Fault tolerance, idiomatic performance, etc.

Here are some concepts that came up during various discussions this semester.

Fault tolerance

I've realized that one reason why narrative filmmaking is so hard is because it's fault intolerant. If you're missing a shot it causes big problems. There are four ways to handle fault intolerance:

1. Redundancy (e.g., shoot coverage)
2. Iteration (reshoot/pickups)
3. Substitution (fill the hole with another shot like a cutaway)
4. Improvise.

Idiomatic performance

If you have a beeping noise and play it metronomically it will sound like a beep. Play it in chords like a marimba and the beep will sound like a musical instrument. The negative is also true. Play a string sound like a piano and the strings will sound piano-y, not like strings. Learning to play idiomatically is a big part of making a synth sound like a particular instrument.

We tend to reduce things to physics; sound is a waveform, an image is a series of pixels. But resemblance goes beyond capture data. It is related to an idiomatic understanding of performance. This is similar to the phenomenological idea that we hear words and voices--not waveforms.

A performance, therefore, is a way of restoring this understanding to technology.

Angle of greatest movement

This is a way of making a Vokrapich-ean construct more explicit. "Angle of greatest movement refers to the amount the camera has to move to capture a gesture while shooting tight. Choose the angle that allows for the maximum or minimum movement depending on your needs.