The Fourth Attempt

The film

A surgeon who spent nine years developing a procedure that failed three times before it worked.

The problem on the table

The department needed to recruit fellowship-trained surgeons against offers from coastal institutions with deeper budgets.

How we made it

We built the film around failure rather than accolades. Interviews were shot in a single two-hour sitting; the rest is observational footage from pre-op, rounds, and a long walk to the parking structure at 6am.

Behind the scenes

• Interviews were shot once, in a two-hour sitting, with no question list shared in advance.
• We shadowed pre-op for three days before a camera came out of the case.
• The parking-structure walk was the last shot of the last day and became the opening frame.