Why were sound movie and video producers in the 1970s and 1980s compelled to add horrendous music tracks to accompany the visual action? The audio selections certainly detract in most cases. This trend infected videos from overseas as well as the United States. It's too bad because there were some interesting operations captured on film. I hate to press the MUTE button since some natural sound is recorded. It boggles my mind that it took these film producers so long to figure out that natural railroad sounds mixed occasionally with silence or a voice-over was what the viewers prefer. Not Tijuana Brass over the Blue Ridge Summit!

P.S. To be fair, I have seen and heard "silent" railroad films set to tasteful music.

Not
> Tijuana Brass over the Blue Ridge Summit!

Are you referring to the video that has the SR 4501/T&P 610 double-header with what sounds like porn music in the background?

Southeastern Railway Museum
gapower97@yahoo.com

> Are you referring to the video that has the
> SR 4501/T&P 610 double-header with what
> sounds like porn music in the background?

Familiar with porn music, Andrew?

Seriously, I like to hear the sound of the engine working without a track on top. Why pollute it with other inferior forms of music.

Dave


irondave@bellsouth.net

That's one notable example of that bad genre of films! There were others. The use or selection of music is downright distracting. The 1970s and early 80s were decades of poor taste in so many ways in my estimation. RR film/video producers mercifully grew out of it.

> Are you referring to the video that has the
> SR 4501/T&P 610 double-header with what
> sounds like porn (?) music in the background?

One railroad filmmaker who was quite active in the 1950s lacked recording equipment. To provide a backdrop, he used to make up a sound track consisting of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" and other patriotic songs. It was an odd pairing at times, seeing a slow, rural branchline train puffing along (it was a 2-8-0, if I remember correctly), while being bowled over by scores of trumpets, trombones, tubas, and piccolos blaring out Sousa's finest.

Dan Cupper
Harrisburg, Pa.

cupper@att.net

Who can forget Clarence Weaver's addition of "This is My Country" to his film doccumentry "Ore Train" that showed the the journey of Lake Ore on the Elmira Branch to the Lehigh Valley interchange at Mt. Carmel, PA........After watching the footage of pairs of I1sa's fore and aft and hearing the song I wanted to go out and buy a War Bond!

EBL

Eric.Levin@conrail.com

> Why were sound movie and video producers in
> the 1970s and 1980s compelled to add
> horrendous music tracks to accompany the
> visual action? The audio selections
> certainly detract in most cases. This trend
> infected videos from overseas as well as the
> United States. It's too bad because there
> were some interesting operations captured on
> film. I hate to press the MUTE button since
> some natural sound is recorded. It boggles
> my mind that it took these film producers so
> long to figure out that natural railroad
> sounds mixed occasionally with silence or a
> voice-over was what the viewers prefer. Not
> Tijuana Brass over the Blue Ridge Summit!

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment....Music in railroad videos is one of those issues where people are on one side or the other--they like it or they hate it.

As someone with a little experience in producing videos (and being good friends of several producers of railfan video), there are twenty different ways to produce tapes. If you separate the producers down, you eventually end up with the ones that come from a professional video background and the ones that want to make tapes to document what they have done. Interestingly enough however, the ones from a pro background are USUALLY the ones more likely to make the tape more of a documentary feature than a pure "railfan runby" tape. Included in the arsenal are interviews, advanced editing techniques (beyond just the fade from scene to scene) and...more often than not, music. Watch most television documentaries and you will find music.

On the other side of the spectrum, you also get the people that want to try something different and will put music or some other device on there "just because they want to", regardless of whether there is a place--or need--for it.

Anyone who has watched railfan videos knows there is a wide range when it comes to the producers. This ranges from some very high quality, professional-looking videos (videography, editing, narration, etc) to some very amateurish products that consist of putting some scenes together that may or may not have any relationship to each other with questionable videography and no narration (or narration so bad you wish you could turn it off).

As producers, we are stuck with a choice trying to put out the best possible video while also attempting to develop a style that will hopefully distinguish ourselves from a field that is already horribly overcrowded with all these companies.

I personally haven't used any music yet in my work as the situation hasn't called for it, but I have seen examples of music used effectively--and music used very ineffectively. At the same time, one producer I know will NEVER use music in their tapes, while the other one swears by it. In the end, it's all just a matter of opinion--and trying to figure out what works best in that particular tape (or area of the tape).

> P.S. To be fair, I have seen and heard "silent" railroad films set to tasteful music.

Silent railroad films (or films recorded where the sound was recorded separately and long lost to history) is a difficult problem for those in video. The choices are either attempting to dub sound in and make it sound "realistic" (which is very difficult and time consuming at best), or trying to pick a piece of music that works with the footage. In the end, neither is a perfect solution as finding a "perfect match" for live sound is difficult, and musical selections are always tricky to pick one that gives the correct mood without making the music the unintended focus of the tape.

Kevin
Blue Ridge Video

k_gilliam@bellsouth.net

This is a much better discussion than I was expecting. While I know that a lot of old film footage was made without sound, sometimes live sound is worse. It may be neat to hear church bells, or a dog barking, (I've even heard a rooster crow), in the background, but the sound of traffic behind the videographer is very distracting. Also, hearing an unseen aircraft is tough on the viewer. This can make the wait for a train to pass unbearable. Good editing makes for a great show, no matter what the film's budget is.

http://www.nps.gov/stea/

As one who has a long history of producing videos largely from vintage (silent) footage, let me give our own history regarding audio application.

When we began in 1985 we had the good fortune to acquire one of the best reels of vintage railroad film I've ever seen. It was a coast to coast, mostly color collection dating from the mid 1930's through the 1950's and mostly from the '40's. We didn't have much of a sound library at that time so music and narration provided most of the audio. That program, Glory Machines Vol 1, has never been topped in sales by all the others we've done. It still sells today.

As time passed, we gained access to more and more audio, most of it taped by railfans and some taped by myself. Yes, steam excursions were a useful resource for us and you'd be surprised what engines you have heard pitching in for their muted bretheren in some programs. Later, we gained enough audio that we could actually produce programs with the correct sounds for a specific locomotive- an great advance in the attempt to bring silent footage to life. We've had footage of B&O, N&W, NYC, PRR and others that had actual scenes on tape as well as film in the past ten years or so.

Applying audio to silent footage is not easy. I think the first requirement is to have a fairly good knowledge of locomotives, how they operate and how they sound at different times. It comes from experience and there's no substitute for it. I've heard some really bad mistakes made in the audio of some productions and to a viewer who's knowledgable about the subject, that can wreck the viewing experience.

It also takes a bit of research to make a scene believable. What kind of whistle did those engines have? Is it drifting or working? Did it have an air ringer on the bell? What about the other action in the scene? A car just passed our camera...put that in, too! It's the "extras" that really make the difference.

To me, music is every bit as important as the train sound. It has to be applied tastefully and it has to convey the mood of the scene. If it's overbearing, that will be what the viewer remembers. Check out the music in a Hollywood film. It's purpose is to get the viewer involved and not overwhelm him.
In the pictures I do, I try to keep the music in a supporting role and use it sparingly, now more so than in our earlier releases.

We recently did a video on sternwheel steamboats. In that case, the audio was largely music and narration. I think it's one of the best we've released lately.

One other thing about applying train sounds to silent film; it takes FOREVER to get it right. There have been some shows where I worked on audio for three months. Even then, it's not always right but it's as close as I can get it. It's very similar to adding lip synch narration and can be extremely tedious at times.

In all the years of working with film for video, I've only had two reels with actual sound recorded on the film. Frankly, the sound quality wasn't up to par but we did use it anyway because of it's historic nature.

-Jim Herron
Herron Rail Video



http://www.herronrail.com
hrvideo@mindspring.com

> Why were sound movie and video producers in
> the 1970s and 1980s compelled to add
> horrendous music tracks to accompany the
> visual action? The audio selections
> certainly detract in most cases. This trend
> infected videos from overseas as well as the
> United States. It's too bad because there
> were some interesting operations captured on
> film. I hate to press the MUTE button since
> some natural sound is recorded. It boggles
> my mind that it took these film producers so
> long to figure out that natural railroad
> sounds mixed occasionally with silence or a
> voice-over was what the viewers prefer. Not
> Tijuana Brass over the Blue Ridge Summit!

> P.S. To be fair, I have seen and heard
> "silent" railroad films set to
> tasteful music.

Most of the stuff shot in the 70's and early 80's was originally shot on Film(Sunday Rivers Productions are all shot on film), therefore they had no natural sound, or they dubbed in from a recorder later.

As one poster said, the rail videos run the gammet of quality and styles. In fact our selection is quite varied as we do everything from steam excursions, contemporary diesels, vintage, and travel-style Like the America By Rail we did. In those videos we used music for the Amtrak riding. One viewer said they wanted to hear natural sounds....of what we asked, the cameraman breathing as he looks out the sealed coach!!!
We have done several vintage videos(DM&IR, Canadian, NP, etc) where we were fortunate to have REAL audio that went with these programs, and we matched in the audio. This was VERY VERY RARE! When we saw a note on an audio reel, and saw it matched a seen it was like finding treasure!

However, I am working on some of my dads older stuff(8mm), and it never had sound, and I don;t want to just dub in any old train sounds. I am using narration and tasteful music.

Another aspect of music that folks should consider is cost. We have several hundred disks of production music, that we have the RIGHTS to use in productions. You can't just go pull-out your favorite music cd and use that, not legally anyway.

On our America By Rail videos, we actually hired a guy to compose the music for all 4 videos, and you can imagine this cost several thousand dollars. Those Hollywood movies have a big budget cause they get good music from folks like John Williams.

Good music for Train programs is hard to get. There isn't much orchestral production music out there, and I frankly don't care for the goofy boxcar Willy bluegrass, that folks seem compelled to put on train videos. I prefer a more uplifting sophisticated approach making the subject appear important rather than irresponsible. Finding music that fits train programs is difficult and sometimes you have to use whats available due to cost and what you can get.
Greg Scholl


Videos
sales@gregschollvideo.com

Sort of related - I remember reading someone's account of a ride on the British Columbia's Royal Hudson train where there was music constantly played on the public address system, Guy Lombardo as I recall. Imagine trying to listen to the loco working from the coaches on that run. Again, its a matter of taste.

rdgoldfede@aol.com

> Sort of related - I remember reading
> someone's account of a ride on the British
> Columbia's Royal Hudson train where there
> was music constantly played on the public
> address system, Guy Lombardo as I recall.
> Imagine trying to listen to the loco working
> from the coaches on that run. Again, its a
> matter of taste.

I think most of your basic tourist railroads also narrate their train rides. I agree with you about being a pain with music and narration. Last time I rode the C&TS it was this way, they yaked the entire trip, so I went out to open gon for some fresh stack music.

Maybe as high tech as things are, we can have headphones for passengers who want to tune into the inflight(I mean onboard)audio selector for music or narration, or local news:)

I guess the average rider is so accustomed to being spoon-fed information, that they feel cheated if they don't get their regular dose of narration or music provided.
Greg


Videos
sales@gregschollvideo.com

> I think most of your basic tourist railroads
> also narrate their train rides. I agree with
> you about being a pain with music and
> narration. Last time I rode the C&TS it
> was this way, they yaked the entire trip, so
> I went out to open gon for some fresh stack
> music.

> Maybe as high tech as things are, we can
> have headphones for passengers who want to
> tune into the inflight(I mean onboard)audio
> selector for music or narration, or local
> news:)

> I guess the average rider is so accustomed
> to being spoon-fed information, that they
> feel cheated if they don't get their regular
> dose of narration or music provided.
> Greg

There was a movement in our group a couple years ago to get a PA system for a running narration. I fought against it tooth and nail, but lost. Mercifully, the PA announcements died of their own accord. The system's still in place but the battery hasn't been charged in two seasons. When I carhost, I prefer to chat with small groups of folks and maybe raise my voice once in a while to tell the whole coach some point of interest or give them instructions. People seem to like this better than a PA system -- it's far more personal.

The South Carolina Railroad Museum
mconrad@compuzone.net

> I think most of your basic tourist railroads
> also narrate their train rides. I agree with
> you about being a pain with music and
> narration. Last time I rode the C&TS it
> was this way, they yaked the entire trip, so
> I went out to open gon for some fresh stack
> music.

> Maybe as high tech as things are, we can
> have headphones for passengers who want to
> tune into the inflight(I mean onboard)audio
> selector for music or narration, or local
> news:)

> I guess the average rider is so accustomed
> to being spoon-fed information, that they
> feel cheated if they don't get their regular
> dose of narration or music provided.
> Greg

I don't remember just what year it was but I believe it was the last year the Rocky Club got to run the three day excursion. A PA system had been installed on the train, a first for the club trip. At Silverton our party was among the first to get back to the train. We had just set down when a huge black whiskered man and a couple of his cohorts came thru the coach. We didn't remember seeing them among the passengers but didn't think too much of it until it was discovered while the rest of the
riders were loading that the PA System didn't work. Each of the spiral co-ax between the cars had been severed with a very sharp knife.
Back at Durango I was talking to Jonesy, the
Special Agent, as he was geting into his car to go
to Silverton and bring back the "Mountain Man"
to face charges. I had to admire Jonesy's courage.
I'm small and Jonesy wasn't much bigger that me
but he was very casual about going up there alone to bring that guy back.
Jim

rrfanjim@mvn.net

> When I
> carhost, I prefer to chat with small groups
> of folks and maybe raise my voice once in a
> while to tell the whole coach some point of
> interest or give them instructions. People
> seem to like this better than a PA system --
> it's far more personal.

This is so true (except for the packed Halloween trips) and you can meet the most interesting people this way. Pointing out the historical locations or the flora and fauna or just chatting in general. Listening to the rail joints and switches and the general clunk and clatter of the coaches is more of the railroad experience than muzak.


lamontdc@adelphia.net