LATE NIGHT WORK CLUB (EAMONN O’NEILL)

Late Night Work Club (LNWC) is an online collective of animators based across Europe and the USA. Its 17 members include Dave Prosser, Louise Bagnall and Eamonn O’ Neill from the UK.
Eamonn O’Neill is a director at Studio AKA and works on his LNWC films in his own time from a home studio. He received a BAFTA nomination for his film I’m Fine Thanks.

LNWC was largely set up by independent animator Scott Benson, when he noticed that many likeminded people and friends were working independently on projects outside of their day to day commercial work – converging late at night on Twitter. Scott had the idea to form a loose collective where people could support each other and also together release work online. After some initial discussions with Eamonn O’Neill, Charles Huettner and Eimhin McNamara, it quickly grew to what it is now.

LNWC members are professional animators, sound designers or musicians, who work on making LNWC shorts outside of their day jobs. Each member works on their own film responding to a collective theme, and films are then released together online.

STATE OF PLAY

The internet is the collective’s main means of communication – it’s how the members met and how they reach their audience. Their first project, the Ghost Stories anthology, is self funded, so each film is low or no budget.

ADVICE

“With Ghost Stories right now we’re not considering crowd funding or pay per view. The heart of the project is much more about supporting your own scene and sharing work without any sense of exclusivity. The films will be online and we will be offering a limited run of DVDs, posters, badges etc. We want to inspire others to do the same – to show you don’t need permission to do something like this.”

“The biggest highlight for me is hearing that complete strangers enjoy your work and appreciate what you do. The BAFTA nomination has been huge; it has given me a great boost to keep going.”

“For someone about to graduate I would say just keep working. Don’t graduate and stop doing your own work. Work with your friends and build up relationships. If you’re scared and nervous about your work you’re probably doing something right.”