The Freedom to Fail

video tracking shot via sled — Darryl Lai being pulled by lead sled dog Justin Smith. Both are Web Communications staff members.

You might wonder how the title of this relates to the above photo so let me try and establish the scene. Darryl (AKA “Da-REAL Deal”) squirreled himself into some kind of tiny sled. The reason this tiny sled exists still evades my comprehension. Justin then attached this strange sled to his waist much like a sled dog. This weird setup was an attempt at getting a tracking shot of a cross country skiier. The idea was that the skiier would come at them while justin ran along pulling Darryl on his tiny sled.

The trouble was that it absolutely didn’t work. The motion was so rocky that it really didn’t turn out well. Now I didn’t watch further than the first 30 seconds and they are very good at post processing so maybe it will be usable. However, I kind of doubt it. The purpose of this post is to show you what it takes to make really high quality work (in any field). You have to be excited about the possibility of failure. You have to continue to try new things, take leaps of faith, screw up and hopefully do better next time.

This isn’t supposed to be a warm and fuzzy motivational pitch this is just simple fact. If you want to do anything great (doesn’t matter what it is) you have to try everything. No matter how crazy or weird it might seem. You have to do whatever it takes to get that epic shot.

-Kegan