Saturday

Today I filmed some footage for an illustrative segment. Moviemaking is an intellectual endeavor, but it's also just a ton of manual labor. So, here's two ratios.

% time spent doing grunt work / % time spent on project


# of people who consume the product / % time spent on project

For moviemaking, the first is really, really high. Especially when you are making the movie yourself with little money.
For writing, the second one is really, really low. There is tons of great reading material out there about congestion pricing, but it has no effect as long as people won't invest their valuable time reading it. Likewise, there is lots of really good stuff written about the financial crisis, but people really like listening to that This American Life episode more than they like reading through books or articles.

Down to the wire

It's getting down to the wire now. Just 18 days left until the b. phil. defense. Can I pull it off?

So far this week, I have made a pretty good run into the "considering the possibilities" animation. It's the third animation, and the most elaborate because it has a bunch of video in it.

The goal is to have four and-a-half animations. The next one explains what C.P. is, and the next one is called "at the margin," and it's about how it's hard to imagine the people at the margin of driving, but that they're still there.

Monday

Today I've been prepping for my trip to DC tomorrow. I have to get a lighting kit together. Parking will be a strain. Good news: I got connected last minute to the head of the Office of Transportation Management at the Department of Transportation. We will be doing an interview about HOT lanes on Wednesday, after my interview with Adie Tomer.


Things are going pretty well. I'm checking equipment out of filmmakers for the first time...getting a tripod and an HVX.

Back again

I was on hiatus. Now I am back in action.

Working a lot on the paper for the B. Phil. A lot of ideas are coming together very quickly.

It's weird how, as the deadline approaches, certain parts of writing a paper become obvious. Not in the funny way. Not in the way that you realize you can't be lazy anymore. More like, a strong sense of reality kicks in...intuitions about what is manageable and what isn't.

It's not that before you were deluding yourself at some deeper level. It's more like how you believe a good luck charm works. You will go through a lot to hold on to your good luck charm. You really think it works. But if you have to make a choice that wagers a lot on your good luck charm pulling through, then suddenly it becomes obvious that your good luck charm isn't reliable.

When I'm writing my paper, I'll wonder if going down certain alleys are feasible. Should I look into this point? Should I look for more sources on this topic? Should I email so-and-so with a question? Should I put these points in this order to make the point better, even if that order was not my first impulse?

At the beginning of the paper-writing, these questions can be paralyzing, because in actuality they are legit and their are lots of avenues to explore. And it is hard to know where the margin of exploring/experimenting/investigating is. Because realistically--unless you do the same thing often enough to have rules-of-thumb--, you rely on a feeling of where that margin is.

For me, that margin sense is very weak and confusing at the beginning. That feeling of where the margin is becomes stronger as the deadline approaches, though. The best outcome would be if I truly believed that the paper were due one week before it is due.

Wednesday

Today I had a meeting with my adviser Will Z. He gave a bunch of good hints. I'm about to enter a little break session, since my girlfriend and I are headed to Alabama for spring break on Friday, by way of friends in Charleston and Atlanta. I am getting cracking on the paper that I have to write for my B. Phil. degree along with the movie.

In other news, I got an interview with someone at the Brookings Institute. Pretty excited about that. Now, if I could just get one more D.C. interview, I won't feel weird driving down there.

Friday

I bought a bunch of after effects scripts yesterday. They are awesome. I paid $70, but that's not that bad considering how much I get out of them. I bought them at aescripts.com.

The most recent sequence is coming along well. I'm trying to incorporate more 3d elements, since everyone seems to like it a lot when the camera moves around. I'll have it posted on Monday.

My computer programmer roommate Victor was like, "Why didn't you just ask me to script these things for you?" But certainty and time are important. If I'd used him, I would have had to describe in detail what I wanted, and maybe I don't really know what I want in advance. I would have had to wait until his schedule permitted. And then there would be uncertainty about whether they worked and how well. Inevitably something goes wrong.

D.C. phone home

The people in Washington, DC are not getting back to me. It's pretty depressing. I feel like I am stalking the entire transport expertise community of our nation's capitol. There's always tomorrow.

Reasons people are not getting back to me:

D.C. supplies of Five Hour Energy Drink are critically low.
Revenge for the Pens kicking The Caps out of the playoffs.
Everyone in D.C. afraid to admit they live in D.C., for fear of being labeled a "beltway insider."
Lewis Lehe's Place is also the name of an infamous D.C. leather bar.
President Obama planning his own documentary about congestion pricing and has issued a gag order on the subject.

In other news, I wrote a bunch of narration today and started planning the next segment, which includes video skits. It will be finished by next Sunday.

Goals for this week

Get interviews in D.C. for real this time.
Finish an overall outline of the movie.
Write narration and work plan for the next section.
Start working on next animation.

New draft of engineer's explanation

What causes congestion? Engineer's perspective. Draft 2 from Lewis on Vimeo.

Some of the stock footage I acquired didn't work, so I used the free sample. I will get that worked out in the future. Also, teh audio is a little weird.



The biggest thing is that there need to be more visual elements in the piece. Like trees moving, different types of cars, different colors of cars, etc.

Frustrated

Animating the engineer's explanation is taking forever, and it's not really looking as good as I'd hoped. I can jazz it up, but again that's more time. Maybe future progress will be quicker, because now I am a lot better at recording audio and programming expressions. I hope so. I will have the second draft of the engineer's explanation up by tomorrow night, so help me DOT (department of transportation).

In other news, I'm not having any success getting interviews in Washington, DC. with economists or anyone. I am going to try the people at the new HOT lanes project. Maybe they will be more helpful. The trouble is that everyone in DC, vs. Los Angeles, seems to really require that the project is "official" somehow. I don't know how to get a stamp of authenticity, because I'm not associated with anything big. Oh well. If I just keep making cool animations to show people, and keep emailing, then it will succeed.

Tuesday

Today I am working on the engineer's explanation of what causes congestion.

Snow

Unfortunately, the snow is ruining a lot of my plans right now. I want to film some outside segments.

Awful News Coverage of the Jobs Bill Catastrophe

If you don't know, here's the low down on the jobs bill catastrophe.

• Unemployment is high.
• The Senate was going to pass a bill to create jobs.
• The main parts of the bill were (1) tax credits for job creation and (2) additional highway construction.
• The tax credit was designed by Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
• Republicans added two provisions: (3) cut the estate tax (death tax...inheritance tax) to 0 percent for one year and extend research and development tax credits. (4) pay doctors more money when they see Medicare patients.
• (3) and (4) do not create jobs...except maybe (3) creates jobs for scientists and engineers, a group for whom there is almost no unemployment.
• (3) and (4) cost $41 billion.
• The final bill cost about $85 billion.
• Sen. Harry Reid threw out the bill and replaced it with a bill that has only (1) and (2) and only costs $15 billion.
• $15 billion will not create many jobs.

These are the facts, but the headlines are such:

After Rare Bipartisan Deal, Reid Slashes Jobs Bill (Fox News)
Senate Dems Ax Bipartisan Jobs Bill (ABC)
Senate Dems Pare Down Jobs Bill, Scrap Bipartisan Version (USA Today)

I'm starting to wonder if Republicans truly, deep down, have a moral compass. Do they feel a sense of right and wrong? After my senator, senator shelby, held up all Obama's appointments for several days because he wanted to get refueling tankers built in Mobile and an FBI center built in Alabama that will study improvised explosive devices, I'm really starting to wonder. When these people get up in the morning, do they wonder, "How can I help America?" I really can't imagine someone doing that, and then adding an estate tax extension into a jobs bill. I'm starting to wonder if Republicans--as a group--are crazy people or dishonest people, rather than people who believe different things about the economy or have different ideas of justice. From what I can see, they feel they are at a war with progressives in which literally anything done to hurt the center or the left is a victory, even if it hurts America. They feel they are on a team fighting another team. And their "team" isn't really defined by small-government ideals: paying doctors more money for Medicare patients means using more tax dollars, and is therefore larger government. Their team is defined as the type of people who are generally for lower taxes, e.g. rich people, old people, doctors, etc. And even if a measure grows the government, as long as it helps their team, then they are for it.

My graph of the sitmulus

You can read the accompanying article on Blog of the Allies. The column is way backlogged for the pitt news, because of the snow storm.

new draft of economics explanation

What causes congestion? Economist's answer. Draft 2 from Lewis on Vimeo.

Today

Today I rewrote some narration. This week has been all about outlining.

It starts with an explanation of why traffic happens. That's the "engineers explanation." Then it goes into an economist's explanation. The central question will be, "How do we choose which cars to push off the road?"

The economist's explanation will consider:
(1) a lottery
(2) regulation
(3) volunteerism.

But it turns out none of the three work. So, it's left up to the price system.

That is the structure of the first 12 minutes of the movie.

Issues:

I want to have the information unfold as a dialogue. I have been listening to RadioLab and also This American Life. Both those shows always present information as a two-person dialogue, where one person is skeptical and questioning, while their partner is expository.
But I only have myself right now. I'll get two narrators in the future.

The central format might be an infomercial. It would be a campy infomercial. The humor would be that it's set up with two people talking in a home about congestion pricing as if it's a household product. Queue black-and-white shots of someone banging the steering wheel in traffic. Queue sweater tied over shoulders. Queue unexpected visitors dropping in.

Or it could be the get-rich-quick type of infomercial, where there's this sleazy dude explaining everything about congestion pricing.

A movie about health care economics!

Money-Driven Medicine

I can't wait to see it.

Goals

My friend Rob came to visit and left this morning. Now it's back to the grindstone. The animations are coming along really well.

I am buying a flatscreen monitor. I'll have the two monitor setup, which is great for after effects. I wonder if my roommates will mind me having two monitors on the kitchen table. I'll have to take the monitor away when I'm not using it.

The best place to buy this flatscreen monitor is the goodwill computer shop on the south side, from what I can tell.

Economics graphs just keep getting sweeter

A sweet visualization...

It's weird (but awesome) how much money Canada has given to Haiti. Is it a government initiative? Are Canadians just really generous? What gives?

Why we need better economics education

Poll: Most say stimulus has not helped middle class

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday morning indicates that 25 percent of the public thinks the stimulus has benefited the middle class.

One-third of the people questioned think the stimulus has helped low-income Americans, with just over four in 10 saying the plan has benefited business executives. A majority, 54 percent, think the stimulus has helped bankers and investors.

The pollster admits:

"Opinions on the economic stimulus bill are colored by the perception that it has helped fat cats, but not ordinary Americans," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "It's possible that the belief that the stimulus bill helped bankers and CEOs is due to the public confusing the stimulus bill with the various bailout bills that were passed at roughly the same time last year."

Actually, I think this problem is ubiquitous. It is impossible to believe that the stimulus helped bankers if you know how the money is allocated. But after (1) giving every family in America an $800 tax credit, (2) shoring up states' Medicaid money, (3) stabilizing state education budgets, and (4) boosting unemployment aid and COBRA subsidies, Obama still has to fight off accusations that the stimulus was a handout for bankers. These 4 expenditures accounted for the vast majority of the stimulus money...especially what has been spent so far. Thanks to these four expenditures, millions of people are insured against health catastrophes, hundreds of thousands of extra teachers are in schools, and state and local taxes have stayed low...despite would-be calamitous budget shortfalls by state and local governments.

None of the stimulus money went to banks or investors, except as profits on things that consumers spent their stimulus money on. It is depressing that people confuse the bailouts with the stimulus, and even more depressing that they think Obama initiated the bailouts. The $800 billion TARP program started under Bush, and, as he was on his way out, Bush pried open TARP to bail out General Motors and Chrysler. It is true that Obama supported these things, but that isn't the same as the public's belief that he is the one who executed them. Under his watch, Tim Giethner did the bumbled AIG bailout, but, again, this was a case of the Treasury secretary executing a program--a program previously established under Bush's Secretary Paulson--as it was intended to be executed. He might have done a poor job and cost tax payers as much as $20 or $30 billion. This is about how much America spends on farm subsidies per year, which is a well-established waste of money that virtually no one has studied and then supported. And now, by a long string of associations, Obama's stimulus package helps bankers.

Static media about economics

Financial Graph & Art
I think what's interesting is that there is aviable company that sells only wall charts like the one shown here. How much more animations?

podcast on Taxing Cadillac Plans

Taxing Health Care: Planet Money (NPR economics show) podcast

On Planet Money, they interviewed an economist at MIT about why the Cadillac tax on expensive insurance plans is a good idea. During the podcast, and this was pretty awesome, the engineer in the studio started getting all upset. So, they had the economsit debate the sound engineer.

We do not have enough debate between highly-trained professional and absolute amateur with good common sense. I say that not becasue I side with tthe engineer (I don't), but because the economist is so hamstringed in his explanation. For example, he has trouble, because he assumes that cost savings from lower health insurance premiums from the employer will be passed on to the worker. This really will happen, after a while, in a free labor market, because even if the employers' profits rise in the short-term, after a while the workers will be able to bargain for higher wages or else other employers will move in (drawn by the higher profits) and bid up the workers' wages.

The economist assumes this mechanism, this "if...then..." chain of events, so deeply that he doesn't even notice he's making this chain of logic. But the worker just hears it as a "today/tomorrow" story between one worker and one employee. The possibility of currently non-existent, but potential employers moving in, and the long-term effects, don't occur to the engineer; they are outside the realm of what an individual can observe; they only show up in the big picture.

The biggest problem the worker has, though, is understanding the idea of someone being "at the margin" over whether to get a health treatment or not. He says, "I don't see why someone would go to the doctor, just because it's cheap." The margin is a hard-to-understand, suspicious concept, because, by definition, only a handful of people will be anywhere near the margin in a very large market. Almost everyone is very far on one side of the "buy/don't buy" curve.

This really changed the way I'm thinking about my documentary. I realize that, I, too, assume the margin. And I think I kind of address the margin, in the section with Anne having to return a video vs. studying, but I think the margin needs to be treated in its own section, which actually makes the point that I've just made: almost everyone is well on one side of the margin. Add to this the special feature of the market for roadspace that only like 10% of people at the margin have to quit driving for substantial gains, and I think I've got a convincing argument.

Goals for this week

Finish my explanation on variable tolls.
Get in touch with people in D.C. (None of the folks last week responded.)
Meet with the documentary guy at pittsburgh filmmakers.
Find a film studies professor who might like to be on my committee.

Hayek/Keynes rap video

An awesome case of economics + new media = entertaining education about economics. Maybe it's a little dorky, but we really have a limit in how good the medicine can taste:

I am on the Keynes side, and here's why: although Hayek and the austrians give an explanation of why recessions happen, they don't really have advice about what to do during the recession. They are the guys in the corner, shaking their head, saying, "We told you so." But Keynes is the doctor who pumps your stomach. Plus, even Keynes advocates raising taxes and cutting spending (causing a government surplus) during the boom. He's only a party boy during the recession.

Should I create a rap video about congestion pricing?

How to show changes

On Friday, I ran into a problem. I want to show two concepts: shifting demand causing changes in traffic flow; the way traffic flow changes over the course of a day. Even though it required some complicated animation, I decided to make it so my "supply/demand" graph (with flow on x axis and travel time on y axis) turns sideways, and then morphs into the "flow/time of day" graph. This is tricky, because what must be carried over is that the flow is the same concept, but the time is changed slightly: travel time is experienced by individual drivers, but time of day is an independent variable. Still, if you turn the travel time curve sideways, so it's sticking out of the time of day graph, I have decided that its curve is, in fact, accurate, as long as the personal travel time curve is in motion. Another good way to think about it is that I could have drawn the graph in 3dimensions, with the curve having a curve along the z axis coming out of the screen, and this would have been accurate, but instead I just showed 30 slices through the x axis per second.

This is cool. Here is something video can accomplish that static media cannot: showing changes in 3 variables clearly. This is a real, intellectual advantage that video has over older, more respectable forms of static media.

I will post some pic tures and clean up this post so it makes sense later.

My first two animations (very rough drafts)

Very Rough Draft: How Economists Think about Congestion from Lewis on Vimeo.
Actually, it turns out this first one starts sort of in the middle. I must have rendered it wrong. Oh well...it's a rough draft.

Rough Draft: What Causes Congestion from Lewis on Vimeo.

Goals for this Week

Write narration for a third animation
Talk to Malloy and Cassing about being on my committee
Find someone at Pittsburgh Filmmakers interested in being on my committee.
Find someone in film studies interested in being on my committee
Clean up the previous animations
Email Mr. D.S. at Federal Highway Administration
Email several people in DC whom I could interview at the same time as Mr. D.S.
Start on my next learning project...learning to jerk or salsa or locksmith or something

Presentation

On Tuesday, I worked all day on my animations to get them nice for my presentation with Prof. Wolfe. At 11:30 PM, I was getting sleepy, so I thought of that Five Hour Energy Drinks that folks are always talking about. "Does that stuff really work?" I thought.

I walked down to the One Stop and paid 3.25 in quarters for a bottle. Now I can testify that, yes, Five Hour Energy Drink really works. It is miraculous. I worked all night. I didn't get jittery or crazy. And then I went to bed at 5 AM and slept like a drunk baby. I woke up at 8:30 AM, not feeling too bad. Then I drank another bottle and felt great. I worked until my presentation at noon.

In the post-Five Hour Energy Drink world, is sleep passe? How much more GDP could the US have if we just drank Five Hour Energy Drink all day and all night? Would we take more vacay time, or would we just work and produce more? According to Paul Krugman, you need laws to get more vacay... Could we lower carbon emissions and obesity if everyone just woke up at 3 AM, drank a FHED, and then walked fifteen miles to work downtown from their houses in the suburbs? Is that the real solution to congestion?

Monday

Today I filmed a segment with my roommate Anne that will be incorporated into the illustration of how driving confers congestion externalities. It went pretty well. Maybe it should be a theme to have fashionable girls in my movie, to make it seem less dorky.

Do fashionable girls make everything less dorky? Is that what Vana White did to Wheel of Fortune?

Subtasks and Productivity

Today I spent a long time figuring out how to do several important things: recording on my VAIO with my USB mic, using filters in Soundbooth, using the transcribe function, and exporting from Illustrator to After Effects competently.

Anyway, I spent a really long time tooling around with the microphone. Computers do weird things for no reason. Eventually I solved the problem, but all in all I probably spent like 3 hours working on it. That is really too long, I decided. So for my other tasks, I pulled out my little notebook and started making subtasks.

When I'm working with computers and gadgets, there is some kind of curious little kid inside of me who bubbles up. He wants to understand each component of whatever process I'm doing to the fullest--always with the justification "just in case." That's fine...sometimes. But if you're inclined to do that all the time like I am, then you probably won't get the job done.

The purpose of my work time is to get a job done, not to enjoy myself--although I've chosen my work so that I stand a good chance of enjoying myself anyway. It's essential to mess around, even to do it a lot, but that should have its own reserved time. The division of labor works as much within a single person's time as between people in a community. So I'm happiest and most productive when I rationally specialize with my time. I realize gains from trade between the two types of workers I can be.

A good way to keep my head out of the clouds is by making little subtasks on a notebook. I call them "subtasks," because they are much more specific and smaller than regular tasks that you would put on your daily to-do list. I'll write "Figure out how best to record." Then underneath it, I'll write "test compressor defaults."

At any moment, I should be able to justify whatever I am doing according to a subtask. That keeps me on track. It lets me make rational decisions.

Filleting a Faulty Reason to Support C.P.

Activist and analyst Charles Komanoff explains why reduced pollution isn't a good reason to support congestion pricing. This makes sense: congestion pricing can actually raise daily traffic volumes, by spreading out the flow more evenly. The overall impact on pollution is negligable either way, as Komanoff explains:

Rather, there are three reasons that in almost any congestion pricing plan, whether Kheel-Komanoff or Bloomberg or Ravitch, the value of the time savings will dwarf the air quality benefits:

1. On a regional basis, congestion pricing eliminates only a small percentage of VMT. Ditto, tailpipe emissions.
2. Emissions from present-day cars (and, increasingly, trucks and buses) are low and trending lower. Thus, the vaunted improvements in traffic flow won't eliminate much car exhaust, because there isn’t much to begin with.
3. Time savings from tolling gridlocked roads rise geometrically with congestion. A given percentage increase in speed saves six times as many minutes when the base speed is 5 mph as when it's 30 mph. Considering that slow speeds also imply high volumes, congestion pricing is practically ordained to generate big time savings -- particularly if the tolls are varied by time of day and day of week.

The lesson for congestion pricing advocates is clear: give the "green" angle a rest. We're not in 1970 anymore. (If per-mile emission rates hadn't changed since Earth Day, the air quality benefits would be some 40 times greater, equaling or even surpassing the time savings.) Clean air no longer provides a powerful rationale for congestion pricing.

From a cost-benefit standpoint, the overwhelming reason to adopt congestion pricing in New York City -- in addition to providing a vital new revenue stream for public transit, of course -- is to enable people stuck in traffic to save time.

Earlier, he makes a point about car pollution:

Cars now on the road are 30 to 50 times less polluting than in 1970. True, there are more cars being driven more miles, but even with a tripling of VMT (vehicle miles traveled), U.S. passenger vehicles today are probably putting out only a tenth as much air pollution as they did on the first Earth Day.

Honesty makes for a good case. We don't want to get bogged down arguing about benefits that don't exist, when there are undeniable time savings at stake.

Questions My Blog Will Treat

Micro:
How can you maximize productivity on a long-term, independent project?
How can you stay motivated on a long-term, independent project?
Is it easy to learn to use new technology?
What are good workflows/tips for independent video?

Macro:
What are the best ways to present abstract information in new media? Especially economics information.
Does learning economics knowledge change people's opinions?
How far can amateurs go in the new media?
How much of an impact can one citizen have if he/she puts his/her mind to a task?

Initial Conditions

So far, I haven't made much progress on production. To catch you up to speed:

Progress
Last summer, I read deeply on congestion pricing. I wrote a long article about congestion pricing that will be featured in the upcoming Pitt Political Review. I also flew to L.A. and interviewed two researchers at RAND, one person at the SR91 Express Lanes, one person at the Reason Foundation, and the editor of StreetsBlog L.A.

In the fall, I returned to classes. I tried to animate with my feeble knowledge of After Effects, which I learned in an animation class in Buenos Aires at Facultad Universidad de Cine, but I didn't get far. I finished my college classes on December 18, 2009.

Over the break, I got a membership at Lynda.com. It's media tutorial service. I watched all of the After Effects series and the Illustrator series.

Finances

I now have nine months left on my lease in Pittsburgh. I have a source of income from working 20 hours per week making maps and editing documents and spreadsheets for my father's business. I don't earn much, but rent and beer in Pittsburgh are very cheap, and my health insurance policy has a high deductible.

I also have $5500 in stocks I accumuluated mainly by investing in emerging markets. I plan to cash it all in and spend it all on my documentary. I have no college debt. Pitt has been generous with scholarship for me.

Equipment
I have a Sony HVR A1U HD camera, a tripod, a year-long HD access-pass to Pittsburgh Filmmakers, an Intuous 3 6"x8" Wacom tablet, a bunch of tapes, Adobe Master Collection, and a dream.

Experience
I have been working on videos in my free time since I was 12. From 2005-2007, I made the 47-minute documentary It's a Thick Book about problems with the Alabama State Constitution. Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform distributed it across the state on DVD and at mass screenings. Now it is shown in high school civics classes sometimes. That got me really pumped to make another politics/economics doc. I want to do this for a living as long as I can.

I have usually worked with a Panasonic DVX100A or B and edited on Final Cut Pro with Motion. For this project, I'm switching to Windows. I'm animating in After Effects and doing a rough-draft edit in Premiere. I will probably then do a final draft edit in AVID. This is my first long project in the HDV format and my first long Windows project.

Context
I am working on a B. Phil. (Bachelors of Philosophy) degree in Mathematics-Economics from University of Pittsburgh's University Honors College. My documentary is part of my thesis. My classes are all done. In April, I have to present a working product and a paper about media about economics before a committee.

Motivation
I really hate traffic congestion. I am interested in what new media can accomplish as far as informing the citizens in a republic about their policy options. I want America to be a pleasant, prosperous place to live. 

My First Post

Hello Americans and Others,

My name is Lewis. I'm making a documentary that explains road pricing a.k.a. congestion pricing a.k.a. value pricing a.k.a. congestion taxes a.k.a. variable tolling. I thought it would be cool to blog the process of making the documentary as a real-time historical record. I also thought it would motivate me to work better.

This blog should be interesting to: friends, family, young activists, members of the livable streets movement, people who make a living commenting on new media, people who make a living talking about how young people/creative things will revitalize Pittsburgh, and people who hate traffic.

I will also post on all news related to road pricing in the United States of America and abroad.