Women Behind the Lens
Grow With Anna Smith
Anna Smith is a Creative Video Producer and Director, and part of the team at GIFTED, by Nature. Half-Romanian and half-Scottish, Smith grew up in North-West England, always feeling drawn towards the arts but never truly believing in the possibility of a creative career. While studying English Literature at university, Smith used her love of illustration (and her animation-savvy friends) to teach herself 2D animation.
She delved headfirst into part-time freelance animation work alongside her studies, and quickly progressed onto creating animated music videos, live-action documentary pieces, and album artwork for a range of high-profile clients including James Blunt, Mumford and Sons, The Regrettes, Aurora, Jay1, and many others. The success Smith found through growing her portfolio and building relationships with major music labels across the globe led to her full-time career as a freelance creative following the completion of her degree, and she has since worked for the likes of Elton John, James Arthur, KSI, Yxng Bane, and Dean Lewis.
After establishing an impressive portfolio of animated music videos, Smith made the shift from animation into live video, and in 2021, she joined the GIFTED team as Creative Video Producer.
Smith’s diasporic family has meant that she’s not always known where she feels at home, so she values community and connection above all else. Her journey into the creative industries has guided her to find home in all those that inspire and support her — including family, friends, and work colleagues.
What are three words that describe how you’re feeling right now?
Hopeful, content, excited.
What is your latest project about?
My latest project release is the music video I produced, directed and edited for Vicky Pasion’s ‘Switch It Up’, which premiered on Wonderland Magazine! I have to thank the amazing GIFTED team for their support and involvement in making the video a reality. It’s about having fun, staying playful, not taking yourself too seriously, and finding joy in how you present yourself to the outer world. There’s such a carefully crafted image of what it takes to be someone in the public eye, whether that’s a musician, a celebrity, or a social media influencer, and it's easy to lose authenticity in such a public arena. That’s why it was such a joy to work with such a great team and talented musician on a song I truly love, with the intention of keeping fun and play at the heart of everything we do.
What is your greatest source of inspiration or motivation?
I find that inspiration is such an individual and intuitive process, so it’s a difficult thing to break down into words. It’s almost like an innate drive to create and keep creating. I am a big believer that you can’t just wait for inspiration to strike, though – having bursts of inspiration or even a natural talent for anything only gets you 20% of the way. The rest is hard work, and the power to work hard at seeking out inspiration in times that you don’t feel it just coming out of the blue.
What is your creative process?
My creative process always starts with a conversation. Community and collaboration are so important to me – I love nothing more than seeing my ideas morph and take their own form when I bounce those ideas off other inspired people. I recognise there’s importance in sitting with these ideas to bring them back to reality — it’s important to ground yourself and realise what is actually within the realms of your ability to achieve. However, I think limitations such as timelines, budgets, location etc. can offer a new space of creative inspiration. You then get to explore expanding your original grand, abstract ideas to fill up every inch of those constraints. It allows you to see how to actually make it all possible.
How can our community engage with your project?
At the moment, there’s so much I still have left to do, and so many projects I still want to create. You can keep up to date on my movements and my work through Instagram and my portfolio, but before long I’m hoping you’ll see bigger and broader things on the horizon with my work output. So yeah, for now I guess stay tuned, check out my work, say hi and get in touch if you wanna collaborate! And watch this space, because who knows what the future has in store!
In this season of springtime rejuvenation, what do you hope the world creates space for?
I hope the world creates space for people to be their individual, authentic selves. I hope the barriers to access, particularly to quite inaccessible industries like creative ones, become more permeable and open. I hope people can see inspiration in more inclusivity and diversity, of people, opinions, style, identity, and everything else. With my work, I hope to keep building my community and be able to connect with more and more people with what I do. I hope to make work that I’m truly proud of that resonates with people. I’m far from my final form yet, but I’m proud of my journey so far, and I’ll dive head-first into every opportunity that gets me closer to my goals. Ultimately, I hope that I can keep growing and that I can use whatever experience and knowledge I gain along the way to support anyone around me looking to pursue similar things.
What are you:
Listening to? Kendrick Lamar’s Mr Morale and the Big Steppers is on loop right now.
Reading? At the moment I’m reading We Move, an absolutely beautiful short story collection written by a very talented friend of mine, Gurnaik Johal.
Watching? As a pretentious film fanatic I’d love to say something really high-brow but nah, I’ve been running up the new season of Selling Sunset like there’s no tomorrow (and if anyone wants to buy me a $10 million mansion in Beverly Hills, I’m not complaining).
