It's pouring rain in North Vancouver BC so I am indoors and in the mood for
spitballing rather than something constructive.
As Pieter so correctly states, any producer has to think carefully about the
purpose of making the DVD and the target audience. If it is being created to
promote S Scale rather than preach to the converts, I believe such a production
will have primary distribution via shows, demonstrations, NASG and interested
hobby shops. I also agree with Pieter -- where such a production might be on a
stand competing with other DVDs, the cover will need to catch the public and
model railroaders' eye with a generic enough title not to invoke viewer
prejudice -- something along the lines of "Superb Layouts." Reference to S
Scale should be a sub-heading. If you believe there is enough prejudice
against S Scale as equating to tinplate operations, it might even be best to
refer to "modeling in 3/16-inch scale."
The layouts are the thing. That is what will make any viewer's eyes get big.
The history of S (it started in Britain, by the way, as H1 long before there
was any product in the U.S.) would be at best a sidebar worth a couple of
paragraphs. The message needs to deal more with (and show) the advantages of S
in operating characteristics, detail, etc. The proof will be there on the
screen.
I don't know how many actual manufacturers/suppliers their are in our scale
right now, counting all types of items, but if somebody told me there were,
say, 100 suppliers producing S scale items, I might think the scale is not all
that limited after all. With the ease of indexing a DVD, a separate feature
could include a short discussion of suppliers, with reference to links pages
such as those of NASG, Peter Vanvliet or Craig McConnell. Mind you, if I was
putting together such a DVD, I might slyly ask for a contribution from those
suppliers who would like to get their own websites listed directly. Anything
that helps defray the DVD production costs would be helpful. But then, I'm not
a DVD producer so I don't know what I'm talking about.
By the way, so far as I know, S is the only scale that is consistent everywhere
in scale and track gauge (for standard gauge). The big three, O, HO and N, are
different in Europe and/or Great Britain.
The ideal, of course, would be to licence it to one of the general labels, like
Columbia River Entertainment, or Koch, that lease other companies' productions
for mass-market distribution in Wal-Mart, drug store chains, etc. If it looks
like something that could be a Christmas gift for "that young train engineer"
or "perfect for the train buff" or some such pap, leasing out would be possible.
It's temporarily stopped raining and I'm out of spit, so I'll go away now.
regards ... pqr
----- Original Message -----
The "History of S" DVD sounds like a winner and something any other DVD would
want to avoid competing with, at least to start.
One thing we have to think about is the purpose of the DVD. If it is for our
own entertainment, then all S content would be best. As Ed noted in an earlier
post; if we want to use this to help promote the scale, then "The Best of S
Scale" or "All S, All the Time" as a series title will probably NOT work. From
that point of view, something like "Top Notch Layouts of ...", with a sample
from each major scale in the locality would have a draw to folks in other
scales as well and get them to SEE some S in action.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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