Everyone screws up. Learn from it and move on.
First off, this is how life works, not just the film industry. If you are like me, you take it hard when you screw up. The key is to realize it happens to everyone, it will happen to you, and that you can’t control that. The idea is to screw up as little as possible, but when you do, accept it (that’s important, take responsibility at all times), see what you can learn from it to make yourself better next time, and move on.
It's not the falling down, everyone falls down, it’s the getting back up.
I tend to do a post mortem of sorts when I screw up. If I have someone who was in the vicinity, 1st AC, DP, dolly grip, I’ll ask them for their honest assessment. Sometimes outside eyes see things we don't and can be invaluable and it’s the best way to learn.
One of my most haunted memories of this industry happened when I was working on a very popular show that was ending its run. We were on the last day of the final episode and one of the final things we were going to shoot was going to be the death of one of the most beloved characters on the show. The director, a huge name, had an extremely complicated shot designed involving a fifty foot moving crane called a techno crane. A tremendous amount of using this device successfully lives in where you set the base based on the arc of the shot.It was a great shot and one I would have loved to achieve.
The day happened to be a sixth day, rare but not unheard of, and so we were already tired. We got to the shot at 5 in the morning, the sun threatening to come up, wind blowing, so tired and cold that I remember my teeth were chattering. We set up the crane, started to rehearse and just couldn’t get the shot the director wanted. We tried and tried, and it just wasn’t working, I kept on losing the frame at a point where I was supposed to go from upside down to right side up and I realized that my mind just wasn’t working well. Our director kept asking “why isn’t this working” and I couldn’t quite figure out why. Realizing what was at stake I took the director aside and said the one thing no operator evere wants to say - I am concerned we are not going to get this the way you want and I think we should come up with an alternate plan. It's unbelievably rare when you throw in the towel but sometimes, when the sun is coming up and you realize everyone is exhausted, it is literally the last shot of the show and there is no time to do it another day, you have to be realistic.
The director got upset with me (as I expected he should) but recognized I was just telling him the truth about the situation. We came up with a slightly modified version, nowhere near as interesting, and of course, in the final edit, no one wonders why the camera didn't do something else. But that shot will always haunt me and to this day it’s a painful reminder. In retrospect, I should have realized that was too ambitious of a shot that late in the week and asked way way way ahead of time to do it earlier in the day.
The next morning…well afternoon…I woke up and with a good night's sleep behind me, and instantly realized what was wrong with the shot. I had asked for the base to be set in the wrong place for what we needed to do. Had it been earlier in the day, before exhaustion set in, I think I would have recognized that or more than likely, not made the mistake to begin with, but the mistake was mine. To this day I still cringe when thinking about the one that got away but in the end, I realize that punting the idea and speaking to the director about it was not only the hardest thing to do, but the right thing to do, considering the circumstances. Sometimes the hardest things to do are the only option.
Onwards.
