Badges

Much of our time can be taken highlighting the things we do well. All worthwhile and important. When things don’t go well, when we are unsuccessful, when we stuff up, well, hopefully we reflect on it. But do we ever hold the stuff ups as a badge of honour as we do the successes?

Years ago I did some courses where aspiring actors got together with aspiring directors and even aspiring producers to collaborate on some projects. It was pretty organic, so a director would share an idea with a few people, or show someone a script and they would arrange a time to get together, film, edit and finally share their work with the rest of the group.

One of the biggest ideas was a scene from the Dear Hunter, where Robert DeNiros character is playing russian roulette with some Viet Cong. It’s a pretty intense scene, with obvious setting and costume issues. This director wanted to do it all, so he arranged for about 15 of us to go up to a farm about an hour and a half away from home. Arrival time was 6.00 am, with shooting commencing at 7 am. We broke for lunch for about 30 minutes and had dinner on the go.

Filming stopped at 3am the next morning. It was a full on day, with every detail seemingly going into all aspects of the shoot. Scenes were shot and then re shot. Make up re applied, costumes checked, lighting and sound re checked.

We all went home exhausted. I was used to long shoots, even for very little final product. A 30 second tv commercial could take 9 hours to shoot, but this was a long one.

For the director, his job was not over. He spent hours and hours with a friend, editing the final 4 and a half minutes of film.

About three weeks after the shoot, we all sat there on screening night at the course. Other actors et al who were not at the shoot had heard about it, so there was a real sense of anticipation.

When the final credits flowed through and the lights were put on, the course director asked the director for his thoughts. He paused, then said, “Well, it’s s*# really isn’t it?!”

It was that. It was a bad piece on many levels, lighting, acting, directing. All together it made for an uncomfortable 4 and a half minutes. In fact, the best thing that could be said about it was the editing.

And this is what flawed me, the director spent all that time editing. He knew he was going to be presenting something pretty horrible, to a lot of people. Really, it was his name on it, he was the director, it was his big idea.

Yet he finished it, held it up for all to see, for all to ridicule. He held up his failure as a trophy. He went on, “I obviously have my views, but I would like to hear yours, but be a little more specific than me. How and why is it s*#t?”

What followed was much debate about where it went wrong, what could be improved, whether it was too much to try in the first place. And he noted it all down.

I spoke to him a couple of weeks after and he made comments like “It’s all about learning stuff.” and “Gee, it really helped my editing skills trying to piece that together.”

His badge of honour really looked good on him.