pay for services?

[b]"I have a question about the whole idea of the Co-op. I have posted asking for help with __________ but everyone that has contacted me has expected money. I had thought that the whole point of the Co-op was to offer services and help for free and offer your services as well to those who need it?"

[/b] As professed in our mission statement, the point of The Animation Co-op is to serve as a nexus for folks who are working on independent animation projects. Basically we try to get people hooked up, primarily through our social gatherings but also through the online Co-op database. By design, the database is slanted towards people developing projects (as opposed to a listing of folks looking for work). Whether or not folks actually collaborate productively and to mutual benefit is something we neither control, mediate, nor monitor. The simple idea is to expose project requests to an eclectic group of artists, animators, actors, writers, musicians, technicians and vendors... and let interested parties take it from there.

Most of the independent producers listed in the database are folks like you and me who don't have a lot of cash to burn. As such, it's probably a safe bet that cash for services is not going to be their option of first resort, so anyone looking to the Co-op for "employment" is likely to be disappointed. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with someone asking to be paid in exchange for services provided. The hard reality is that while people are less likely to fuss over money when it comes to labors of love, it's a challenge to find someone who will fall in love with *your* labor, no matter how "good" it is. When push comes to shove, YOU are the only person who really cares about your work. This holds true even in a co-op.

The bottom line is that folks need to be invested in your project one way or another in order to contribute their time and energy to it. Naturally, the most straightforward way to invest someone in your work is to pay them. It's also the most cut-and-dried (for better and for worse), and typically the least affordable (especially for an independent producer working out of their spare bedroom). In the absence of cash on the barrelhead, you're going to need to devise some sort of compensatory arrangement that is beneficial to the folks working with you, otherwise they're likely to drop out once the initial enthusiasm for your project wanes as the demands of their personal lives wax. This is true even when you encounter someone who professes to be "jazzed" about your work, and volunteers their talents pro bono. You need to ask yourself what's in it for them, and then come up with a good answer to that question... and deliver on it.

For example, in our own independent experiences (both with new projects submitted to The Animation Co-op database and with our earlier work on "Henry's Garden"), we have employed a variety of arrangements in order to get the work done. Some agreements were successful, and some were not. What all of the successful agreements had in common (despite the differences in their specific terms) were provisions which those working with us deemed worthwhile in some respect. In certain cases this was in the form of well-defined promotional considerations for vendors who were donating software or hardware. In other cases it might have been an agreement to utilize a post-production house's resources during their slow period in exchange for a discount. And sometimes it was indeed in the form of straight cash for services (even if the money exchanged utimately amounted to a mere honorarium on the actual time spent towards the project).

Certainly, try to get what you can for free... but recognize that you ultimately get what you pay for. Shelling out full price is unnecessary, but shelling out *nothing* is unrealistic. Folks who donate their services for free will ultimately not be accountable to your project, and your ability to make demands of their time and move the work along will obviously be constrained. With this in mind, you should trawl for outside assistance with your hopes suitably low. This may sound negative, but I'm trying to be as candid as possible based upon personal experience and the experiences of colleagues (all of whom eventually got their work done, if that's any consolation). Ultimately, these things tend to sort themselves out in a Darwinian way. And there *are* angels out there who will give you a lift when you least expect it. The important thing is to keep stepping towards your goal with the realization that no one is going to save you. When push comes to shove, you are the one who is going to see your vision through.

Kevin Geiger

[I]Kevin Geiger Director & Co-founder The Animation Co-op http://www.animationcoop.org/[/I]