Professional Pugbash (On Film)

[Corbs]

You may have seen BT post this video recently (this is actually on a secret link on my channel as they only posted it to Facebook, so don't share it around please - keep it to RMWebbers only), which features a little OO gauge train at 47 seconds...

 

I produced this video (well, most of it - the neon VFX and super-fast pacing were done after I had finished on the project, the last edit I worked on had a slower pace and showed the ball traversing the house in a more honest way, but meh, it's their video and they can do what they want with it).

About a year ago we took on this job of visualising what wi-fi would look like if it was a ball going around a house, propelled by household objects.

 

This entailed finding a location, and asking the family who lived there to move out for 3 weeks while we transformed their home into a set. I locked a team of art department makers and problem solvers in there with the task of making something impressive and believable.

Whilst we didn't shoot the whole thing in 1 take (we only had 1 camera), we wanted to make it feel like it was done in 1, and that the items featured could believably have come from the house.

 

We didn't want to feature too much branded stuff, so I took on the very very very important task of creating a train that looked generic but familiar.

 

The starting point was a Hornby Christmas Set, with a Santa-liveried Holden 101.

Before this, I'd done a few trials with some old spares from the box (including a wagon from my first ever train set).

 

 

The main body of the 101 was cut away, leaving only the smokebox and cab. I substituted a butchered Bachmann 'Junior' saddle tank left over from a failed attempt at my YEC 0-6-0ST, and the cab from a Bachmann 'NotThomas'.

I added my 'trademark' sloped bunker.

 

This was all lashed together, while a chimney from an Electrotren 0-6-0T was fitted, and the dome from Lord of the Isles tried out, this was substituted for a GBL Black 5 dome.

The cab was reduced in height.

 

The truck needed to carry the ping pong ball and then tip it out. The principle was tested using the Reindeer wagon and some brass rod.

 

With the test successful, I re-used the van chassis and cut the hopper from a Hornby coal wagon off its mounts as it needed to be able to swivel. This was mounted to the van chassis with brass rod after having the bottom cut out and flattened.

 

The hopper was weighted so as not to tip over when the ball fell into it, and then the operating rod was added to the side.

 

 

Tests were good

 

Originally I had fitted an old Tri-ang Mk1 with purple LEDs, but the incline was so great that it would have required double heading to drag up the slope, so that went in the bin, and I fitted LEDs to the cab of the loco instead, as well as this tunnel...

 

The loco was finished off in my favourite, Vauxhall Regatta Blue

 

The modern Hornby chassis was actually too slow for our film crew, so it was swapped with the SOUTHERN tank's chassis, losing the outside cylinders in the process.

It was heavily ballasted with liquid gravity.

 

This photo hopefully explains the tipping mechanism (and an earlier iteration of the ball flinger). The bent ruler was a nice touch I thought.

 

The towers and track were fixed together using a hot glue gun to avoid wear and tear. The train took lots of tumbles and had to be patched back together several times! I ended up glueing a length of brass rod into the chimney to strengthen it.

 

The shoot itself was arduous. We were filming for 2 days, over 14 hours each day. The first room alone took over 100 takes to complete. We were hampered as a lot of the props had been heavily modified a couple of days before, due to late feedback from pteohple weho schall nloit be neanmetd, which meant our carefully-practised reliability went out the window.

 

The light pouring in through the bedroom window is not from the sun, in fact the source is a 2.5k HMI on a very very tall stand outside the window, on the neighbours driveway, as we were shooting well into the darkness (we gave the neighbours a bottle of wine as a thank you).

 

The train was actually zip-tied together to prevent unwanted uncoupling.

 

We were up against a hard deadline as the family had to move back in to the house 2 days after the shoot, and the house had to be returned to exactly as we found it.

But, we did it, and almost exactly a year later, the film is out, which makes me happy, because a train I cobbled together from scraps made it into a commercial video.

 

 

Also I kept all of the track.

 

Cheers!

Edited October 22, 2019 by Corbs

[Devo63]

Hi Corbs,

I couldn't decide whether to flag this as 'Like' or 'Craftsmanship'. I always find it interesting the amount of time and work required just to make a shortish commercial. Did you storyboard the whole thing beforehand or just said 'a model train would be good here'?  Also did you get to keep the props as part of your fee? As always, I like your work!

 

Dave R 

[Corbs]

Hi Dave, the storyboard that the agency had presented to the client was nothing like what was filmed, in their original draft, the ball bounced on its own (with no contraptions or gadgets) between all the rooms, which lit up purple as the ball passed through. When we were contracted, we said we would only be interested if we were doing it for real.

 

Because of this, we did not have time to write a storyboard due to the experimentation required, but we did have lists of 'this kind of thing might work'. Part of the brief was that the contraptions needed to match the room they were in, e.g. no kitchen utensils in the playroom.

 

It also meant that our shoot was more complex.

For example, we had rigged up CCTV through the house, leading to a monitor in front of a lighting desk. The desk op was remotely controlling various SmartBat lights (little uplighters) all set to purple, as he could see the progress of the ball on his screen and faded them up as the ball passed.

 

All the action in the kids' room was done manually. I was standing on the stairs behind the camera op and shouted 'train' as the ball fell down the slinky and into the hopper. A crew member hidden behind the door to the kids room had 2 banks of multi-plug sockets in front of him, and had to hit each switch in a certain order.

The first one started the train (set to a constant speed on the Hornby controller), the second was the first uplighter underneath the railway (these ones are just lights from The Range with purple gel around the bulbs)... 

 

...and so on and so forth. He also had to grab a string and pull it to lift the Fortnite hot air balloon up in the background as the train passed!

 

My poor long-suffering production assistant was hidden behind the other bedroom door on their own all day, poised to pull the final trigger mechanism, but because there were so many issues, he was stuck with nothing to do (and we'd barricaded the door!).

 

After the shoot, we had a free-for-all in the office where undamaged props were given away to anyone who wanted them, with the remainder being given away to charity shops, the damaged or modified stuff was recycled.

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

4 hours ago, Corbs said:

the damaged or modified stuff was recycled.

Shame, I'd have bought the loco off you. :p

Edited October 23, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist

[LNWR18901910]

What a fantastic model, Sir! This would delight children and adults in a train set as well!

[Corbs]

4 hours ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Shame, I'd have bought the loco off you. :p

I kept the loco and train for the memories  

[RedGemAlchemist]

16 hours ago, Corbs said:

I kept the loco and train for the memories  

Aah, fair. 
Good as well. Fits in well with the rest of your fleet in the colour it's in.

 

EDIT: Especially so, as I've just realised it looks a little bit like the character Charlie from the Thomas and Friends TV series. 

Edited October 24, 2019 by RedGemAlchemist
Update as I just remembered something I'd wanted to add

[Barclay]

Looks fantastic - as I sit in the office preparing to spend the rest of the day in the car, we can only be envious of those creative types who have fun jobs!!!

 

That first wagon - I had the same - one in blue and one in yellow. But whatever was the make?

[Invicta]

14 hours ago, Barclay said:

Looks fantastic - as I sit in the office preparing to spend the rest of the day in the car, we can only be envious of those creative types who have fun jobs!!!

 

That first wagon - I had the same - one in blue and one in yellow. But whatever was the make?

 

Looks like one of the wagons from a 1970's Hornby clockwork set? I remember my younger brother having one of these

 

 

Edited October 25, 2019 by Invicta

[LNWR18901910]

47 minutes ago, Invicta said:

 

Looks like one of the wagons from a 1970's Hornby clockwork set? I remember my younger brother having one of these

 

 

I used to have the same wagons in my old Thomas the Tank Engine wind-up trains. I wonder what it would be like to make some modern versions of these today.

[Barclay]

I think you're right - I had a couple of the clockwork loco's. before I got my first electric one!

[Ben B]

Fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff, like the sort of in-depth articles I used to read in Creative review when I was studying Photography at Uni (our library had a subscription, one of the few things I missed after I graduated).  I used to really want to work in the advertising field, doing this sort of thing, but I think with all the work and demands from clients and so on, that I wouldn't have the patience these days.  I remember trying to explain to a friend on the Fine Art course at another Uni about the complexities of these things... she saw a pic from a fashion shoot I'd done, a lass off the drama course in the park and thought 'that's a nice photo'.  I tried to explain the planning, the going round charity shops for three days to get the props and costume bits on a stupidly low budget, the sleepness night before the shoot customising the props, the two attempts at the shoot to get the best weather, the co-ordination of getting a point in time before the deadline where the model, me, and an assistant were all free with transport, the model release forms and legal what-not... and that's before getting into the whole 'photography isn't just setting the camera to Auto and going click'.

 

Sorry, rant over.  An impressive amount of work, and the bit with the train is a nice part of the ad- and watching it before reading the rest of the piece, I was trying to spot what model it was, so your efforts disguising it's origin worked!  Good that you were able to combine your hobby unobtrusively into the job