Give It Your Best Effort

Give It your Best Effort
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

It’s hard sometimes to give your best effort every day when the excitement of a new project transitions into the routine that a long-term project needs.

A few days after Disney announced that they would permanently close down Blue Sky Studios, I joined a room in Clubhouse organized by the Animation Industry Club.

Among the speakers, there was Troy Quane, who co-directed Spies in Disguise with Nick Bruno back in 2019. He was recalling that experience and how, when you go through all the meetings, reviews, and so on for years, sometimes you almost just want to move forward with the project and accept things that you usually wouldn’t. And so he told the story of how Blue Sky founder, Chris Wedge, approached him after one of the many meetings and told him:

“When it’s done, it’s done forever. So fight for everything you want”

And that phrase is so true. We sometimes forget, when we are in the midst of the process, that once we release our stories to the world, whether it’s a film, a book, or a comic, we can’t take it back. And so it is right there and then, in the thick of the production, that we need to push ourselves to strive for the best result possible, even when we might feel tired. Because you won’t get a second chance at it, you won’t get another opportunity. We have to give it our best effort.

Because, as Chris Wedge told Troy that day, once it is done… it is done forever.