Derailed Productions Official Website
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Creator of The Thomas films 'The Old Mine' & 'Thomas and the Christmas Tree Delivery'
and other Thomas & Friends Content
The Latest
After the successful release of my first semi official HO production with CrazyTrainStudios (Jude). 'Mind that Bike' (adaption) is the latest thing from us and were excited to share it with everyone, the feedback thus far has been excellent.
This collaborative project with Jude is the first step into the next stage of Derailed Productions as were going full steam ahead into the world of HO/OO content with tons of cool stuff in the works right now behind closed doors. (for now) More on this in the Sneak Peak section.
Despite this I've just dropped my latest ERTL project. An adaptation of Christopher Awdry's story 'Speedkiller'. After Mountain Engines I became a lot more invested in The Railway Series and decided I wanted to adapt a Christopher story next and I wanted to make something to comemerate the anniversary of the Talyllyn Railway in Wales. This time however I didn't adapt the whole book it's from like I did before, and opted to just do the one as I'm not a fan of the other story's in the book it's from, 'Great Little Engines'.
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For any other updates on my production’s check my website here or you can check out my Twitter or for any updates, behind the scenes or photos on my projects!
Introduction
This website is for the official Derailed Productions YouTube channel. Here I will be showing behind the scenes, photos, videos and updates for the productions being made for my YouTube channel. None of my fan content is by any means associated with the official brand ‘Thomas and Friends’ and is only for fan made purposes only.
I hope you enjoy the tour of my work on here, from original stories to remakes to feature length films there is always something new being made for my fans.
My Experience in Film
I first began filmmaking or more specifically animating in mid 2015. It first started out with using my toy cars, I made these short films with my phone with me pushing my toy cars around on a small set and it basically took off from there and now I have a successful YouTube channel with many people who support me.
I am now currently working on yet another big project which is an adaption of the Railway Series book ‘Mountain Engines’. This adaption is supposed to be adapted as if Britt Allcroft and David Mitton had adapted the story into the Classic TV show themselves with the exception of using Ertl models as that’s my artistic style and I will say I do have another special in the works, but I won’t say too much about that just yet.
Derailed Productions on set of
'Speedkiller'
Bringing back the Magic of Stop Motion Animation
The Old Mine
The Old Mine was my first ever Thomas special. It was planned back in late 2016 and was also filmed and such in late 2016 and early 2017. The film was originally released on January 17, 2017. The film was very slow moving and puts a vibe on how lax the film is.
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I was 13 years old when I made the film and you can tell by my voice and the simplistic narration. Still using my phone, the whole film was shot on my iPhone using a stop motion app. I originally wanted to animated faces for this film but did not have the knowledge or software to do it so that idea was scratched. There was also a significant amount of live action footage in this film as with my newer content I keep it to a minimum and only do it if necessary. Edward was going to be a main character in the film but was later cut because I was unable to obtain his model at the time and production was behind schedule so most of his role was given to Duck.
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As some of you may be able to tell this film was heavily based and inspired from the fantastic and amazing fifth season of Thomas the Tank Engine. I find that Season 5 of Thomas is one to never fade from my mind. When I made this film, I had in mind the successful convections and beauty of season 5 with the beautiful sets that the set workers put so much care into and the amazing direction from David Mitton and of coarse the fantastic music composed by Mike O’Donnell and Junior Campbell. It was definitely a shame seeing the franchise go downhill after the success of season 5 and the box office flop that was ‘Thomas and the Magic Railroad’.
Remakes
The idea of me doing remakes had been on my mind for a very long time even before I made ‘The Old Mine’. Production on my remakes began in February of 2017 after the release of ‘The Old Mine’ as I thought it was time to start doing them like I had always wanted to and because I wanted a break from writing original stories.
After I had planned out all the episodes I was going to remake the only thing that was holding me back was certain models I didn’t own that I needed for the remakes since my collection wasn’t to big at the time, so I filmed what I could and in the meantime models I needed were being purchased and shipped to the studio. All the remakes were finished in the summer 2017 and afterwards I went back and made a few more remakes in the fall of the same year.
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The remakes were one of the last things I filmed on my phone and since I didn’t use special effects back then such as facial animation they were quite easy to make and were edited on Microsoft Movie Maker and believe me I would’ve used a different program to edit if I could but that’s all I had back then. Considering that my remakes were easy to make they still took a long time to produce as its stop motion not live action so its takes twice the time to make them.
Doing these remakes really helped me to become better at doing what I do and pushed me to newer and more exciting film work. What impressed me was the response all my remakes got from the YouTube fan base and how many views they all got within the first few weeks of they’re initial release. People seemed to really like the use of stop motion and Ertl models in my videos which is understandable since you don’t see much of those two elements in other people’s videos in the fan base.
The Remake Collection
(Playlist)
Thomas and the Christmas Tree Delivery
Never have I put so much time and effort into a film. This film took over a year to produce and I was tired of flour getting everywhere, every time I filmed I had to put up a curtain around the set to prevent flour from getting everywhere. The care and attention to detail for this film wasn’t just from me either, other associates of mine had spent a lot of time helping me with this masterpiece such as one of my close friends Ely Davidson who composed the main tune for the film for me and Dean (The Cynical One) who did a fantastic job on some of the models for the movie and many other great friends of mine helped a bunch with the making of this film. The crew and I really did go all out with this film including a DVD release afterwards.
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The film was originally written in November 2017, after it was written I sat on the script for a few months and later on went back and revised it and made many changes to it. Production started in March 2018. While filming was in progress I continued to make small minor changes to the script and it was finalized in May 2018.
DVD Cover designed by Vincent Sekafetz (Vincente22)
Taken from Behind the Scenes of Thomas and the Christmas Tree Delivery
Sneak Peeks
Future Project Plans from Derailed Productions
Production still from 'Mind that Bike'
Working in the world of stop motion is tough and it takes a long time to make content so its twice the work that must be done but that’s all just part of the process. Its about pushing and challenging yourself and improving to become good at what you want to do.
I plan to slowly start shifting away from Ertl. Over the years I've become more interested in the HO/OO Scale Thomas models and want to have my own fleet of customized, accurate, TVS Style models to make content with. With my recent 'Mountain Engines' adaptions I've become more interested in the 'Railway Series' and want to adapt some more stories with these HO models along with fan written stories. Many of the people who watch my content respond in ways that feel rewarding which give’s a warm feeling that people are watching my videos and that I’m always improving which is nice to know.
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I'll always love Ertl but HO opens up a whole new door to many possibilities. You can see I've shared an image of my Thomas model on my home page and that's not even the tip of the iceberg for what's to come. I'm already working with other community members on other models and planning what type of content will come to the channel in the future and hope all the hard work will pay off in the end, and that I'll be able to produce the best possible content for this upcoming new age of Derailed Productions.
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