Creative videos on YouTube

I've always taken what I consider to be a radical and progressive view of railway photography. Having just acquired a new Nikon that will film HD video, I find myself wanting to stretch the boundaries with video too.

So may of the railway vids on YouTube are frankly pretty dull. There seems to be a fixation with filming the loco from a standard front three quarter perspective, and then continuing to film until every vehicle in the train has passed. Many videographers seem to shoot from the wrong side, sun on the other side of the train. Why is that?

Can anybody point me at some YouTube vids that test the creative edges a bit? That get a sense of what's going on rather than pure record stuff?

To get a feel for where I'm coming from, check out my still stuff at Gallery - UK Heritage Railways.

Thank you!

Mike

 

"So many of the railway vids on YouTube are frankly pretty dull. There seems to be a fixation with filming the loco from a standard front three quarter perspective, and then continuing to film until every vehicle in the train has passed. Many videographers seem to shoot from the wrong side, sun on the other side of the train. Why is that?"

Firstly you have to consider the aspect of actually getting the shot in the first place. There is access to the track issues, line of sight and maximum filming time (don't forget you have to fill a long time - its not just one snap) Often things are in the way, station buildings, railway signal furniture, other service trains, other photographers, passengers, We also have to take in the issue of noise - people, wind, cars, noisy buzzing substations - loads of things. All this sometimes dictates where you can take the shot from. Often meaning you cant get the best light.

And sound is why one continues to film until every coach has gone by, one wants to catch the doppler on whistles, the disappearing mournful whistle perhaps, the bonus of some wheel slip or opening up after being on trailing regulator.

Why into the sun? if its not forced onto you by getting the shot, sometimes its good to get the sun - specially a falling or rising sun with different light hue, through the smoke. Why standard 3/4 view? because you see more of the loco, tho like to film on what I call the "fast side" the side nearer the loco as you get more feeling of speed - dont forget this is motion we are dealing with on video, motion and noise. Its tricky, some of them are coming at you at 75mph

And then we have post processing, transitions, titles, sound editing etc etc.

I have put up hundreds of videos in the last 18 months since i got the camera, some of them are mundane, some of them unusual, some funny, some of them bloody good for various reasons. , but I wouldn't dare offer any of my videos up to show those points, I really wouldn't want you to think them all dull and boring. Why post the mundane? because effort goes into getting them, so its a shame not to put them up for record.

I will give you one example tho. I spent 4 minutes filming empty track because I had a great sound of the approaching loco. I also had a minute or two of fox I had filmed 15 minutes earlier. So I started with the sound track, and spliced the fox video onto the sound track. It was all real and all filmed by me at that location but the events were shifted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca7OWEzgtdQ


.