John Allen made people think I guess about their approaches to the hobby as such. much like Malcom Furlow. I find that some of the arguing about prototypical depictions of MRR’ing has the same note as that of an artist having to deal with questions about ‘realism’. We forget we are arguing over RE-presentation not the thing itself. If I use elves on my layout instead of humans of what use would it be for a negative nancy to get all in a bother about it anyway?
I picked up the DVD on the G&D finally got to see it
BUY IT!
Dam the guy was good!, this is just a capsule summary, but the DVD sadly short at just under 40 minutes, includes many still shots but is mainly composed of a never finished film that was in production when Allen died and never finished. So what you can see is parts of the G&D at its hight in full glory, professionally shot on great color film. Definetly worth it as one thing video allowes is to see the layout in action, and the moving camera allows to see how there was no part of the layout that wasnt detailed, I now see where the detailing logic behind the F&SM came from, every square inch of the layout has to looks “lived in”.
Thanks! As you probably saw on my earlier post/question, I’ve been holding off due to $ and already having all of those still photos in that wonderful book. If there is at least 20-30 min. of filmed motion footage out of that 40, I think I’ll pick this up! At $35 on sale, yet, I wanted to be sure it’d be worth it. Thanks for getting back to me/us about the length of filmed footage.
I haven’t watched my copy for a while, but I’d say there’s maybe 20 min. of film footage. It’s broken up into segments as I recall, so the narrator will talk say about John’s narrow gauge interests and it’ll show some stills and some footage of the narrow gauge in action while the narrator talks about it. I can’t remember who the narrator was (not sure he was even identified?) but I think it was a friend of John’s who was familiar with the layout.
Thanks! If anyone happens to actually time the filmed sections, just as a recording studio/production guy aside from MRing, I"d be curious. If it’s near 20 min. I’m in. This man has been a hero of mine for decades and I had always wished that motion pictures existed and only found out last year that it did. If anyone happens to see a used copy at a cheaper price listed somewhere and would PM me that would be greatly appreciated as well. Otherwise it’ll have to wait until the new year.
Where can I get the video? I might be able to buy one now since I’ve been lucky to have unloaded alot of stuff recently on Ebay and the money is there now to buy this. I still wouldn’t pay $300 for a used book so the video just may give what the book could. To bad I never bought my own copy. But that’s life, I guess.
Irv
Irv, I just now ordered a DVD copy from trainvideodepot.com for $30 plus 3.00 shipping. I didn’t find anything cheaper or used online. Hope that helps. They’re in CA. (Don’t remember if I saw a VHS version listed there if you meant video, literally…)
I got mine thru them too, but at a show. watched it again its definelty like 30+min out of the 40 of film