Effects work is hard to show if you explain the software and never show the night. This video is just under seven minutes, and the title says it is the visual effects of Engineering Tragedy. What the audio is, for the first stretch, is a ballad: a winter storm off Lake Erie, a train trying to make up time, a bridge over the Ashtabula River, a crack, cars falling, fire, and people in the water. Some lines are sung clearly. Some are muffled enough that the words bend. Then the track drops the song and becomes the wreck as the people in it would have heard it. Someone says the bridge fell into the river. Someone yells that the train is in the river and that they need help. The piece ends on those voices, not on a credit for the effect.
A producer or a museum hiring Beacon for a piece like this is buying the sequence the pictures have to live up to. A breakdown of how a shot was built can come later. This video is the wreck.
They did not need a tutorial on the tools. They needed the night the bridge failed. That is what this video is for.
Read transcript Video dialogue and narration
[00:27.960] We'll have past seven on a stormy winter night.
[00:31.420] A blizzard was blowing down off the shores of Old Lake Erie.
[00:38.420] Left two feet of snow on the ground.
[00:42.420] Train number five was laid out eerie on the late shore
[00:46.420] of Michigan's southern line.
[00:49.420] Two steam engines and 11 rail cars
[00:52.420] was trying to make up time.
[00:55.900] But the snow, the wind and the dark all can spout and spite
[01:03.100] against man's feeble blends and his faulty designs
[01:06.800] in ash to fuel her that night.
[01:25.900] ś ś
[01:38.900] ś The passengers and crew that kept themselves warm
[01:41.900] ś With the coasters burning inside
[01:45.900] ś Some played cards and others took their supper
[01:48.900] ś Some were sleeping through the ride
[01:51.900] ś When last thing left between the train
[01:54.900] The train and the station was a bridge
[01:57.120] Across the Ashtabula River
[01:59.620] Where the train made a dash and the snow it did fly
[02:03.420] The bridge began to shiver
[02:06.720] One crack, the bridge gave way
[02:10.220] Sending on and rail costs its sky
[02:14.060] Somebody cried, we're going down
[02:17.660] We are all going to die
[02:20.760] ś ś
[02:48.760] 60 feet below the cars piled up
[02:52.760] The flames they rose up high
[02:55.760] But the fire chief was drunk and the flames did spread
[02:59.760] Burning them parcels alive
[03:02.760] Some died in the fall, some died in the fire
[03:06.760] The lucky ones they were drowned
[03:09.760] Wild good people tried to save their lives
[03:13.760] Thieves stole everything they found
[03:16.760] Well the smoke, fire and the water, wind and the snow,
[03:23.960] and no good bridge across the Ashland Bula River
[03:27.960] took 96 hours.
[03:29.960] Danny, the bridge just fell into the river.
[03:31.960] Let's go see.
[03:46.760] Hey, we got a signal to keep, but we need help.
[03:53.760] I need help!
[04:12.520] The train's balling in the river! Someone please help!
[04:22.260] Help!
[04:23.760] Help!
[04:24.260] Woo!
[04:25.760] Help!
[04:26.260] Oh
[04:56.260] Over here, over here.
[05:01.260] You too.
[05:02.260] Get them up there.
[05:03.260] Help, can we help?
[05:07.260] Get the wings into the pump house.
[05:10.260] Let's go.
