Directing from the Sidelines: Mentorship, Authority, and Blurred Authorship in Student Animation Projects

Bao Chau Phan · RMIT University Vietnam · [email protected]

Patrick Hartono · RMIT University Vietnam · [email protected]

Credits may name a supervisor without showing how their feedback shaped a student animation film. This paper asks when pedagogical guidance becomes a creative contribution requiring acknowledgement, and what ethical obligations follow from the supervisor’s authority over student work. Drawing on scholarship on distributed creative labour (Heller, 2019), it examines the pre-production phase (ideation and early concept development) of Judgement Realm, a 2023 graduation film made by three students in Vietnam. A reflexive, practice-based case study brings together versioned scripts, storyboards and character designs, message exchanges, contemporaneous supervision notes and later reflections. Three vignettes trace a framing question and risk caution followed by a change in conceptual setting; suggestions about narration and camera angles followed by revisions, including alternatives devised by the students; and an audience criterion followed by a substantial shift in character design. The surviving materials show changes to the work, but much spoken feedback went unrecorded and the students’ reasons for particular choices remain uncertain. The analysis distinguishes influence from a contribution that enters the work and warrants acknowledgement. It does not claim that this single case can establish a threshold for co-authorship. Instead, it develops a vocabulary for discussing degrees of intervention, mutual justification, the content of creative contributions, and the asymmetry between supervisory authority and student accountability. It proposes a credit on the finished work and a start-of-project agreement as ways to make the supervisory relationship and its decision rules more visible.

Keywords: authorship; mentorship; animation education; practice-based research; power distance; Vietnamese higher education; distributed creative labour

Phan Bao Chau (Jackie) is an Associate Lecturer at RMIT University Vietnam, an animator, art practitioner, and educator specializing in 2D animation and motion graphics. She previously served as Brand Director and Head of the Digital Animation Department at FPT University and has been a visiting lecturer at Vietnamese universities. Jackie has supervised student projects featured over ten times on Behance. She is a jury member for festivals, including the 17th Xiamen International Animation Festival, and serves on graduation committees at universities such as Van Lang University, FPT University, and Hoa Sen University. Her work bridges industry practice and education.