There is no spotlight in collaboration.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the benefit of seeing Electric Six in concert with opening bands We Are the Fury and The Gore Gore Girls. It was a great show and Electric Six were absolutely amazing (one of the best acts I've seen all year!).

However, the Gore Gore Girls didn't put on that great a show and it was for one simple reason: The failure to share the limelight. During the performance, in most of the songs, the singer also played lead guitar. The other guitarist was also more than capable of playing lead, but for some reason, only played lead on two songs.

The singer was wearing herself out trying to do everything and in the end, it just got embarrassing to watch. On the one instrumental where the 2nd guitarist actually played lead, the singer actually got up on one of the monitor speakers and danced around, stealing the spotlight from the lead performer. It became a boring ordeal of "Look at me! Look at me!" The indulgence grew tiresome and I was glad when it was over.

The thing is that when you're taking part in any kind of collaborative artform, you cannot ever assume full credit for the work produced. You also cannot try to garner all the attention that the work gets.

In film, there's all this worry about who's the author of the piece. Oh, it's the screenwriter. Oh, it's the director. Oh, it's the producer. The truth is that the author is the group of people who made the piece. Change any member of that key crew and you're going to end up with a different film. Ingmar Bergman's films wouldn't be the same without Sven Nykvyst. The Coen Brothers make different movies if the script is from someone else.

Film is the most collaborative art. It is completely unfair for one person to ignore the hard work of everyone else and proclaim themselves the author of the film.

I've had the unfortunate experience of working in the past with people who come from this mindset of sole authorship. There were many creative disagreements and a constant struggle to keep the ideas flowing freely back and forth. Unfortunately, the project devolved into a horrible power struggle, the flow of ideas stopped and turned into either outright dictation or passive-aggressive mind-reading. In the end, the project was absolutely awful and an outright heartbreak for me, who was hoping for turning out a great product.

If you're going to work collaboratively, then you need to remember that the key idea is teamwork. You cannot do everything yourself, nor should you.