Take the time to do it right!

by Gabe Askew on 11/02/09 at 8:25 am

I was talking to my old boss the other day and it reminded me of one of his anecdotes that has always stayed with me.
My boss worked in visual effects and one the projects he worked on was a movie titled “Fair Game.”  You may remember it as the one and only movie starring Cindy Crawford.  Anyway, his effect was an animation of a computer interface and it was to be displayed on a television screen in the movie.  Whenever you film a television screen, you have to sync the refresh of the television screen to the film camera.  This is so you don’t get that weird bar moving down the television screen that you see in some older movies.  My boss described the man in charge of that process.  You see, every time the camera stops you have to restart the whole process.  And in the middle of this hectic film set, this man would slowly and methodically retool the television screen and the film camera.  And it seemed to my boss that this man showed no concern for how long the process took.  So my boss asked him, “Aren’t you worried that you’re taking too long to do this?”  And the man who was a long time veteran of the industry responded, “If you take too long to do something, a year from now it won’t be remembered.  Same for if you bust your butt to do something faster than normal.  What they will remember is if you screwed up their million dollar day of shooting.  The mistake is what they will remember.”