Model Railroad Blog

First Movie “Short” – Helicopter Flyover

 

After a few months of ramping up on the learning curve, I finally felt I’d gotten to the point where I could actually produce something.   The first “short movie” out of the box is a helicopter flyover of my LAJ layout.  You can see the clip HERE.

Somebody that has been following this asked what my end game was with this whole short movie production thing.  Why was I doing it and what did I hope to get out of it?  Things become very easy when you can answer that question, which I think I can with a fair amount of confidence.  I really only do it for one reason, to produce something I personally enjoy watching, something tied solely to my unique tastes, unburdened by the need for broad commercial appeal or entertaining the hobby community at large.  As I mentioned previously, when you are targeting an audience of one, things become pretty easy!

When it comes to model railroad “film”, one major advantage is we have the ability to step out of “the model railroad way of doing things” and study what professionals have produced on the screen for t.v. and movies and then copy their ideas, techniques, and creative approaches.  All you have to do is turn on your television set or go to the movies and you’ll have a lot of templates and frameworks to look at for ideas.  I have no shame in being a copy cat.  I’m not sure what t.v. series it is, Law and Order or Blue Bloods I think, where they have a really cool helicopter perspective looking down on Manhattan as the lead into the show.  I wanted to do something similar for the layout.  This particular viewing angle also has the advantage that you can get away from the curse of model railroad videography, depth of field.

Following the advice of some of the excellent tutorials on line, the first step was to draft a brief “script” of what I wanted to do.  I didn’t just want to wing it. Once I had a sense for the composition I was shooting for it was a matter of pulling together the project assets; sound, still photos, personally shot footage, and purchased stock footage.  First up was the personally produced video.

One of the more difficult challenges was finding a way to control the path of the camera both horizontally and vertically.  Using a ladder and some trial and error with the camera I found that a height of 22 inches was needed to get the width of the layout in the shot.  It’s crucial when shooting video to have high-quality photographic lights, so much so that it’s not even worth bothering if you try to go with room fluorescents.  I lit the scene with 3200K photo floods.  Things were helped by the fact that I also have overhead 3200K LED strip lights over the layout.  With the track height established, I found I also needed a guide rail in back to guide the camera.  The clamps in the photo above are holding down an ad hoc rail made from a strip of plastic weatherstripping.

I’ve spent an enormous amount of time researching cameras.  What’s best?Video? DSLR? Phones? Model railroads present unique photographic challenges and the end result of that research was that an iPhone was the best fit for what I wanted to do.  I’ll spare you the long technical diatribe as to why.  Suffice it to say that the cameras on these devices that we carry around all day and use to call our spouses about the grocery list are absolutely astounding in terms of the quality of output they can produce.

With the rail in place, I then turned the camera on and simply slid it down the rail as smoothly as I could (which wasn’t always as smoothly as I would have liked).  It’s important when you do this that you briefly hold the iPhone screen until the AE/AF “lock” icon appears.  If you don’t, the camera will always be “hunting” for the best focus and exposure creating flashiness and jumpy focus in the output.  It took a number of takes but I ended up with four or five usable clips.

I wanted this to be a “movie short” that captured the LA vibe.  One of the film making tutorials I read had the excellent idea of searching for “stock footage” to mix into your production.   Leaning heavily on internet searches, the sound library of Freesound.org, and the imagery at Shutterstock, I was able to find and purchase clips that really added to the look I was after.  The air to air helo footage is from Shutterstock.  It was pricey but added so much I ultimately bit the bullet and purchased it.  I wanted a hall of fame Los Angeles DJ as the audio lead in which lead me to the Bruce Vidal clip (sadly Bruce is no longer living).  The helo blade chop audio was easy to find on Freesound.org.

With all of my project assets in hand, I then spent a significant amount of time composing them into the final movie using Adobe Premiere Elements as the editor (screenshot above).  As I studied movie trailers it became apparent what a crucial role sound plays.  It’s sort of subliminal.  For model railroad productions, ambient sound is totally unusable.  In any clip I shoot of my layout, the first step is to unlink the audio and dump it.  There are plenty of sources for better sound tracks that you can dub in.  At that point, it was a matter of doing the post production grunt work to stitch things together.

 

An Audience of One

The inspiration for this photo came from studying the imagery in the movie “Tangerine”. A larger format version is uploaded on my Flickr account.

Why do we photograph and create video of our layouts?  After doing so, why do share them with others by posting them publicly?

The answer to the first question is an easy one to answer, for me at least.  Photography allows me to interpret and experience the layout in ways that are simply impossible with the naked eye.  It’s a form of creative expression and experience.  There are infinite possibilities in terms of how you position the camera, compose a shot, and light it.  Once that is done, limitless opportunities follow in terms of how you edit it.   With each approach, we can create a different experience and mood.  In the end, however, for me personally, I photograph my layout for no other reason than I like looking at the images when I’m done.

The answer to the second question is harder for me to answer.  Why do I post images publicly?  Why do you?  I’m more of an internally motivated person so, while I appreciate a compliment as much as anybody would, they don’t give me that much of a rise.  Most postings are followed by a few “attaboys”.  On occasion, somebody will email me to let me know that they think an image of mine sucks! Criticism is fair game whenever you go public.  If compliments aren’t that crucial to me, and on occasion, somebody will take a shot, why do I, or any of us for that matter, bother?  I think it comes down to two things.  First, by posting publicly, you get a sense of being part of a larger community.  Second, there is the satisfaction that some person out there will be brought enjoyment, find an idea they can use, or find a source of motivation.  Every step I’ve taken on the learning curve has been paved by the work and generosity of somebody else.  It’s nice to be able to think you can pass a bit of that on.

Since my last posting, I’ve spent a lot of time studying and trying to get up to speed on the subject of video and cinematography.   The creative energy and passion in the film hobby (or industry) has been such an energizing, motivating, and uplifting experience.  There is such a relentless drive to push the envelope and try new things.  There is so much great information out there.  As is often the case, when you Google one subject it often equates to pulling a thread that leads to even more interesting information.  Somewhere along the line, I ended up with the search phrase “short film cinematography winners”.  That led me to two exceptionally well-executed films. The first one I came across was the short film, The Painter of Jalouzi.  The second was the feature length film “Tangerine” the breakout film from Sundance 2015.  What’s interesting is that the creators of each granted numerous interviews where they lay out in startling detail the equipment they used, filming techniques and their editing processes.  There’s a lot in there that can be applied to still photography as well.  I was particularly interested in the cinematography of “Tangerine” since it was filmed in LA.   Watching it on demand I was able to hit the pause button at various junctures and look closely at how things were done.  Afterwards, I used some of the ideas to compose the shot above.  Specifically, the deep color saturation, low sun angle, and sun shining behind the palm.  If you’d like to go through the exercise yourself search Google and YouTube with the phrase “The Making of Painter of Jalouzi (or Tangerine)”.

Rotary Beacon

In looking at videos of CF-7’s in action on the LAJ, the rotary beacons on the cab roof are very noticeable.  The filament headlights in my loco had already started burning out so it was time to replace them with LED’s, a project I’d been putting off.  Time to bite the bullet and get it done.  Since I was already going to have the shell off, now was a time to add the rotary beacon effect.  The challenge of these micro lighting projects is wire management.  There are just so many hair-thin wires to keep track of and cleanly tie up and route.   We don’t have the luxury of hair-thin zip ties and other tools available to us for larger wiring projects.  I picked up the LED’s from HDA Modelworx and with a lot of hand holding from TCS tech support I eventually got it done.  You can see a demo. clip of the finished result HERE.

Compelling Video – July 3rd

The practice video I uploaded onto YouTube was a successful exercise in terms of rooting out where the major trouble spots are with respect to creating the type of video I have in mind.  Just as with still images, model railroad videography presents unique challenges.  At the top of the list is handling the backdrop.  As I mentioned before, they often show up as a low contrast, muddy/brownish blue.  The solution with still photography is relatively simple, just remove the offending real background and replace it with a photo of actual sky.  Doing so totally transforms an image.  But how do you do that with video?  After a false start trying to edit out the layout’s actual blue wall background as is,  I decided to experiment with the more traditional video strategy of using a green screen.  The end result wasn’t perfect but was very promising.

I went to Michaels and picked up a sheet of neon green, foam backed, poster board.  It’s crucial that no shadows or dirt spots appear on the board.  When you look through the lens you need to see a totally uniform sea of green.

Here is how the frames looked in a short ten-second practice clip I shot.

 

Next up was the editing which was done in Adobe Premiere Elements.  I loaded the clip onto the storyboard as well as a still photo of actual sky.  Using the “green screen” tool, the green screen was removed so the actual sky showed through.  If you look closely you can see just a hint of artifacts on the branches and the edge of the loco but the result was much cleaner than I expected and at least gives “proof of concept” that background removal can work with model railroad video.