The thing about production is that it helps to be a quick study. It rewards people who are quick studies so I’m guessing it produces a lot of people who are quick studies.
You learn as you go, basically. You may have learned about production in school, but everywhere you work has its own processes and ways of doing things. They have their own logistical challenges and time frames within which those challenges occur. There are personalities and all manner of reactions to high stress environments.
So you learn on the fly. You make mistakes on the fly. But you don't forget anything.
The business also rewards people who yes... they make mistakes but they learn from those mistakes, internalize the lessons those mistakes present, and move on from there with increased knowledge and know-how.
Studio production and remote production offered me plenty of opportunities to observe and then carry out the different processes involved in all the variations of those productions. The experience sharpened my observational and listening abilities and was my introduction to seeing the future so that I could be faster at what I did, so that I could see problems coming miles before they arrived.
And yes. I made mistakes. But I never made the same one twice. And the things I learned from people explaining them to me... I never required those explanations twice. I made notebooks of notes about processes that didn't immediately stick in my head. So I could always look up the answers embedded in explanations that had previously been given to me.
After my work in studio and remote production, I was thrown into the deep end in live broadcast television.
And if I didn't have to know how to see the future before...
I'd sure have to learn how to then. Because seeing into the future increases your speed in that circumstance. It also increase your accuracy because you can see everything out in front of you that has a bearing on what you're doing right now. And you learn how to do it in high pressure environments against the clock.
Always always always against the clock.
Accuracy, getting it right, was paramount.
The ability to both think and keep cool under pressure so you could keep thinking strategically... was paramount.
And yes. I made some whopping on-air mistakes. But all those few mistakes were one-offs and were the product of a certain fearfulness of making mistakes in a high pressure, high stakes environment.
So I also learned how to not be ruled by that fear and, instead, lean into what I absolutely did know, the expertise I did have. And whatever I needed to do my job better, faster, mistake-free (as possible), I made sure I learned that information, acquired those skills. Which really does turn out to be a huge antidote to fear and hesitation. The other antidote, of course, being able to see into the future. Because sometimes in the future are problems or questions that need time to be addressed. So they have to be intuited as soon as possible so that by the time those question marks arrive in the present, you have the answers teed up.
In reality, I lived in the future a lot because live broadcast television demands it.
It's perhaps the best skill I brought with me from that experience into the real world, into my own life and subsequent career.
And for all the pressure, the uncertainty, the self-doubts I was subject to...
I am grateful for the experience.
Turns out it was essential to the me who came out of it.
