50% of the people making animated films in the state. Many other LNWC members have been to Annecy, Ottawa, Pictoplasma, etc. Every year they say, " I saw something really cool after a two-hour Sand Animation show, but just wait until it's posted online." And the years go by, and I'm still waiting to see many of the things I got so excited about when I saw the trailers years ago. Imagine you are a teen. Those years are forever. Animation would never be as diverse, interesting, and inspiring if the best films could be seen for years at a time, on specific weekends in far-flung cities, in places accessible only to those with the means and ability to fly, book a hotel, and pay for a pass to get there. It will be.

It was a given from the beginning for us that we would upload our work to the Internet from day one. But our audience is the people who have access to the Internet, not the people who have access to the very small world of an animation film festival. I am one of them. Most people are. And by putting this film in front of them, we are exposing them to our work and allowing others to say, "I can make things; I can make things. I can make things. I want to be in this world. I want to support this scene. I think that's a very good thing. Personally, I want people other than fellow animators and hardcore fans to see my work. A lot of the festival audience already watches animation news, so there's a great chance they'll see it online anyway.

Cartoon Brew: What's next for the Late Night Work Club? If so, will it be produced with the same staff? Ghost Stories will be screening in various venues during the fall, and hopefully at a few festivals in the next year or so. Plans and conversations are already underway about what we will do together next. Our current thinking about our big project is that all of the previous participants will have priority negotiating rights. But we are all busy and have our own lives, so there will be openings and we already have a pretty good list of other potential members. So we'll see how it goes. Like I said, we're building this thing up ourselves. But that in itself is very exciting.