On knowing your worth and getting back to work
From Nick Gibney
VCspotlight is a bi-monthly interview series with the documentary filmmakers and video journalists who comprise our global filmmaking collective.
New Jersey-based writer, animator, and visual artist Nick Gibney is the Director of Graphics and Animation for Jigsaw Productions, an award winning documentary production company in New York. His animation work has been featured at festivals around the world, including Sundance, Tribeca, and South by Southwest. Gibney’s also a published comic book creator, and he’s helped storyboard documentaries like Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson.
What was your first-ever job?
My first-ever job was scooping ice cream at an ice cream/candy shop when I was 14. As an adolescent growing up in a boring suburb, I was determined to get a job as soon as humanly possible because to me, at that age, money meant freedom. It meant that I could walk into the record store (which would become my second job) and buy CDs and DVDs or the comic book store to buy comics, and not have to justify my spending to anyone but me. I learned from scooping ice cream, in short, to value my time. Even though I was tired after work and would then have to go do homework, I would get a paycheck at the end of the week.
Flash forward, when people started asking if I would do creative jobs where I’d be paid “with exposure” or was told “it’s a great opportunity to get your foot in the door,” I was very skeptical and would usually turn them down. If you’re giving your time to work for someone else, they should pay you. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but something is better than nothing, in my opinion. And the few times in my life where I have caved on this and taken significantly less than I felt I was worth because the job was exciting, I always paid for it later. Know your worth and ask to be paid what you’re worth. On the same token, don’t oversell yourself.
What was the first film or video that you worked on?
The first film I ever worked on was a documentary series called The Blues. I was fifteen. The job was basically a part-time office clerk. At the time, there were piles and piles of Blues CDs that needed to digitized, so it was my job to sit at a computer in the corner of the production office and listen to Blues songs for hours while I copied the discs, typed up the track listings (because this was 2003, prior to the futuristic days of CD metadata), and log them for archival.
I learned that there are a plethora of jobs in the film industry that are less glamorous than being the director, but also that they are what you make of them. I can tell you one thing, listening to all that Blues music definitely helped me in my job interview at the record shop down the street from the ice cream parlor, where I started making $2 more an hour. Blind Willie Johnson is still one of my favorite musicians.
What are you working on now?
Right now I’m working on Dirty Money: Season 2 for Netflix. The biggest challenge with it (and almost any documentary, in my experience) is focusing on the creative process given a tight deadline. The best way to handle this is with good communication. Be upfront about what is realistic during the time allotted and try not to bite off more than you can chew. If you’re going to need help to get everything they need to be done, say so.
What does your animation process look like?
My animation process, like any creative process, developed over time by watching A LOT of animation and films, emulating the things I liked, playing to my strengths, and confronting my weaknesses. I was always drawn to more general filmmaking tools like composition, timing, and storyboarding because I am more interested in telling a good story than in being the best character animator, which I think informed how I approach each step. My primary question when approaching animated sequences in documentaries is, “Does it serve the story? And how?”
What’s a ritual or mantra that’s particularly important to you as a filmmaker?
As for mantras, I have an excerpt from a story by Henry Rollins taped to my computer. It reads:
“I’ve got a stopwatch strapped to my brain. Got a death-trip man screaming in my ear. I got a part animal part machine vision digging its spurs into my side screaming: ‘Faster, you idiot, the sun is coming up!’”
It reminds me to get back to work.
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by films, books (non-fiction and fiction), illustrations, music. But I have a lot of mentors that inspire me as well. My former teacher, Suzan Pitt, was both a personal and creative inspiration through her mentorship and her films. I was very lucky to have been her student and teaching assistant, and her recent passing hit me very hard.
Great teachers and mentors can inform and reshape how you look at the role of art and artists, and I’ve been very fortunate to have some great mentors. My dad, in a myriad of ways, has also been a major inspiration for me.
What are your favorite stills from projects you’ve worked on?
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
This was the first creative job I ever had on a film, one where I was actually using my artistic skills as opposed to just getting people coffee. I storyboarded all the recreation scenes for the doc. I was particularly proud of this shot because while the rest of the shoot was on location, this shot necessitated a green screen shoot; and as a twenty-year-old artist, it was validating to see how simple drawings could affect the storytelling and production decisions of a big feature film.
Steve Jobs: Man In The Machine
I believe this was my first fully animated sequence in a feature film. I like it because it served both a practical and creative purpose. The practical being that the footage of the person telling the story I was animating was very low quality, so they wanted something more interesting to look at while the story is told. The creative motivation for it being an animated scene at all, instead of recreation, was that the story took place in the hazy recollections of one person, so we wanted the visuals existing in a kind of “memory-verse.”
Rolling Stone: Stories From The Edge
This scene, a collaboration with The Glossary, was very important to me. I was working on a big chunk of the GFX for this film on the east coast, while The Glossary was handling a set of others on the west coast. This particular sequence was on a tight deadline and it involved representing the spirit of Hunter Thompson and Ralph Steadman as a collaborative pair. As a lover of Ralph Steadman’s art, I was very invested in making sure that this scene was done right. I think The Glossary had 24 hours before they had to deliver the final graphic, but the directors and I felt that the scene didn’t have enough of Steadman’s signature splatter.
So I woke up at 4 in the morning, took a camera into the office, lined the phone room with cardboard, and filmed paint splatter for two hours. The Glossary is in California, so by the time I sent them the footage they were just starting their day and were able to incorporate the footage beautifully before delivery. I was validated in my efforts when the directors received written confirmation from Ralph Steadman himself that he liked the scene.
