Good enough. Ok so this one is probably going to get me in trouble… I can just smell it. So at risk of being thrown out a window, I have this philosophy... That anything in production that does not help your audience experience what you want them to experience threatens everything you're trying to accomplish. Anything that slows production down or makes it more complicated is taking away from your ability to tell the story well. Now I know that sounds benign at first but hear me out. Creativity is inherently not a patient thing. All it wants to do is pour itself out as thoughts and ideas flow. This is where the idea of Good Enough comes in to play.
One of the biggest factors that inhibits the speed of production, in my experience, is our beloved gear. (GASP) Our cameras and rigs and lighting and lenses. It's all important but we have an industry where historically everything just moves slow because there's a ton of crap everywhere on set and it's all big and heavy and expensive and that's just what you do because that's how it's been done. I don't want to function that way. I want to go faster. I only want tools that are Good Enough. Sure a bigger nicer camera and lenses and all that may on paper give me better image quality, but can your audience tell? Maybe you can tell but are you making this for you or them? And do they even care? Not in my experience. And the last time I checked people weren’t pausing their movie to zoom in 400% to see how much noise is in the shadows. Certainly your image quality needs to be above a certain threshold or it'll take away from their experience so it does have to be Good Enough, but anything beyond Good Enough comes at a very high cost. An expensive diminishing return of money and time and ultimately the experience for your audience. Again speed fuels creativity and slowing down for small and unnecessary improvements more often tends to have a greater negative effect than your tiny improvements are having a positive one.
My most important tool for production is my journal. It holds ideas, sketches, diagrams... It's light weight and inexpensive and all it does is feed production. I've shot so many videos with a Good Enough tripod head as a shoulder rig and no matte box and Good Enough lenses and no one who was ever impacted by the final product ever cared. Keep it simple, keep it Good Enough, and focus on doing work that matters... because ultimately if you’re not moving your audience you’re wasting your time.
Now if you think that everything I just said is total nonsense then leave a comment and let me know, I’m totally open for the conversation.