Creatively active professional road warriors who tend to have a regular successful operation love and need three key things: Clear Information, order and energy. A whole lot of the energy. These 3 things combined can make all the difference in your production, project, and final product. The three of them benefit from one very healthy obsession that most of the professional I’ve had the pleasure to work with seem to share:
Obsess the details.
Every single key for excellence is in the details. No matter what you’re doing or what vertebra of your project’s spine you’re looking at — go deep, get in there. The macro level; that’s where it’s at!
We ask questions because we want to understand, not only the outcome but the process that led to that outcome. Why? Because we as a part of the team, can mimic that reasoning and then take the best decision for our team, for our project, our boss and ultimately ourselves.
That said, this occurs only and only if, you have a phenomenal team, led by a great leader that provides grounds to growth and nourishes the idea that we are in this together. It’s an invitation to “think like us” and be part of something bigger than yourself.
If the leader explains the ins and outs, the details and the reason why you were asked to do something in a certain way, because down the line that means it shaves some time off, it solves or prevents an issue to become a liability or it’s just a part of that toolkit we call “best practices” — then you can explain clearly to everyone in the team, pass over the information, make everyone grow.
Details — and the previous conversations about them — are the reason why we can discuss and argue with the crew during the set-up phase. Why we can pitch in on a conversation that isn’t necessarily down our ally, that attention to details is what makes your opinion matter.
The same attention to details that Mike Mason a tech manager on a reality show I worked on showcased when cleaning the equipment in the tech room, showing me how to detect when a lens was drifting or needed to back focus, how to do it and when to do it. That’s knowledge.
Wisdom came years later working on live television when a director agreed with me that a lens needed back focus and he did the old “camera 2 is camera 1 now and camera 1 please act quickly” seamlessly fixing everything. Such a great display a driver leader.
Attention to details is good and bad habit most usually develop into an obsession, that makes our lives harder but our work easier. It’s the reason why people tend to leave us alone when we retreat to our “craziness” and then come back when we are “doing better” and it is also the same reason why we get a call to join a team for a new project regularly.
A great example of this is what happened to me at Gold Cup this year: The pitch manager was working hard on this venue. Early in the morning to very late hours at night. Since I enjoy learning as much as possible about pitch and its condition, we bonded over how to keep grass alive. At this venue, the pitch comes in on a tray and after that venue can set the goals. This event is a show we all stop to enjoy, time-lapse it and have a nice iced coffee.
The very next day we were there very early, it’s match day, if we did our job, today should be smooth and correcting some minor details — Oh! and have a double header… Sometimes I forget about that part. So, I see him and you could tell he was not happy. We meet courtside and he points exactly at what I was looking. He confirms what I was wondering, he knows. He is yelling but it’s because he understands that the is suboptimal and that we need to address this as soon as possible.
The issue? The goals were set, but they are crooked. Now, this may not sound like a broadcast problem, and indeed, it’s directly a venue and pitch management issue. But it does not leave us out of the equation. See, up in the top level, on the catwalk we have two cameras set in line with the goal line.
These cameras are part of the VAR operation and help us identify key moments. A goal can be marked as valid or not by these shots. A big deal to a good set up is that the goal line aligns with the top pole of the goal — if the goals are crooked, this affects us directly. Therefore, it’s 8:00 first match is at 17:00, let’s get to work!
Controlling the details as much as possible makes everyone else’s life easier, but also it makes life much more beautiful. For instance we all focus to much on seeing the greatest monuments, the best cities to believe that we have fulfill a goal in life and that we, somehow had a great life — however if you focus on the details you can find greatness in everything. In your garden, on any sidewalk, in the spring light that’s hitting a perfect stranger at the restaurant you are just arriving.
Obsess the details, and the essence of things in life:
These two pictures where taken at the same spot. One is the view in front of me the other one is what I found on the ground. To me both as impressive, for very different reasons.
