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Journal: shorter notes on technique, practice and recurring mistakes
The reference pages describe how things work. This is where the shorter observations go — the recurring mistakes, the arguments that happen on every production, and the practices that survive contact with a load-in.
What does not fit a reference page
the recurring observation, the repeated mistakeThe reference pages in design, videos and tools are written to be complete about one thing each. This section is for what does not fit that shape: the observation that recurs across productions, the mistake that keeps happening, the argument that every show has and nobody documents.
The entries below currently point into the reference set, at the passages where each of these observations is developed properly. As standalone notes accumulate they will appear here directly.
Why some things resist being a page
A reference page has to be complete about its subject. That is a useful constraint and it excludes a whole category of true things, the ones that are only visible across several productions, or that belong to no single department.
“A surprising amount of design is packing” is one of those. It is not a fact about rigging, or about content, or about the schedule, although it shows up in all three. Put it on any one page and it reads as a digression; leave it out and something true goes unsaid.
So it goes here, with a pointer to the passage where the specific version of it is argued properly.
The observations that keep recurring
Failures are failures of sequence, not of skill. Every trade on a production can be executed well and the show can still be poor, because content was authored against geometry that changed. This is the argument that organises the design pages, and the specific mechanism is under previs.
Depth beats resolution. Separating a picture physically reads as depth in a way that drawing depth into a flat image does not, and the finding recurs across a decade, from stacked translucent planes in 2014 to volumetric LED in 2017. The technique is documented under LED and volumetric.
The tool is chosen for the hands, not for the feature list. An operator fluent in a constrained instrument will produce a better show on it than on a more capable tool they have to think about, and on a live set thinking about the tool is the failure mode. Set out under the toolchain and in practice under VJ workflow.
The seat nobody holds gets filled by default. Six departments optimising honestly converge on the same safe moves, and the result is competent and generic. That is art direction, the discipline most often left vacant.
What a note here has to earn
Three tests, and an observation has to pass all three. It has to be visible in more than one production, or it is an anecdote. It has to be checkable against something published, or it is an opinion presented as a finding. And it has to change a decision, if knowing it would not make anybody do anything differently, it is trivia.
That is a deliberately high bar for a section that could easily fill with volume. The alternative is a journal of observations nobody can act on, which is worse than an empty one.
How this sits against the rest of the site
The reference set is the substance: the design half, the running half, the toolchain underneath both, and the productions where all of it was worked out. What can be sourced is set out in the field in print, and every term used across the site is defined once in the glossary.
This section is the thinnest of them by design. It exists for the things that are true across the whole set and belong to no part of it.
One more reason the bar is high: a note here competes for attention with pages that took a great deal longer to write. An observation that is merely interesting costs the reader the same click as one that changes how they specify a wall, and only one of those is worth the interruption.
In this section
4 pages- METHOD The cheapest hour on any production Why previs is the first thing cut and the last thing that should be, and what it actually unblocks. Read →
- PRACTICE Organise the bank for the hand At showtime nobody reads. Why clip banks are laid out by energy and never alphabetically. Read →
- TECHNIQUE Depth is not resolution The recurring finding that separating a picture physically beats making it sharper. Read →
- CONSTRAINT A surprising amount of design is packing How much of the touring visual language is decided by what fits in a truck. Read →
Questions
the things people ask about thisWhat goes in the journal rather than the reference pages?
Observations that are too short to be a reference page and too specific to belong in one. Recurring mistakes, arguments that repeat on every production, and working practices that are widely known in the field but rarely written down.
How often is it updated?
Irregularly and honestly, when there is something worth writing rather than on a schedule. A reference site that publishes filler to look active is a reference site that becomes less useful.
Are the notes sourced the same way as the reference pages?
Yes. Where a claim is general practice it is stated as general practice; where it is attributable it is attributed. Where the written record is thin, the note says so rather than filling the gap.
Can I suggest a topic?
Yes — corrections especially. If something here is wrong, or a production is documented inaccurately, that is worth knowing. See contact.