by Morten Skallerud
I love trains. I love
Large Format, and I love making magic on film. "Where the Trains
used to go" gave me an opportunity to combine the three for
a 4½ minute 15perf 70mm "magic journey" along the remains
of a closed-down narrow-gauge railway.
"Where the Trains used
to go" is the first Norwegian film shot in 15/70 Large Format. It was screened
publicly for the first time at LFCA 2003 last May, where it was well received
and was elected "Best Short film"! After that it has been to more
festivals and has started its round at Large Format film theatres abroad. But
back home in Norway we have not been able to screen it for an audience yet,
since Norway's only LF theatre closed its doors to the public just before our
film was completed....
Here are some glimpses from
the making of our film - frame by frame :
A night shoot :
The crew of 4 gathers on
the narrow-gauge museum railway track around 7 o'clock in the evening. It is
the beginning of March, snow covers the Norwegian landscape and the sun has
already set an hour ago. Soon it will be dark enough to start filming.
Earlier in the day our friends
from the Museum Railroad had helped us push up our camera locomotive, a rail
trolley for the generator and a small passenger wagon with a wood stove inside
it, which they are letting us use as a "base camp". We are about a
kilometre away from the station area and stables now. All the rolling material
stands nicely in a row - the red camera locomotive a bit ahead of the rest,
placed on exactly the same spot as where we shot the last frame a week ago.
The large camera, the theodolite and the computers were all placed back inside
earlier today when there was still daylight and it was a bit warmer.
We go through a long safety
procedure to ensure that the camera works properly, then use the theodolite
and a straight-forward-reference to adjust the pan angle for the first frame.
We have just changed the sight point for our theodolite, so from now on we aim
at the right side of the top of an easily recognisable pole 200 metres ahead.
(Having no viewfinder on the camera, we also double check the framing using
a Nikon F3 camera with a corresponding 24mm lens and angle marks on the ground
glass.)
Then we go through the tables
for forward movement and panning, which I had prepared before we started using
a series of measurement stills from last summer. We shall start by advancing
the camera locomotive 92 centimetres per frame for the first 5 frames - then
increase to 92,5 for the next 5 frames - then 93 for the next 5 and so on till
we reach 100 centimetres per frame. Then we will stay at 100 centimetres per
frame for at least another 2 or 3 shooting nights. At the same time we will
be panning the camera slowly towards the left to prepare for the long curve
we are moving into. Panning speed is now 0.05 degrees per frame, which we will
increase gradually to 0.10 degrees.
Clouds cover the night sky.
There is no moon behind them tonight, so they pick up light mainly from the
scattered houses and sparsely lit roads nearby. It is quite dark, but not so
dark that I cannot see the snow covered landscape with my own night vision.
A few street lamps are visible in the distance.
Comparing with last night and
the test stills I took then, I decide to expose 30 seconds per frame. It is
too long to keep a 1-frame-per-minute shooting cycle, but I would rather shoot
fewer frames per night than underexpose.
We shoot the slate and some
test frames to ensure that everything works properly, then we are ready to make
today's first effective frame. The electric generator grumbles nicely, the long
electric cable lies ready to be pulled after us, we are in position with the
pan angle double checked, the camera base is perfectly level and the internal
dolly is on start position. Camera, computers and crew are ready. The time is
20.32.
Still we wait for another few
minutes, because a train is expected to pass on the "big" railway
line beside us around 20.39. I want to expose the first frame while that train
is passing. Passing trains make those nice lines of light through the frame,
and also the light flash helps to smooth out the cut from the previous shooting
night.
The main line train comes up
from behind. I press the exposure button. The Kuper control turns off the work
light, starts moving the inner camera dolly slowly forwards and opens the camera
shutter. We are exposing today's first effective frame! After 30 seconds the
shutter closes, the inner dolly stops and moves back to its start position,
and the work light comes on again.
Eivind Natvig and Ninon Onarheim
are responsible for the forward move of the locomotive, they walk behind and
steer it with an electric motor and a special measuring device. Since we are
still moving uphill they also help to speed up the process by pushing a bit
extra, manually. When the locomotive has reached its next shooting position,
they shout "Ready!".
Dennis Røller and I stand
inside the main room at the rear of the locomotive, one on each side of the
inner camera dolly. As soon as we are in position, Dennis adjusts the levelling
actuators till both axes are perfect. Myself, after having adjusted the angle
measure for the next frame, I look through the theodolite telescope and adjust
the Moy head till the centre-cross lines up with the pole top in the distance
again. When Dennis has also said "Ready!" and the time is right, I
push the exposure button again. We are exposing today's second effective frame
of film...
It goes on like this for a long
time: 30 seconds exposure while the camera moves slowly forwards. - Work lights
on, camera dolly back again. - Locomotive forward - Level and pan adjustments.
Work lights off - 30 second exposure - Work lights on, locomotive forward, adjustments.
Work lights off - 30 second exposure - Work lights on, locomotive forward, adjustments.
After having been through this process 24 times, we have made one second of
film.
Twice per hour the scheduled
trains pass on the main line beside us. We make sure that it happens during
exposure. After 00.39 there are no more passing trains - except maybe a freight
train or two. But we never know when they will pass - so we take a break and
a night meal inside the passenger wagon.
After the break the night light
seems a bit weaker, so we increase the exposure to 40 seconds per frame. And
lightly falling snow makes extra work for us to keep the lens clean. It is 3
o'clock before we wrap and the daytime watch takes over. Tonight we have exposed
7½ seconds of film, and we have reached a total of 1 minute and 25 seconds.
This was our 17th shooting day.
--------------------
Technique
for a nature animation film :
Mats Erixon, in Sweden, had
a primitive 15/65 single frame camera which he had used earlier as an optical
printer camera. It had no viewfinder and was as far as you could come from being
a reliable, versatile easy-to-use location camera. But it worked, and it was
affordable! Gustaf Mandal, at Filmsmedjan, did some beautiful pieces of engineering
work fitting Mitchell magazines, a Hasselblad mount, a matte-box with a safety
shutter and filter holder and various other central details. So together with
Mats' Kuper control this camera would do single-frame shooting the way we needed.
We had made a 5perf 70mm film
called "A Year along the Abandoned Road" some years ago using much
the same nature animation technique, - so we knew the basics and had some bits
of equipment we could use. But this time the camera was a lot heavier, we should
move along a variety of grounds and pass a couple of solid obstacles. We also
needed movement blur when moving fast. So we had to build a new and more comprehensive
camera tracking system before the shooting could start. Frode Wik of Wakeman
Film, Morten Johansen of Norsk Hardkrom, Dennis Røller and I myself made
up the central construction team.
We built a solid "Camera
Locomotive" in steel and aluminium with red wooden outer walls, - 3,5 meters
long (11 ½ feet) by 2,6 meters tall (8½ feet) and with 3 sets
of wheels: Railway wheels, wheels for asphalt, and wheels that could be used
with the flexible rails we had made for the previous film.
Inside the locomotive we made places for two standing persons and different
kinds of equipment, plus the most central part: an "Inner Dolly" which
could be moved very precisely forward and backward up to 128 cm (a bit more
than 4 feet) on linear bearings. On this "Inner Dolly" we made an
electronic fine-levelling system with 4 actuators, that supported a Moy head
with the camera on it. A theodolite (land measuring instrument) was placed beside
the camera as an essential panning and aiming device.
Heaters were installed to maintain the correct temperature during the cold period.
All electrical equipment was run on 220V AC, which would be supplied either
by generators or from nearby houses. Lots of cable was needed ....
This double system could be
used in a variety of ways, and even during the shooting period new constructions
were made, or old ones modified.
Single-frame technique gave
us many ways to expose each frame. For day scenes we chose exposure times between
1/15 sec and 10 seconds per frame, always using a nice T stop around 11 and
combining with more or less heavy ND filters. For night scenes exposure times
varied between 10 and 60 seconds at full aperture 2.8 - except for the artificially
lit pixilation scene at the station which we took at 2 seconds and 5.6.
Raw film was Eastman 5245 for
the day scenes and Vision 500T for night.
Finishing :
Most of the time, the rural
Norwegian landscape and the camera's train like moves were the main content
of our pictures. Though sometimes we needed to control the movements of people
and objects, - which gave us an opportunity to use our animation skills a bit.
This was quite fun! In fact, you can animate people, cars and locomotives using
much of the same principles as for puppet films or cartoons....
All in all, we spent 34 shooting
days (and nights) spread over a year, with a crew of 3 - 4 people for a 4½
minute film. Not to mention numerous days with technical work etc., and a lot
of stand-by for the weather etc., etc... Lots of people had been really
positive and helpful - not the least everyone at the beautiful little Tertitten
Museum Railway where we did most of the shooting. Thanks to all these, a wonderful
crew, the Norwegian film funding sources, our co-operating partner Grenzeløs
and everyone who gave us good deals and did lots of unpaid work etc., we were
able to get material on film which was very close to how I wanted it to
be.
Norway's most famous jazz composer
and saxophonist Jan Garbarek created a really magical piece of music for the
film, and Jan Lindvik made the rest of the sound track very well at The Chimney
Pot, Oslo. Re-recording was done by Tormod Ringnes, partly at TCP and partly
in the Imax Theatre.
Gulliver in Paris, who had also
done the lab work during shooting, did the lab. post production with Andrew
Oran of Lynbrookfilm as supervisor. They did a beautiful job and gave me wonderful
service all the way, - even though this was a small film with a very limited
lab budget!
"Where the Trains used
to go" was finished in April 2003. The budget was more than used up, and
I had become a poor but quite happy film director. The first official screening
was at LFCA 2003 (Large format film festival in Los Angeles in May), where it
was voted Best Short Film! In September it was screened and very well received
at the GSTA conference and trade show, which is the world's biggest event for
Large format cinemas. A number of theatres showed their interest in the film.
In January 2004 public screenings started at Cosmonova in Stockholm, and there
will be more screenings in other countries.
So what about Norway? The Imax
Theatre in Oslo was one of our partners during the production, and should have
been the main exhibition place for our film. But in July 2002 - just before
our shooting was completed - they closed their doors to the public. Now they
have decided not to open them again, which means there is no longer a Large
Format theatre in Norway!
Indeed it was possible to make
a large-format film in Norway. But will it ever be possible to screen the film
for a Norwegian audience? We really hope so!