FOR THE RAILROAD CENTENNIAL...

Figured out, I think, how to do a music video of “Tillamook Railroad Blues,” using available technology and (mostly) available personnel. Biggest plus: we have the soundtrack. The song, professionally recorded in a commercial studio,. Is on the Deathgrass album. All we have to worry about is matching video up to it.

For the choruses (there are four), I’d like to use the “lip-dub” technique I saw in that Grand Rapids city music video: you have a crowd of people, all lip-synching to the chorus, and the camera zooms in on first one person, then another, some with props (like guitars or microphones), some not, ending up each time with bigger and bigger crowds of singers.

I’d want some of that to be train passengers, and there, I’d need their cooperation—and I’m not sure how easy that’d be to arrange. If we were doing that “locals only and they ride free or cheap” day October 2, the day after the railroad centennial celebration, I could probably do it easily; I’d know a lot of those folks personally, and they probably know the song. (And to the extent they didn’t, we’d have time to rehearse.)

It wouldn’t be exclusively train passengers doing the lip-synching, of course; I’d want some “on the ground” footage in Garibaldi and Rockaway with people “singing,” too. And for the last chorus, I’d like to have footage of the Lions Club dedication ceremony they’re going to have on Centennial Day, with all them Lions dressed up in their bright yellow vests—and “singing.” Again, I know most of those guys (and gals).

In the verses (four of those, too), I mostly wouldn’t have singers. Some historical (or historical-looking) photos and footage in Verse 1, highway traffic and abandoned-looking track (Verse 2), shots of the “working” diesel engines that are no longer used (Verse 3), and footage of the dedication ceremony (Verse 4). You’d see a singer just occasionally, as a transition between clips, and it’d probably be me by default—again, lip-synching to the existing soundtrack.

For the breaks (two of them on the soundtrack), I would like to have footage of the band playing—and I have some of that, from the Summerfest performance in Wheeler; I don’t know if our rendition of the song there is the same tempo as on the record, but it very well could be, because we’re very deliberate about it. I also don’t know if it’s possible in “editing mode” to zero in on individual players; if not, I’ll have to get some “zoom” footage. A clip of the cameraperson(s), too—one of the things I do with breaks in video is overlay the “special thanks to…” credits. I want a couple of dancers (and I know some good ones who’d probably be amenable).

I don’t have to use train passengers for my chorus “lip-dubbers.” I really could do it entirely with people I know, and not on the train, but with just enough moving-train footage thrown in to create the illusion (one can do that with video), and it might be easier to do it that way—I wouldn’t need to enlist as much help. Still, roping the passengers in would be fun (and, one hopes, fun for them, too). And I like enlisting as many folks as possible in these efforts.

Would I include footage of the Salmonberry Canyon part of the railroad line, that got destroyed (again) in the 2007 winter storm and was never repaired? I would, if I could get to it. I wouldn’t want to be obvious about it—this video isn’t a political statement, after all—but that destruction (and the no repairs) is a fact of life, and one can’t ignore it. I’d probably put it in Verse 2, where we talk about the “shoulda gone out to pasture…”

But wouldn’t this be a fun thing to do to memorialize the railroad’s centennial?

Joe