Short- and Long-Term Playfulness
This week I have mostly been laying the groundwork for the project, which actually involves finishing off the last project - seeing as this is, in part, a ‘making of’, it’s hard to get started without finishing the previous one! However, what I have been doing is writing a long reflection on the way Finding Play was made. Part of this reflective process has been about looking at where the film came from - what the original genesis of the film was, and where it ended up. It’s raised lots of interesting points in terms of not only how I operate on a project, but how I analyse a project also. So, while this isn’t the most exciting blog post in terms of film-making production, I think it’s really important to think about where playfulness entered the project; that is, after all, going to be the central question of Pressing Play.
As I have written about the development of the project in a sort of timeline, I have broken the project down into the stages I worked through - initial ideas, character design, animation, sound design, etc. - and in doing so, I have been able to look back over my behaviour and feelings in each stage and begin to think about whether or not I engaged in that ‘bit’ playfully or not. And as I’ve done so, I’ve started to come to a conclusion - I’m not sure that it matters.
To be clear I still think that understanding playfulness and my experience of the project - whether it was a playful one or not, whether I was playful during the project and how I cultivated that playfulness - is important. It is, after all, the centre point of my research. What I think is less important is looking at all of the individual ways in which I ‘played’ over the course of making the project. Unsurprisingly, there were parts that I found more enjoyable, and parts that I found less so; parts that I really could get lost in the process, and parts where I felt frustrated and a bit blocked.
Perhaps there are two kinds of playfulness at play here: short-terms playfulness, where I undertook a certain task and ‘played’ whilst doing it (e.g. character design); and longer-term, i.e. the project as a whole. A view of the short-term playfulness indicates the inevitable ebb and flow of feeling playful over the course of a project. A longer-term view looks at the project as a whole: did I have fun making this film?
Both points of analysis are useful. Looking at the shorter term, it presents clues as to the way I like to work: quick-and-dirty, with reflection-in-action, not giving myself a chance to overthink. In this regard, there is still learning to do: I have to learn to trust my instincts more; I have to set myself short deadlines; I have to let go, where possible, of the idea that everything I make needs to influence or will have direct impact on my career as an animator.
Looking at the longer-term, overall experience of making this film presents less specific feedback - did I enjoy making this film? Yes! - but allows for a more nuanced understanding of how working plorkfully functions. What appears to me, is the idea that to expect everything to feel playful during a project - particularly an animated one, with less immediacy than, say, an illustration - is unrealistic. However, what I can try and do is put things in place that allow meto feel as playful as possible during the project - taking advantages of any opportunities for short-term play - thus increasing my overall engagement with the process and, ultimately, the piece itself.
When Corita wrote “Our best times are when working and playing are the same” (Kent and Steward 2008, p156), I believe she meant the in-the-moment feeling of joyfully making things, the PLEX framework experiences of Exploration and Discovery, as much as creation. The feeling we get when we become so absorbed in colouring in that we are no longer looking at the full drawing. That is, until we step back and go “aha! There it is, marvel upon my works!”; or, more often than not in my case, “ok, that’s done, what’s next on the list?”. It is progressing through a project that brings me real joy; bringing something full to fruition. This is perhaps why my abstract experiments feel like very short-term play to me; what I really get a kick out of is making something from start to finish. In fact, maybe I can boil that down further: perhaps what I really get a kick out of is finishing.
Perhaps our best times are when working and playing were the same - when we’re not thinking about it in the moment, we’re just doing the thing. Perhaps the second best moments are looking back on something and saying “ha! That was good. What next?”.
References
KENT, C. & STEWARD, J. 2008. Learning by heart, New York, Bantam Books.