It all starts with wanting to do a skit on a train and all you have is a childlike train set like the ones packaged for Fisher Price years back. You know you have to film something for a minute and you need content that will keep an attentive audience. One thing to do is build up on the ideas you already have by using your imagination. But if your imagination runs dry, work on some of leads you can get from actors involved or from previous skits that you have worked on. Even unrelated material can add a certain shock value to the film that is about to happen.
So a simple train skit does not have to be something super-intensive on an actor playing with a toy train it can also be about his anticipation of something about to happen before it actually occurs. One could mount a simple circular track on a cardboard base made to look like a piece of property by coloring in homes that are drawn along the route or one can go all out and put together papier-mâché homes if there is time. The actor could play with the train and move it along, or he could also run up to obstacles that appear out of the blue like a cow the crosses the tracks. Comic elements occur when by he frantically tries to remove the toy farm animal from the track. This scene can be extended further to add tension.
We all wait for public transport vehicles so why not consider have him look attentive trying to decipher a familiar whistle sound that he hears in the distance. I am then suggesting not just working with visuals but also acoustics to show that the train is arriving as if the player’s thoughts have materialized. There could be the added element of mounting a flashlight in a make believe tunnel to give the effect of a train about to emerge but now with special effect on the web, one can obtain visual effects such as this.
The train may disappear back into the make believe tunnel and actor can attempt to locate it desperately. Here is where the actor comes to terms with facing his own imaginary world. That too may make a good comical ending.
