Speed Equals Quality

How many sayings have you heard equating speed with shoddy workmanship?

"Haste makes waste"

The entire tortoise and hare story

"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast"

Has anyone ever proven that?

When your food takes a long time at a restaurant, is it generally a better meal?

Someone used "quality" as an excuse for being slow, and somehow; we all bought into it.

I notice that when I am on a deadline, I somehow manage to make the work happen at lightning speed.

Recently, I was on an indie film set that was running late and I had a hard out at 3pm. When the director finished setting up the emotional breakdown scene for my character at 2:50 pm, the camera started rolling and I nailed it in one take.

Am I that brilliant of an actor?

Maybe.

But I do know one thing; if I had time to do multiple takes it would have definitely taken me longer.

I don't know if it's because my actor subconscious knows that first takes are rarely used due to technical reasons, if it's Parkinson's Law, or having no time to judge my instincts; but I often perform best under pressure.

Maybe we are not consistently brilliant because we know we don't have to be.

It's food for thought.

So maybe, I don't need a month to write a rough draft of a script, or 2 years to produce a film. Maybe these are speed limiters that I placed there myself without asking if they are valid.

One movie took two years, so now all of them do?

Seems like a pretty small frame of reference.

So, without working myself to death, I am going to see just how fast I can get my next few projects done.

Will I have more typos? Probably.

The truth is; I probably cant write a novel in three days or produce a feature film in a month.

But I can probably do it a lot faster than I currently do.

I am not saying that you shouldn't put care into your work.

I'm not saying that some projects won't take time.

What I am saying is that you shouldn't assume that every project needs to take months and months if it's gonna be any good. Every project has it's own time frame, and we shouldn't force them to wait just because of our preconceived notions.

Just for fun, see how fast you can go.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for making art.

E