Like this:

Last night, after a day of working on my Geocache with Mitch, I was lying on my couch reading Snow Crash until quite late.  My mind then began to wander.  This is usually my sign that my brain has had enough reading.  When I read a page from a book and my mind is picturing ideas for movies or past conversations or songs or what it would be like to be a rockstar or how much effort it would take to go make a fruit smoothie or how I wish I was snowboarding or any number of fantastical dream images – then getting any more concentrated serious reading done is probably a lostass cause.  So for a few minutes I embraced my wandering mind and though about school.

I was working as a cameraman this weekend on a video shoot and the guy in charge seemed to have much lower standards of quality than I am used to enforcing over myself.  We weren’t getting all of the proper angles needed and were doing things – though effective and definately workable – fairly rushed.  It was a two-camera shoot.  The whole point of a two-camera shoot is to have the different angles to cut away to in order to make the piece more than just a tripoded one-angle bore-fest.  The guy in charge actually said at one point, when Mitch (the other camera guy) brought up worries that we weren’t filming enough, “Guys.  Let me put it this way… I actually could care less if we use any footage from that camera at all.” – pointing to the handheld, off-tripod camera.

This surprised me.  He just doesn’t care if the video is interesting?  Doesn’t want more than one angle?  But then he clarified himself, “What I mean is this…  I was talking to a friend who has had success with this sort of stuff and his advice was ‘The best product is a finished one.’  We are doing well as long as we just get it done.“

So lying on my couch after working on homework all day and thinking about school I began thinking about this conversation.  I don’t fully agree with this mentality, because I have seen output by some people who do just ‘get things done’ and often I am very unimpressed.  Although – this is something that I have trouble with.

I often get hung up on tiny, and retrospectively meaningless details of things.  I am constantly saying, ‘what if I did [new digressing idea] instead?’  When it comes to making video, film, photography, animation, or I suppose just art, I believe I can benefit quite a bit from just getting things done.  Making decisions and sticking with them.  Not constantly second guessing myself to the point that progress of any sort is completely halted.  I understand that there are literally endless possibilities when it comes to making creative decisions in whatever I do, but rather than obsessing about making (what I believe is) the perfect choice I can instead make a very good one and learn from the eventual outcome – good, bad, or otherwise.

*DISCLAIMER* I mean all of this, of course, with moderation and will still continue to do what I can to not produce total shit at all times.  I don’t mean I won’t care to do well anymore, but I just don’t need to get so frustrated about all the small things.