There have been many Railroading Films and Videos made on the cheap with just one camera either locked or panning.
With time to fill on TV and the web will there be a new era of Railroad Videos produced just like Sporting Events where there are multiple cameras located at different distances?
Something similar has been done in small segments on the History Channel, but I have never seen 5 minutes of video continuously following the same train.
The Railroad videos would need producers and directors, but probably not screen writers. It would be great during a writer’s strike.
If you were to film and produce such a video, I am sure you could get some “air time” on cable channels or internet venues…if you gave it to them for free. But how would you pay your camera men, producer, buy equipment, and buy gas to get to the film location by giving the film away?
Thats the rub…
THis may be just an urban legend, but a few years ago i heard about a local cable company, (I believe it was in one of the Carolinas) shifting some channels around, and bringing more channels online. As a “space saver”, and to test for adjacent channel interference etc, when they moved the weather channel to a new frequency, they put a camera on the fish tank in the studio and brodcast that signal to be able to monitor for channel interference etc. When they put the new progamming on the “Fish Channel”, they had so many customers call and complain they put the fish channel back on and moved the other programing somewhere else…
Are there enough rail fans in a singe media market to bring enough pressure to bear on a content provider to justify a trains channel? Are they dedicated enough to patronize which ever business might wish to under write the production? Or to make pledges like they do to keep PBS on the air?
By the way, most of the shows you see about trains probably do in fact have writers…just filming trains going by isnt likely to keep a lot of people interested for long. Why is this train going by? WHere is it going? Why is it going there? If you are not telling a story with your film or production, are you going to keep your audiences attention? There arent many folks who can talk intellegently about trains from the hip…and Narrators need scripts, which are generally produced by [:O] writers. Who, as the strike demonstrates, not only want to get paid, but want to share in profits from sales on DVDs and other things that make money from th
Two things that bug the hell out of me are videos in which a narrator talks and talks and talks. Yak, yak, yak. Shut up already! The other thing are the cheap videos that overdub silent film with twang music and/or train sounds.
While taking doesn’t really bother me, what is with the bluegrass music used in so many videos? Some of them are so bad that I will just mute the sound.
Actually I am just kidding about the screenwriters. The Screenwriters required are people who are based in the central states who actually study and understand railroads.
There are some Hollywood based screenwriters who worked on many shows that have taken a great program, then have ripped it apart with too many off-the-wall concepts. Railroads are not an off-the-wall concept, so many Hollywood based writers would not be employable for Railroad Documentary Videos.