Public Safety Video For MD&W Railway
- Kylan Bjorkquist
- Jan 17
- 11 min read
This video was my first venture into a more professional work. And by that I mean I got paid by someone to actually make the video. MD&W is a small railway in International Falls MN. Its an important conduit for cargo for the town as it runs cars to a large paper mill, which is the town's largest business.
For a little bit of context, I'm originally from International Falls and moved about a 6 hour drive away from the community and still visit on occasion. Then on a day in June, about two days before such a visit, I got a message from someone I knew who worked for MD&W. They had found out that I would be in town for a few days and asked me if I could make a video for them on some railway safety tips. There had been an incident where a car had driven a little two close to a railway stop arm and the arm had come down on the hood of the car. I'm happy to say that no one was hurt and there was no major damage that I know of, but they asked if I could put together a video to give people a helpful safety guide.
The main problem was the time. The point of my trip was actually for my brother's bachelor party weekend. Neither of us drink (We're boring like that) but it was going to be busy with board games and target shooting and I wasn't sure how to find the time. On top of that, between work and the college classes I had at the time, I didn't have the time to do any preproduction work. But I also wanted the chance to figure out what I could do on short notice. Needless to say, I said yes.
The thing is, I kind of enjoy challenges like this. It really helps me push what I can do, learn different things and apply things I already know in different ways. I learn something new with every project and we'll talk about what I learned here at the end.
The Challenge
As you can see, there were plenty of challenges I had to overcome to get this project to a place that I could be happy with. The following is a list of the problems I had to face throughout the entire process of making this video.
Little to no time to prepare.
Finding a time to shoot during a busy weekend.
A new camera.
No retakes.
Being unfamiliar with how a railway works.
Some of these might not seem like much of a problem, like no retakes or being unfamiliar with railways, but these problems were made larger by not having time to plan or prepare.
The Plan
So what kind of a plan did I have? Well honestly, not much. I wasn't lying when I said that I didn't have time to do any preproduction. I couldn't write out a script, or make much of a shot list. I couldn't make a mood board or draw any sketches. About the most planning I had time for was making sure I had a full camera battery and double check that I was bringing my new Cannon R7 in the first place.
However, I did have time on my 6 hour drive to come up with at least a couple ideas for the video as a whole and by the time I got to my destination, I had two goals for the video.
Give general tips for public safety around trains and railroads.
Set a tone of community and connection between MD&W and the public.
I also had some ideas for how I might achieve these goals starting with an intentional starting shot. MD&W is located on the riverbank of Rainy River. Rainy river is an important part of the community up there. A lot of people will travel to fish on it and businesses rely on the tourism it provides. Many old fishermen retire to the area because of it. I figured that starting with a shot of the river would be a good way to show that connection to the community and give it that local feel.
I also decided that I wanted to include as much of the employees in the video as I could and also decided that it would be a good idea to ask some of the employees what they thought would make for a good video since they would obviously know more about the day to day things than I could. I also decided that it would be a good idea to have the actual safety tips voiced by the railway's General Manager Kristen Wold. And as far as a run time for the video went. My goal was a 5 minute YouTube video that could be split into shorter videos if needed.
Production
So how did it all go? Well, for starters I found time to shoot. My weekend would end around noon on that Sunday and I had no reason to rush home. Which gave me a few hours to work with. I met up with my friend at the railway and she gave me a tour while I started filming B-roll around the place. As we went around, she also introduced me to two of the train operators who I was able to ask questions and get some ideas.
This lead to me being able to get on one of the trains and film one of the operators doing his job, transferring cars from one place to the next along this three mile track.
Now, as I said earlier. I didn't have much of a shot list. I had to keep my eyes open for anything that could be even remotely useful. I was hoping for a plethora of footage to sort through at the end. Overall, I spent about 4 hours being somewhat guided around and shooting everything from close ups of the tracks, to wide shots of operators at work.
My favorite shots were the ones I got from inside the train itself as the operator did his job. I was able to get some good angles of pulling the cars and some good close ups of the operator himself. Another favorite of mine was a panning shot of a mural of the International Falls area that was inside one of their meeting rooms. I planned to use that one as some kind of transition as it ended by panning to the windows and pointing to the sky.
Once I got home, I gave myself some time before going through everything. There was no deadline on this video other than the railway's safety month in October, which was months away. This was a project I was working on in my spare time between fulltime shifts at the job that was paying for my part time college classes.
When I finally got time, I started researching and writing. I planned for this video to be in two parts. The first half would be a brief history of the railway and talk about the importance of the railway while the second half would be the safety tips. I have the first draft of the script and you can see it below. As always, I initially made it too long and simplified it. But I'd always rather have too much instead of not enough. Which almost ended up being the case with the B-roll I shot. The script ended up being 4 pages long after I cut everything that I had deemed unnecessary. However I found out that it was still too much and cut about 2 pages more once I started editing.
After writing the script I sent it to MD&W for approval and started recording the narration after getting making the changes they wanted and getting the approval. It's worth noting that they didn't have much to say on what I sent them. They liked what I was doing and trusted me with complete creative control but I still made sure to check in with them to make sure they would be happy with the final product. They didn't have any changes they wanted made so we moved forward. I recorded the narration for the beginning and the end and sent Kristen her part.
Post Production
This is when the editing began. I started sorting through the B-roll and putting things together using Adobe Premiere Pro. This is where I found the challenge of using a new camera really came into play. There were more than a few shots where I hadn't gotten the settings right and the shot ended up being very over exposed. Which was really sad for me, because they were good angles of the actual trains pulling the cars. After a brief moment of despair, I put those clips aside and became determined to find a way to fix them later.
I then found some copyright free music from the YouTube Audio library that fit the hometown vibe I was going for and used that to help me control the pacing of the clips and narration. I put together the beginning segment withe the idea of starting from the outside and working my way to inside of the train with each shot until we were close up on the operator.
Salvage
The first step was sorting through everything that I shot. And much to my dismay, I didn't have as much as I thought I did. As I said in the beginning, one of the challenges I faced was in using a new camera. And because of that, the footage of the train operator doing his job were over exposed and I had planned on that being one of the main visual focuses of the video. There was no way around it. I had to color correct.
Unfortunately, I lost the original footage I had so I can't provide a visual of what I was working with. I could just leave a blank space where a picture would go and that would give you a pretty good idea of what I was working with.
Now, I hadn't done too much color correcting at this point in my video career. So on the bright side this particular challenge was a good way to develop my color correcting eye and laid a foundation for future productions like my concept trailer for my short film "The Quack"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_k47FOcN4I
Some of the footage I was able to replace with some of the space-fillers that I'll talk about in the next section. But I think what I'm most proud of for this particular hurdle was that I was able to use the worst clip I got. Though it wasn't perfect. The clip itself still feels pale. However, I was able to lessen the blow to the eyes by shrinking it down and using it as a part of an After effects sequence That helped transition between the history of MD&W and the safety tips.
Filling in the Spaces
The biggest problem I faced while editing was the limited footage. This wouldn't have been a problem if I'd had time to set out a full plan and make a somewhat detailed shot list. But this was a problem that I knew I would face when I signed up for this project. Over the time of driving, shooting and editing I came up with a few ways to fill in the spaces that my footage couldn't.
I started by creating a sequence in After Effects, while I wasn't too experience with After Effects I was pretty confident in my knowledge of keyframes and motion graphics. Confident enough to make a simple sequence to show the area of tracks that MD&W owns on a map of Minnesota. I also got photos of old newspaper clippings from when the railway first started and used them with a bulletin board background to talk about the history of MD&W. The whole sequence takes up about 30 seconds of the video.
30 seconds is a good amount of time for a video now days. That part by itself could easily be an Instagram reel or a TikTok video. Its one of the pieces of the video that I've considered making into a short form video.
Despite having a good 30 second clip that could stand alone, I still had more gaps in my footage to fill. I decided that best way I could do that was by finding somewhat generic train stock footage on Pixabay and other similar websites and splicing it in with my footage. Any drone footage you see in here is stock footage. I'd say about 20% of the final product ended up being stock footage I used to fill in the gaps. Especially towards the end of the video where Kristen starts her voiceover. There were some things that she speaks of like wearing headphones near the tracks that were a bit too specific for the footage that I'd already shot. As well as other shots that I'd had ideas for while writing and editing that either I hadn't thought of it while shooting or never would have had the chance to shoot to begin with such as getting a clip of an older train passing by when she explains that modern trains are quieter.
And the final piece of fill that I used was photos that I animated to slowly zoom in. This had a very specific benefit of being somewhat easily accessible by either looking online or texting my friend who worked there and asking her if she could get me any photos of specific things. While I was putting these in the video where I realized how much more interesting the photos were with just a little bit of keyframe work to get them to either slowly pan from one side to the other or put a slow zoom effect on them. Just enough to have them move and draw the eye. Now this seems like a simple trick that anyone should know, but like I said at the beginning, this was my first semi-professional gig. I was still new and learning
I'm always learning, but that's besides the point.
What I really want to highlight about these fill in tricks is that the placement of each one is intentional. I use the After Effects sequence when I talk about where MD&W is located and when it began with using photos old newspaper clips where I had edited out the background with Photoshop. I figured that having a bit of motion graphics would be a good way to talk about the history and save the footage I shot for the present day.
Furthermore, I used the stock footage as sparingly as I could. Keeping it in places where I either talked about railways in general, or had a point that couldn't be illustrated by what footage I had such as when Kristen spoke on wearing headphones while around the tracks.
Altogether, I was pretty happy with how it all turned out. I had accomplished my goals of making a video that had a heart the community could see and felt like the town I grew up in. All while getting the safety points across.
Looking back at what is now a 2 year old video, there are definitely things I would do differently. For starters, I now have more experience doing short form videos and probably would have focused more on the actual tips and coming up with a skit to get the point across in 30 seconds to a minute. And if not that, I'd speed up the pacing. I also have a better ear for audio mixing and I would add more sound effects to make a deeper sound environment.
I also learned a lot with this project. I learned to always check the exposure and white balance. I learned to cut to the chance. I learned to shoot more than I think is necessary. And I learned how important it is to have plenty of time to prepare and plan before hand. A lot of the problems that I had could have been mitigated simply by having a good plan. But I do still like not having everything planned out. If I could go back and redo this video, I'd write the script and shotlist first and then plan for extra time to shoot extra and try and discover new shots that I couldn't have thought of before hand. Overall it was a fun project and challenge that really felt like a turning point from being somewhat familiar with simple video into a more complex world.
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