Model Railroad Blog

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.

Step Into My World

Federal Cold Storage on the LAJ layout. Picture taken with an iPhone.

The camera lens allows us to interpret, capture, and experience our models in a way that simply isn’t possible with the naked eye. It takes us to the place we envisioned when we started this whole layout building process.  The image above of Federal Cold Storage took most of a weekend to get the end product you see above.  Here’s how I went about it.

I start with a quick test shot which reveals all sorts of nasty things we didn’t notice at first.  Harder to get a handle on is figuring out what is missing from the scene.  After looking at the test shot I decided to add the tree in front of the yellow brick building.  The smallest details can make an enormous difference.  For example, I added two pieces windblown trash, one against the fence in front of the dumpster, the other just to the left of the cross bucks.  I also plucked out a small palm that looked too man made and vacuumed stray ballast off of the street.

Now that the scene was photo ready I tried about half a dozen test shots from slightly different angles.  In composing the shot I wanted to frame the structure with the crossbucks on the right and tree on the left.  I also wanted just a hint of the palm to put the Socal regional stamp on things.  Viewing angle and shadows are critical.  The lower you can get the lens, the larger and more imposing the model subjects appear.  For this reason, I used an iPhone as it is small enough to allow you to get really low.  I set up one Tungsten photo flood and adjusted it’s position until I had the shadows “painted” where I wanted them.  Specifically, I was watching the location of the shadows from the crossbucks and awning.

With everything in place, I shot five images, keeping the camera perfectly still, at different focal points near to far.  I focused on the crossbucks and grade crossing rail first and then focused on subjects further back in the shot.  The five images were then loaded into HeliconFocus and combined into one shot with continuous depth of field.  The actual background is drywall painted sky blue.  I removed the wall background with Corel Knockout 2 and replaced it with an actual sky image from my photo library.

The last step was to do some touch up with the photo editors.  Helicon Focus can leave some funky artifacts and blurs which I cleaned up as best as I could.  A few surfaces had a bit of red or green hue which needed to be fixed.  A tap with the levels tool and it was mission accomplished.

Appreciating the Ordinary

It’s the first week in August 2008 and the switch job works Sweetener Products, swapping loads for empties, pulling, pushing and swapping flat black tanks.  It’s what they did the week before and will do the week after. There’s a certain timeless appeal in the pure ordinariness of rail operations.

 

Moving Models From Plastic to Art

From time to time I think about why model building never made the leap from recreation to fine art.  Why is it that a sculpture can have mass appeal for the ages and be museum worthy but at best, a well done model seems relegated to a small niche museum.  Why is it that when the public sees a well-done model railroad the response is, “Wow! How cute.  My uncle had a Lionel set.  His even had working crossing flashers”?

To say that model building hasn’t, and can not, make the leap to fine art isn’t accurate.  It has once.  On one occasion model building was executed with such excellence that it did attain the lofty heights of fine art and was recognized and honored as such by having an entire wing of a world class museum display it.    If anything has been accomplished once, can it not be done again, the Roger Bannister effect if you will?  The example I’m referring to is the Thorne Rooms at The Art Institute of Chicago.  Conceptualized and brought to fruition in the 1930’s by a woman named Narcissa Niblack Thorne,  the rooms are 1:12 creations that transcend model building to reach the heights of fine art.  The work is simply stunning, even more so when you consider they were built almost ninety years ago.

There are many reasons our hobby hasn’t been able to transcend mere recreation in the public’s eyes.  The largest is probably a failure of imagination.  A failure to see the possibilities.  A number of master artisans were involved in constructing the Thorne rooms.  One of the most notable was Eugene Kupjack.  The apple didn’t fall far from the tree and the model building mastery was passed on to his son, Henry Kupjack who still has a studio today.  On Henry’s website, he has written one of the most eloquent passages on model building I’ve ever written.  I’ve copied it below:

A World in a Box

Henry Kupjack on his world of miniatures and transcendence through detail.

Since the earliest civilizations,

people have been intrigued by miniature replicas of their environments. This interest has taken various directions throughout history; miniature objects, figures, magical talismans, houses and whole scene of daily life have periodically served cultural and religious functions within society while at other times, miniatures have been values as toys or aesthetic objects, simply for the pleasure that they provide. It is impossible to contemplate the history of art, religion, or industry without coming upon every kind of miniature. Their use becomes the willing suspension of disbelief as their effect is so strongly felt.

I create miniature rooms; three-dimensional constructions in mixed media art speak of how we lived in the past, present or lost to us now. There are artwork environments of the minds eye with extraordinary vividness, as perfect in every detail and composition as my skills of precision can give. I fashion these interiors to display the best of art design of a given time; or a mood of surrounding which may not be particularly great in form but becomes specific in its emotiveness. The glass through which we see these miniature rooms is the exact equivalent of a curtain on a proscenium stage, controlling and focusing our view. A stylized theatricality of that is only absent ourselves and we must furnish this crucial ingredient of life. Stand in front of these illuminated boxes, for they are 3 dimensional silent movies in color and the sounds of ones thoughts draw you in and finish the illusion.

I work in the archetypes of our collective imagination,

 an Ottoman coffee house, pirate Captain’s cabin, or backstage at the Wintergarden Theater, which are not mere copies of anything specific or real even though they duplicate specific parts of the whole from historic types. They are a collective assembly of the real that never existed in that way in the real world. These little virtual realities are a synthesis of what we know in our imagination, what they should look like, a Hollywood dream vision so to speak. They are, therefore, more than real because they tap into the Gestalt of our collective memory, and as such are more pure realization. This is miniaturization with the purpose of elevating the common experience and transforming it into the collective dream vision of a time or place beyond us. These miniature rooms can act as magical objects to project our best intention of how we wish it were. They are a virtual world directly in one’s face to wonder how it could possibly be fashioned while adoring the fact that we are being fooled. This is the transformation by one’s imagination to a more perfectly formed place.

Benevento Cellini may have summed up the fascination best by saying that there is great beauty in smallness, one gets all the charm of design, color and effect, because you can see so much more in combination and juxtaposition and then, too, the blemishes and small deformities, which are so inseparable from seeing things upsize, all disappear. The result is closeness and fineness of texture, which pleases both the eye and mind.

On a deeper level,

part of the perception is that the conscious act of miniaturizing the boundless so that it may have actual tactile form and so be comprehended. In is a conceit that gives us metaphor for our imaginations to project through, our understanding to encompass and for our will to dominate, unlike the greater world around us. As early as we can see back in time, as children or cave dwellers, we humans miniaturize to focus and remember the larger concepts all for our hands to hold and see completely.

What are toys but the reduced essence of objects of larger function,

which teach us through play their greater roles. All soldiers, dolls, dinosaurs and trains can be moved and controlled in ways that their full-sized counterparts are reluctant to oblige in. Even sacred beliefs in what cannot be seen or felt become religious miniature constructs as varied as idols, icons, Mandela and crucifix. All of this is why a miniature connects completely; an external model for our inner desire to understand and to have power over. A sand Mandela is a model of the cosmos; a doll becomes an image of us and a candy skeleton a reminder of our impermanence. Soldiers and dolls project social roles more easily that experience, a talisman or cross the heartfelt aspiration of immortality and building blocks the overwhelming need to create new form. All are miniature stand-ins for how we, as no others we know, abstract in this method by miniaturizing all around us.

So it is such a mystery why we love to play with models, toys and miniatures almost without kind, concept or number, giving us our transposed and processed stand-ins for our larger and un-circumscribed world.
~ Henry Kupjack

Compelling Video June 17

The Elephant in the Corner of the Room

 

The constructive criticism received on the LAJ practice video fell into two areas, the white balance and the bit of choppiness in sound transitions. Noted, but also very simple to fix. The purpose of the exercise was to experiment with some techniques but primarily to unearth the challenges that lie in producing higher quality model railroad videos, something that moves closer to cinematography and further from “model railroady” works.

When all was said and done, the biggest problem, and it is a big one, is the lighting and backdrop. Model railroad still photography frequently, and model railroad videos almost always, are typified by a flat muddiness to the images. Part of this is related to not using the correct lighting and part of it has to do with the unique challenges and problems created by our 2D backdrops. Backdrops are the elephant in the corner of the room when it comes to model railroad photography. Model railroad backdrops tend to muddy up in images, show skewed perspectives, and snare shadows of vertical objects (ever see a shadow of a telephone pole when you look into the real sky?)

With still photography, we can work around the problem. By becoming more skilled with the use of photofloods we can inject shadows and contrast into our images. Problematic backdrop issues can be resolved simply with an online editor which can be used to delete the offending background and cropping in a better image. Software such as Corel’s Knockout 2 allows background removal with almost microscopic laser precision, totally free of white artifacts and halos.

The image above is a still photo. The existing backdrop was simply the walls of the room which had been painted sky blue. Although the wall looks totally fine in person it presents as a blue-gray muddy sea in photos. Using Knockout 2 I was able to delete it and replace it with an actual sky. This edit alone totally transforms the image (note: I’ve moved to the philosophy of using low drama, cloudless sky photos as I think they are less distracting). Note also how I was able to position the photo floods to inject shadows into the photo which drape across the building faces and vehicle hoods. Ideally, this is what I’d like to move to with the videos, the absence of muddiness in the sky and more defined shadows. Therein lies the enormous challenge and my central focus moving forward.

Now, contrast the still image with the screen capture of the practice video. I inserted a more brilliantly colored blue poster in the back which helped a little but note the flatness and muddiness in the color. Notice the burnouts and shadows. Although I used the same lighting as the still photograph, the shadows didn’t really snap out. My current video editor is Adobe Premiere Elements. Perhaps due to the challenges of video, I find it much wimpier and less powerful than the still counterpart, Adobe Photoshop. I’ve experimented with Green Sky, Blue Sky, and Chroma Key with lackluster results. Even when I did show signs of progress the borders and artifacts around my edits were apparent.

If any of my blog readers have experience with more advanced, more precise video background removal tools and techniques I’d love to hear from you. Perhaps a video editor that does this for their day job.