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Old March 7th 12, 12:02 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Recliner[_2_] Recliner[_2_] is offline
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Default The Tube documentary

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 12:42:31 +0000 (UTC), d
wrote:

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 12:02:11 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
Had to laugh out loud the other day, when they said "and it's not just
passengers smuggling goods in..." over the shot of a passenger plane
landing. Both of us watching immediately said "the crew", but it turned
out they meant "in freight shipments", and the shot of the plane was
completely out of context.


I think some of the worst editing for transport related stuff has been
in Portilos railway journeys. He'll get into one type of train, they'll do
a tracking shot of a 2nd type and he'll get off from 3rd type at the
destination with an optional interior shot of a 4th. I can't imagine if
they were doing a program involving a car they'd have someone driving off
in an astra, filling up a golf at a petrol station then tuning up in a focus
but for every other form of transport it seems continuity and accuracy doesn't
matter.


It's probably a matter of familiarity, as well as a case of using the
shots you have available. Most film editors routinely use and probably
own cars, so they know quite a bit about them. They also have no
trouble getting hold of the right shots, and can easily re-shoot if
needed.

They know much less about trains and planes, and even if they do, it's
not so easy to rustle up a suitable clip to go with (say) Portillo's
recorded commentary. As discussed previously, it's a particular issue
with aerial shots, where they can't afford to hire helicopters to film
all the actual trains that he travels on, so they probably film a
whole batch in one session. But I do think they've done a better job
with the most recent series.

It's even worse with planes. They certainly can't afford to film the
planes that supposedly feature in anything other than a big budget
feature film, so they have to resort to a stock library.