Tag Archives: Mitch Azaria

Preview: TVO’s Tripping Train 185 is a lazy, lovely trip into Ontario’s north

I’ve covered Mitch Azaria’s excellent real-time Tripping documentary series before. From the first, Tripping the Rideau Canal, through followups Tripping the Niagara and Tripping the Bruce, they all embrace the “slow TV” genre of broadcasting a trip from beginning to end, in real-time.

Azaria’s latest, Tripping Train 185, has a special connection for me.

Debuting Friday on TVO at 7 p.m. ET and post-broadcast on TVO.org and TVO’s YouTube Channel, Tripping Train 185 immediately revived beloved memories of chasing trains with my Dad when I was a kid. He and I used to tool around the back roads of Brantford, Ont., watching passenger and freight trains at level crossings through the countryside. It was exhilarating and felt a little dangerous too. Tripping Train 185 also recalled Cochrane, Ont., my Dad’s hometown and the base of a similar train in the Polar Bear Express. In fact, Azaria was initially planning the board the Polar Bear Express and track its journey from Cochrane to Moosenee, Ont.

“[The Polar Bear Express] a great run in that it ends in a particularly cool spot, but the ride itself is a bit of a tunnel,” Azaria says over the phone. “It doesn’t have the sweeping views that Train 185 has, and that’s just the nature of the country it’s going through.” You can’t argue with him on that. Tripping Train 185 shows the rugged and wildly varying terrain between Sudbury and White River, a beautiful chunk of the Canadian Shield showcasing rocks, valleys, endless forests, marshes, rivers and lakes.

Azaria (third from left) and his crew, next to Train 185.

Operating three times a week, Via Rail’s Train 185 is a flag-stop train, meaning all one has to do to snag a ride on it is stand next to the tracks and flag it down between scheduled station stops. That in itself makes Tripping Train 185 a unique documentary; seeing the train slow down and wondering who and what will be hauled on board is particularly fun, especially when the reality is that train is their only connection to the outside world. But the train itself has a story to tell and attracts enthusiasts from around the world.

Train 185 is the only remaining Rail Diesel Car (RDC) line in North America. Nicknamed Budd Cars because they were built by the Budd Company of Philadelphia in the 1950s to service rural areas around the world, each car has its own twin diesel engines as well as compartments for passengers, conductor and baggage. Like a bus, an RDC provided inexpensive commuter service into remote areas where short rail spurs had been abandoned because of the high cost of traditional, multi-car trains.

“The Budd Cars have a bit of a cult following,” Azaria says. “It’s such a unique type of train that they want to ride the last one in North America.”

As with past Tripping projects, Azaria has compiled a staggering amount of factual information to tell the history of the train, route, and the country itself, which is presented via on-screen visuals. It’s through them that a very cool story about educating the north is told. Using CGI and old CBC footage, we learn of Bill Wright, a teacher who used a revamped Canadian Pacific Railroad passenger car in a schoolhouse/living space for him and his family.

“For 40 years, he worked out of this car,” Azaria recalls. “It would stop on the tracks and any kids in the area would find their way to it. They would be taught for a week and then receive three weeks of homework. Then he’d move up the line and do the same for the next group of kids. He probably taught a few thousand kinds in the time he was up there.”

Tripping Train 185 airs Friday at 7 p.m. ET on TVO. Stream it anytime post-broadcast at TVO.org and the TVO YouTube Channel.

Images courtesy of Tripping Train 185.

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Preview: TVO pushes off for a leisurely cruise in Tripping the Bruce

The first time I cruised along with Mitch Azaria was for his first non-stop boat excursion, Tripping the Rideau Canal. That was followed by Tripping the Niagara. Now comes the third.

Tripping the Bruce—airing Friday at 7 p.m. ET on TVO, TVO.org and TVO’s YouTube channel—sticks with his winning formula, inviting viewers to hop into a sailboat for a three-hour, non-stop 34-kilometre trek along the north shore of the Bruce Peninsula.

Kicking off with a stunning drone shot of rocky crags, deep blue water, green trees and the sound of surf and birds, viewers begin the journey in Wingfield Basin, Lake Huron. Once there—and as with the past two Tripping projects—on-screen facts about the basin are given before we hear the call for anchors to be pulled up and the trip to begin.

Part history lesson, part travelogue, Tripping the Bruce is fascinating not only for the natural spectacles in this rugged part of Ontario but the more than 1,000 shipwrecks festooned along the lake bottom. Engaging animation recalls the history of some of those ships—like the W.L. Wetmore, Sweepstakes and Niagara II—before heading below the waves to show what remains of them today.

The route north is studded with boulders strewn on its shores and a landscape with deep caves and tunnels carved by weather, swimmers and sunbathers at the famous Grotto, the beaches of Dunks Bay and Tobermory, where Canada’s most-visited shipwreck can be seen just below the waterline. The trip ends at Flowerpot Island and its famous sea stacks.

Tripping the Bruce is at its best when no one speaks, when the water, sails and birds are the soundtrack to the stunning visuals captured.

Tripping the Bruce airs Friday at 7 p.m. ET on TVO, TVO.org and TVO’s YouTube channel.

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Take a four-hour tour with TVO’s Tripping the Rideau Canal

Honestly, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. With Canadians—and the world—being encouraged to stay inside as much as possible, Tripping the Rideau Canal comes along to fill a goodly chunk of time for those abiding by the rules and hunkering down.

Debuting Friday at 7 p.m. on TVO (and available to stream on TVO.org) the four-hour documentary—yes, you read that right—plops viewers into a seat in a 1948 mahogany Shepard runabout and takes them on a real-time ride on a 27-kilometre stretch of the canal into Ottawa. The doc is the brainchild of executive producer, writer and director Mitch Azaria, whose Good Earth Productions has made series like Canada: A Magnificient Journey, Great Canadian Parks and Great Canadian Lakes.

And if four hours aboard a boat seems boring, it’s not. Tripping the Rideau Canal is equal parts boat ride and history lesson, as facts about the canal and the area surrounding it flit on-screen every few minutes.

We chatted with Mitch Azaria about the show’s seeds and the challenges he faced filming a four-hour, non-stop production.

I’ve driven parallel to the Rideau Canal for years, so this really opened my eyes to it. How did you end up doing this for TVO?
Mitch Azaria: Ironically I’d actually made a doc about the Rideau Canal a long time ago, but it was so long ago that I’d forgotten about it. I went to Ottawa University, so I always thought that the Rideau Canal went from Carleton University to downtown. I didn’t realize that it’s over 200 kilometres long, it goes from Kingston to Ottawa, when it was built or why. I didn’t know any of that.

We were talking with TVO and they kept saying, ‘We’d like to do something that’s in real-time and we don’t have commercials so we can just put something on for a really long time.’ And we thought, ‘What broadcaster says that to an independent producer? It’s the greatest thing you can do.’ We figured out pretty quickly it would have to be some kind of journey where the viewer feels like they’re taking a trip. It couldn’t be static, it would have to be in motion. We had a list of 10 places in Ontario that we thought would be interesting and that ranged from train trips to highway trips to boat trips. We’d got it down to the Welland Canal and the Rideau Canal and we went with a small camera, shot footage of both and presented it to TVO. We knew already that we liked the Rideau Canal, but we didn’t want to influence them. And they picked the Rideau Canal too. So there we were.

It’s very relaxing and part of the fun is the history lesson.
MA: It’s the oldest continuously operated canal in North America. There’s a lot of interesting parts about the history, but what I find the coolest is that you get to a lock. The men and women that are working the lock, they’re Parks Canada people, because the Rideau Canal is under Parks Canada.

The cranks that they’re turning and the operation that they’re running is the same one that’s been in operation for almost 200 years. The actual handle that they’re hand cranking, everything other than the doors, all the metal works, all the internal work, even the stones that the canals are made out of. Because it’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, they have to go and get the stones from the quarries that are now 150 years closed. They have to go and find those old quarries and take the stone out of those old quarries, so they match the stone that was put there 200 years ago.

Let’s talk about some logistics. I guess it was natural for you to start at the dam at the beginning rather than further up the chain?
MA: John Morrison was the director, and he and I spent a crazy amount of time on the canal trying to figure out all of these things, including a starting point that would be exactly four hours from the end. We weren’t smart enough to figure out anything more than, let’s go four hours back and start.

What about motor noise? Was that ever going to be an issue?
MA: It was going to be a real issue, and we had two sound men that all they did was try and figure out how to avoid that. So, they had everything pointed forward and they had figured out a way to keep everything in front of us.

What are some issues you came across during filming?
MA: We thought we asked every question and every technical issue to make sure that we could run for four hours. And one of the things that came up as we’re running and sort of live, we’re shooting, is the boat operator said, ‘Geez, we’re probably going to have to stop a few times because of these weeds.’ And we went, ‘What do you mean weeds?’ We thought we asked every question. Can the batteries last long enough? Will the camera run long enough? Are the cards long enough that we’re recording on? Do we have enough gas? That’s the one question. So yeah, there were a couple of little hitches that we didn’t count on, but that’s the way it goes.

Get some extra behind-the-scenes footage on filming on the show’s website.

Tripping the Rideau Canal airs Friday at 7 p.m. on TVO.

Images courtesy of the TVO original, Tripping the Rideau CanalFacebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail