Rick ever since you have come aboard MRH you have added a great deal to our hobby this video alone is one fine example. It just proves MRH be it Magazine of Forums Brings the best of Model Railroading into plain view so all of us can learn from one another .

Thanks Rich and The MRH team for putting this video in the Video Library for all to view and learn.

I like the Idea of bringing back the weekly Video to the Mid-Monthly Video. 10 Stars

Dan

Thanks much, Rick. Upon coming to this with the term "forced perspective", I recalled having viewed something about it recently via MRH. I did some searching and came across a blog titled "Designing the Vertical" by indy_troglodyte. dfandrews replied with this statement:

"See the MRH theatre videos of Earl Smallshaw's clinics:  Particularly, volume 1

model-railroad-hobbyist.com/MRHT_2009_NMRA_CLINIC_EarlSmallshaw"

This was my first encounter with this video on MRH and found it very interesting.

Just in case you follow up with an article, I will be looking for that.

Lots of great ideas in this video and a great reminder of things we all likely learned in our school art classes, but have since forgotten.

Roy

Video, ideas and methods are great. Just how deep is the scene depicted?

Only negative to the video was the persistent background music. Leave it out in the future. It isn't necessary and only interferes with listening to the commentary.

Fantastic video

Nice video.  Only suggestions are tone down the background music, and maybe reveal how deep the scene actually is so we can judge how much the forced perspective is tricking our eyes.

Also, a small issue with the website: Under "Playback problems", clicking the blip.tv link gets you a "this video is hidden" error, and the tooltip for that link seems wrong.

This is one that every modler should see -well done, informative and educational.  I will certainly use these ideas in my next layout.

Thoroughly enjoyed this video.  Well done Rick.  Having shot and edited video in the past, I thought the levels of background music and narrative were fine.  Perhaps "I" would have faded the music track slightly once the narrative started but maybe not, because as I said the levels were fine, and I'm all but deaf in one ear!

Do ignore the complaints about the background music.  I challenge the "squeaky wheels" to post their own video turtorials so we can all see how it's supposed to be done!

Thank you all for your feedback on the video.  To address your questions & comments:

The mountain scene is fairly deep - about 3-1/2 ft deep at the base tapering to 6" at the top.  It is about 7 ft high from the floor.  In addition, the layout benchwork is designed to only allow the viewer to get no closer than 6 ft from the scene so as to preserve the forced perspective.  I know that this is deep; however, the same techniques can be used for narrower scenes with great results.

The background music is a little "big" (loud) - I agree and will strive for future videos to be better in that area. I don't particularly like the way my voice sounds and was hoping that a little background music would improve this.  As my Dad used to say, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear".

This is definitely a learning experience for me and I look forward to your help to improve the end product.

Rick

What do you mean.  Is that 6 feet from the back of the scene or 6 feet from the front.  If you can't get closer than 6 feet from the front, do you ever have problems with needing to access the front track on the scene to deal with derails?