[Syzygies]

Back in 2001 I was the math consultant for "A Beautiful Mind". One spends a lot of time waiting on a film set. Eventually one wonders why.

The majority of wait time was the cinematographer lighting each scene. I imagined a workflow where secondary digital cameras captured 3D information, and all lighting took place in post production. Film productions hemorrhage money by the second; this would be a massive cost saving.

I described this idea to a venture capitalist friend, who concluded one already needed to be a player to pull this off. I mentioned this to an acquaintance at Pixar (a logical player) and they went silent.

Still, we don't shoot movies this way. Not there yet...