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.