TRAIN DREAMS PRODUCTION
STOPPING AND STARTING Veloso switched between handheld and static depending on the emotional notes of the scene
choices are related to what the scene is supposed to make us feel,” he explains. In general, for Grainier’s childhood, “we wanted the camera not to move at all and feel like a still image. As he becomes a bit older, the camera follows what he’s living,” Veloso describes. “Those moments with his wife are organic; we’re following his lightness. Then, when he’s around death and grief, that changes.” Scheduling proved a challenge. “A lot of the locations were amazing, but very far away, so we would lose a chunk of the day just getting there,” he admits. With Train Dreams also being tied to its time period, the crew had to take extra care when setting up scenes, so as to avoid any contextual inconsistencies.
“That meant not being able to have a 360° camera,” says Veloso, who wanted ‘the ability to turn the camera around’ as much as possible – but prioritised working in an uncontrolled environment. PLANE DREAMS Train Dreams borrows its visual language from an amalgamation of influences – not just the source material. “We did talk a lot about Dorothea Lange’s pictures, especially during the Great Depression,” recalls Veloso. “She did an amazing job of capturing the beauty within chaos and sadness and grief – the way she isolates characters, framing them in corners and on edges. We wanted to try and do the same.” Veloso also credits Tarkovsky’s
filmography as an inspiration, drawing from his greatest hits like Stalker , Mirror and The Sacrifice , all of which also deal with humanity’s relationship to nature. “We watched a lot of real footage from the time too – whatever we could find,” he shares. To represent the forest fire as faithfully as possible, he turned to news clips and contemporary videos. Train Dreams follows Grainier through the late sixties, demarcating the passage of time through environmental changes and technological breakthroughs – such as the aeroplane. And in his old age, he takes to the sky, finally getting to witness his world from above. Train Dreams is streaming on Netflix from 21 November
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