Model Railroad Blog

Compelling Video Imagery

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what constitutes compelling video imagery and how that could be applied to model railroading. Videos/trailers/movies can serve a myriad of purposes from telling a story, evoking a mood, making a socially relevant point, documentation, or instruction. With model railroading or railfanning, the overwhelming majority of imagery falls into the last two categories, documentation and instruction. There’s no shame in that as both are valuable and necessary. However, model railroading videography, and to an extent railfan videos, generally, don’t rise to the level of high-quality entertainment to the extent a professionally produced movie trailer would.

A typical railfan video consists of a three-quarter view of an approaching train. The train passes, the passing rolling stock is filmed and the train is gone. A model railroad video is typically an elevated video of our plastic models traversing the layout, generally not that exciting but still valuable as a learning tool.

The question I’ve been asking myself is, how would a person move beyond the typical model railroad video format and produce something that moves more towards the entertainment quality of a professionally produced movie trailer? For example, the HBO trailer for the True Detective series HERE.

First would be the composition of the production. Is it necessary that the film tells a story? It could but I don’t think it would have to. It could be equally compelling if it simply evokes a mood. For example, e excellent Miamism production playing on the iconic Miami Vice Phil Collins scene which you can watch HERE. It doesn’t tell a story and yet is very compelling. The sound and imagery alone are enough.

There are challenges applying this to rail fan videos and even larger challenges taking it further to model railroading. Even so, I think it could be done. On the rail fan side, one of the best productions I’ve come across is Tolga’s East Rail at night which you can watch HERE. (If the aspect ratio is off on your screen you can use this online aspect ratio correction tool) It’s a highly unique production from the standpoint of the mood it conveys via the turbo whine, the lighting, the windshield wipers and light rain.

In closely studying high-quality movie trailers I’m struck by how much of the overall effect is carried by sound and lighting. It seems to be the theme with high-quality video production in general these days. That reality poses enormous challenges to producing a compelling model railroad trailer. Ambient model railroad sound won’t work so a way would have to be found to directly channel digital audio from the decoder to the video audio track. I think this could be done. There are also professionally produced audio tracks that can be picked up online and dubbed in. Next up would be the lighting. It’s a given that ordinary room lighting, especially fluorescents, won’t work. It remains to be seen how much improvement can be had moving to photo floods. Other challenges include dealing with backdrops and obtaining and learning high-quality video editing software.

I’m curious what I can come up with. Stay tuned.

Layouts as Wall Art

Full complete Los Angeles Junction layout.

As you walk through your living room, chances are that somewhere on the wall hangs something you enjoy looking at. It could be a painting, poster, sculpture, or photograph. Whatever it is, you liked it when you bought it, you liked it a year after you bought it, and to this day it gives you pleasure to look at it. That’s what art is all about.

A number of years ago somebody wrote that model railroads weren’t meant to be static. By their very nature, their purpose extended beyond serving as a diorama. Although I agree to an extent, and I understood where the writer was coming from, I’m beginning to think that may be oversimplifying things, at least in certain situations.

It sort of snuck on me but I began to realize how much I enjoy looking at my LAJ layout…even when it’s not running. The same held for East Rail. Although it was built to operate, and does so, I derive pleasure from simply taking it in whether trains or running or not. It gives me the same visual sensation as a favorite painting. Maybe we are being a little myopic in pigeon-holing our layouts solely as beautifully crafted, interactive machines.

The nature of art is such that everybody’s experience will vary but a few things factor in if you’re going to build something primarily as wall art.

  • The layout needs to be relatively small, I’d say a 10 foot by 10 foot “L” at most. As layouts get larger, no matter how great they’re built, it becomes too much to take in as you would a painting or sculpture. As I mentioned, East Rail and the LAJ project “feel” like wall art. My Monon layout and The Downtown Spur are too expansive to serve that end.
  • Presentation matters. Ragged MDF fascia’s and dangling wires may be something you could live with on an operations oriented layout in your basement but that won’t fly in a living room or den, especially if you share the space with others. It’s not hard, but the effort has to be made to keep things clean and presentable.
  • Visual composition matters more. On a prototype layout, accuracy, modeling what was there, what serves on operational purpose, is more important than visual cohesiveness. For an art oriented layout, looks and composition are more important than accuracy. To an extent, you can have your cake and eat it too, as long as you are careful in picking your subject.

I did a recent Google search of “what constitutes great art”. The top results were primarily from those in the art world and were surprisingly non-judgemental. The bottom line is if looking at a piece of art brings you enjoyment that’s all that matters. That’s why we hang our children’s finger paints on our wall. If it sparks happiness, humor, or another positive emotion, then its art and worth appreciating in our homes. Some of the google results did go a step further though. Most said that if you start spending a lot more times in museums and studying the work of masters you do start noticing the difference between the skilled amateur and somebody like Vermeer or Hopper. That’s a point that translates to what we do. If you step outside of model railroading and really study painting of the great artists of all time you will start to pick up on nuances that can be applied to creating an effective model railroad scene.

Vernon

If you want to get picky the LAJ isn’t technically in LA, it’s in a separate municipality just south of downtown called Vernon. I’d like to say I had the artistic forethought to pick a location for the LAJ that had a storied, textured past. Not so, I just go lucky. Seriously, how can you beat a place where “the corruption charges outnumber the residents”! On the entertainment website, Vulture.com, Nate Jones wrote an exceptional article on the city of Vernon and the HBO series which uses it as a backdrop.

The Real-Life Town That Inspired True Detective Season Two

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Los Angeles River and Downtown Skyline

The Los Angeles River as it flows through Vernon. Photo: Hal Bergman/Getty Images

Back in 2014, Nic Pizzolatto teased the second season of True Detective by saying he was trying to capture the “psychosphere ambiance” of Southern California, telling the TCA he was hoping to set the season in “the places that don’t get much press and where you wouldn’t normally set a television show.” Well, he found it – True D‘s second season is set in and around the fictional town of Vinci, a business community on the fringes of Los Angeles that, judging from Sunday night’s season premiere, appears to be corrupt to its very core. Pizzolatto didn’t have to delve deep into Lovecraftian mythos for his inspiration this year; as he told Vanity Fair, he only had to look a few miles south of Downtown L.A. to find the city of Vernon, an industrial wasteland where the corruption charges outnumber people.

As the L.A. Times‘ history of the city puts it, criminality has been baked into Vernon’s DNA since the very beginning. The community was co-founded by a Basque immigrant named John Baptiste Leonis, who around the turn of the previous century incorporated a patch of sparsely populated farmland near the rail lines in the hopes of turning it into a mecca for manufacturing. The city lured business interest with low utility rates and sparse regulations, and Leonis promoted the town as a haven for boxing, gambling, and drinking. It would be a place that would eventually draw in the crowds, especially if the likes of boxing, gambling, and drinking were featured.  Vernon, in essence, became the exact type of place L.A. noir was made of – and Leonis ruled over it like a petty dictator. As one political rival told the Times in 1925, “In that town, you do not file papers at the City Hall. You simply hand them to John and he puts them in his pocket. If he is in favor of the proposition, it goes through; if he is opposed, that’s the last you hear of it.”

Vernon only includes a small handful of residences – its population has hovered around 100 – most of which are owned by the city, allowing the local bosses to create a powerful network of political patronage. With taxes from businesses flowing in, they were also able to redirect the city’s funds into their own pockets. After surviving corruption charges that brought down four high-ranking members of Vernon’s oligarchy, Leonis died in 1953 a very rich man, and his grandson Leonis Malburg inherited both his fortune and his political influence; he was elected mayor in 1978 and didn’t leave office for another three decades. (Vernon had no competitive elections from 1980 to 2006.) Malburg pops up in True Detective as the obvious inspiration for Vinci’s seedy mayor, who lives in posh digs in Beverly Hills. In real life, Malburg was convicted of voter fraud in 2009 after it came out that he had been falsifying his Vernon address and really lived in a Hancock Park mansion he’d inherited from his grandfather.

Malburg’s conviction came amid a flood of corruption charges for Vernon’s elite – city administrators were found to have spent public funds on lavish trips for themselves, on top of the million-dollar salaries they were already receiving – and in 2011, State Senator John Perez launched a bill to de-incorporate the city and absorb it back into the city of Los Angeles. The effort failed after Vernon politicians promised a spate of reforms, including pay limits for government employees and public investment in neighboring communities. A year later, with the state auditing Vernon’s finances, former administrator Eric Fresch was found dead on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, an incident that may have inspired the death of Vinci city manager Ben Caspere in True Detective. (The Marin County coroner’s office later determined Fresch’s death was the result of an accidental fall, which seems unlikely to be the case on True D.)

Today, Vernon is home to companies like Tapatío hot sauce and True Religion jeans. Its Wikipedia summary is unintentionally poetic:

Meatpacking plants and warehouses are common. As of 2006, there were no parks.

Despite city officials’ claim to have cleaned up the city in the wake of the failed de-incorporation campaign, Vernon’s lack of environmental regulations is still wreaking havoc on its neighbors: For years, residents in East L.A. fought to close an Exide battery plant in Vernon that was emitting lead and arsenic into the surrounding area; after more than a decade of fines, the plant was finally shut down for good in March.

But if Vernon officials are upset about the city’s reputation, they don’t seem to mind True Detective bringing the city’s sordid history back into the spotlight. In fact, they even let HBO shoot scenes in the city limits. “True Detective will have some settings that look like the city, sound like the city and feel like the city,” Vernon spokesman Frederic MacFarlane told the Times. “But it’s not going to be the city of Vernon.”

Communicating the Emotion of Timelessness

Facing south on Corona Avenue on my LAJ layout.

 

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to articulate, either in writing or photographically, why I’m so drawn to  Allapattah (Miami), Hialeah (Miami) or Vernon (LA).  Time never seemed to move on in these places, seemingly locked permanently in the forties and fifties. Walking down 22nd Street in Miami or 48th Street in Vernon there is just such a sense of peace, calm, visual balance, and understated architectural beauty.

The LAJ layout is now essentially complete.  The challenge now becomes how do I communicate photographically the same sense of calm and timeless elegance that I experience when I’m visiting these places in person?  It’s a humbling process.  Done in its traditional, press worthy format, model railroad photography is essentially an exercise in emotionless documentation.  Pushed too far the other way, such as an entry in a photography contest, model railroad images have a tendency to come across as trying too hard to be creative.  A great image does the job of evoking an emotion without giving the impression that it’s trying to do so.

The next step in the LAJ project is photographic.  Will I be able to instill in you, the viewer, some level of emotion that will make you want to linger for awhile as opposed to saying, “nice photo” followed by the invalidating qualifier  “….for a model railroad shot”.  I have my work cut out for me.

Vehicle Colors

Here’s a good portrayal of common vehicle colors found on the road today.  Notice the preponderance of gray-silver-charcoal-black as well as white.  Note the mix of suv’s, sedans, mini-vans, and pick up trucks.