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How to Film a Tornado 91

Posted by michael from the not-in-kansas-anymore dept.
goneaway writes: "An interesting examination of the competitive world of filming tornadoes or "torn porn" as they call it over at the Atlantic. A fair amount of attention is given to the mechanics of filming and the inventions created to "safely" film while all hell is breaking loose."
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How to Film a Tornado More

How to Film a Tornado

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  • This sounds pretty dangerous- I will stick to filming fruit and other serene objects!

    graspee

  • blind site (Score:2, Interesting)

    by selderrr ( 523988 )
    amazing how they manage to write an article about a stunningly visual phenomenon, and yet don't include a single image.
    • In a well-written article/book pictures will often detract from the writing. Also, they will lead to people not reading your article, they'll just glance at the photos and read the captions. I applaud writers who still publish with the idea that we should take the time to read their words, not just glean the information from it.
      • If you really think that people wouldn't read the article, they could have put the pictures at the bottom... This is definitely a time where pictures would enhance, not detract, from the original article.
    • I won't abuse the article by copying the links here. When you see those photos and videos, seems crazy how anything so beautiful can be so destructive - or vice versa.
      • One thing this article fails to mention is the "80 20" rule. Keeping 20% of the camera's view on the ground and 80% above the horizon yields the best results for filming any type of weather.

        If you film too much ground, you lose out on the actual weather; and if you film too much sky, you lose perspective.

    • literacy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 )
      This is a magazine known as intended for people who are used to material that has small print and printed without pictures. It comes from a tradition where the skill of the author had to make do [theatlantic.com] because the technique of photographic illustration had not really made into print yet. The first issue of The Atlantic Monthly [theatlantic.com] appeared in November of 1857, and billed itself as a "journal of literature, politics, science, and the arts." The Atlantic Monthly is where war-reporting in the American press was made into an art, with dispatches from Civil War battlefields by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (!)

      In other words a magazine that never presumed it's audience was stupid or uneducated, but had a curiosity about the world, and a certain level of education.

  • Hurray for tornado filmers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <thethreatproject ... m ['yah' in gap]> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @08:54AM (#3134665) Homepage Journal
    It may be escapism, avoidance of personal life problems, or one of any number of distractions. however, most technical innovations in film and many other mechanical disciplines come about this way.

    Stop motion film and animation, for instance, are very laborious ways of accomplishing tasks of communication that can be easily accomplished in other ways. However, the drive of fanatical individuals has resulted in some great art in those cases.

    Anything that increases safety and stability while filming a tornado would also increase these characteristics in other chaotic situations, such as a war zone or the scene of a terrorist attack.
    • Anything that increases safety and stability while filming a tornado would also increase these characteristics in other chaotic situations, such as a war zone or the scene of a terrorist attack.

      Hmm? So we can get more voyeuristic video of war and terrorist attacks? I shudder to think of Fox inventing some kind of disaster-bot that would nose around ground-zeros. But hey, ratings trump human dignity, right?

      Even if these guys are inventing things that would protect people/cars against tornadoes ... tornadoes aren't trying to kill you, as a buch of guys with rocket grenades and machine guns would be -- not that I think tornadoes aren't deadly, mind you. I just don't think that experience with tornadoes would translate well into war.

      • Who needs FOX, when we've got MIT [mit.edu].
        • Oh good lord, it has come to this ... any absurd comment I make about an application of some random idea ... not only has been already thought of but has been put into practice and has its own web page.

          I wonder if that means my idea for spray-foam hotdog buns is already in the works somewhere...

          But yeah, back on topic, I agree that Afgan-bot is pretty horrid -- even as art. At least the tornado people seem to be focusing more on nature than human misery.
        • Do you really think that it will survive in afganistan more than one interview with locals?
          Afganistan is poor country and rover will be dismounted for spares, or just for fun.

    • Re:Hurray for tornado filmers (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Stop motion film and animation, for instance, are very laborious ways of accomplishing tasks of communication that can be easily accomplished in other ways."

      Really. Ray Harryhausen could have just hired a bunch of walking skeletons for "Jason and the Argonauts"...Burton could have just found a real live actor who was 6'5" and 50 lbs to play Jack Skelllington...and of course it would have been easy to find a talking cowboy for the live-action version of "Toy Story".

      I think you mis-spoke...animation, stop-motion and other techniques allow filmakers to communicate in ways that are NOT easily accomplished using reality-based techniques.

      (ps...I'm not really an anonymous coward, just lurking until I feel like registering...)
  • I realize that the article said that the seasick cam footage sells, but I would think that a camera in a tornado would not be able to capture anything viewable, unless you anchor it down to the ground. This would mean that one will need to know exactly where the tornado is. These guys need to take a page from the Hurricane hunter planes: come up with an R/C plane that has stabilation built in to handle the winds. THAT would get much better footage, IMHO.

    • There's a problem with this. A hurricane and a tornado are two entirely different animals. You're not going to be able to make a plane that will handle that kind of abuse. Especially not a small RC model.

      Hurricanes may be large and deadly, but their force is spread out, and the winds are relatively straight-line and slow (average what, 100MPH?).

      A tornado is an extremely chaotic beast, with a small vortex and much higher wind velocities (some approaching 300+MPH).
  • Wouldn't it be a little easier to mount a remote control airplane from radio shack or better quality, with an epoxy encased digital video camera with solid media?

    Have one inner relay remote controlled to let go and start recording till the battery ran out. Fly this sucker into the tornado after making as many close passes as possible.

    Then when the tornado is letting up track it with a simple directional locater picked up for under 100 bucks at the spy shops online?

    Find the camera and crack open the solid media which sould survive anything short of getting broken in half against a house or something.

    This is an idea that could be done under 500 bucks total. If I had the money these guys throw around I'd be making these planes in bulk and having my friends come out and help fly them into the tornados!

    • Re:Totally tech ignorant yet "brave" stupod people (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Alizarin Erythrosin ( 457981 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @10:40AM (#3134856)
      Good idea in theory, but it probably would not work well in practice.

      First of all, there's debris. LOTS of debris. It would smash the plane to bits long before it got into the vortex of a large tornado.

      Second, there's often hail in the general area of a tornado.

      Third, it was tried with a helicoptor, but it was realized what the hail around the tornado would do to the blades (namely they wouldn't exist anymore)

      • The plane is expendable, All it serves to do is to get the camera into the storm where I do not wish to be. The debris is what I want to film. Imagin all the crap flying around, if I can catch even a tenth of the stuff with any clairity people would pay. Fridges hitting cows and people hitting their own trailer homes and such. The higher the framerate the better the results, that's where I'd spend the money to get a quality camera, and I would SOOOO insure it against nature and such.

        (imagine bringing it in to radioshack afterwords. "piece of crap didn't last an hour" (set bag of parts on desk) "I want another, it's under warranty.")
        • Verbal moderate parent: +1 funny.

          I think that, perhaps, a better idea than a (flimsy) airplane would be a rocket. Mount it at a likely site, and then, when a nice tornado comes overhead, remote launch it straight into the storm... A couple of solid rocket engines and a casing with a GPS tranmitter in it to help locate it afterwards.

      • But wouldn't the plane get thrown around at the same speeds as the vast majority of debris, minimizing damage?
      • You'd be unlikely to find the pieces. They'd be emulsified with the rest of the rocks, dirt,dogs, houses, trees, cars and asphalt from the road, and spread along a 1 to 30 mile by 300 yd locus.
      • Lots of tornados don't have much a debris field. In fact, a lot of them have no visible funnel or very little funnel (hence no debris or water condensation) for much of their length - see this page for an example. [tinyvital.com]

        I think the hard part would be the wind shear near the wall of the vortex. It could be very extreme. And of course, if you flew in too low you could hit debris.

        I've considered doing such a thing, but it would take a lot of time, have low probability of getting good stuff, and the odds of finding the plane intact are low (even though I would put an ELT-like device on it - I have found LOTS of those by RDF).

    • A plane would be a problem for the reasons already mentioned.

      Instead, maybe you'd want to try a wheeled vehicle, either remote-controlled or (once the technology gets there) autonomous with obstacle-avoidance, road-following and tornado-seeking behaviors. Give it all-terrain drive, lots of kevlar, and a goodamn resilient camera. It would help to test a prototype by shooting it with a .308 a few times to see whether the different assemblies take damage. This vehicle should be literally bulletproof. Use a wheeled vehicle to take advantage of local roads that the tornado may cross. Using this you should be able to drive the vehicle (or it should be able to drive itself) either near or into the tornado's path. Just lay it down on a closed highway and go.

      Of course, this vehicle may also be useful for military reconaissance work, given some modifications to its software.

      (My eventual ambition is to work with robots)

      Hope this helps.

  • Step 1 to produce a good tornado video (Score:3, Funny)

    by SuperCal ( 549671 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @09:49AM (#3134735) Homepage
    Step 1... Set up where the tornados are likely to be. Any trailor park will be a good place to start because as everyone knows tornados are naturally attracted to mullet hair cuts

  • torn porn? (Score:2, Funny)

    by gTsiros ( 205624 )
    I've heard about perversions, but this literaly blew me away...

  • Obvious Answer... (Score:4, Funny)

    by NOT-2-QUICK ( 114909 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @10:31AM (#3134835) Homepage
    As someone who has seen the movie 'Twister' [movieweb.com] no less than a dozen times, I believe the answer to capturing the ultimate 'Torn Porn' is painfully obvious. Simply do the following:

    (1) Purchase a gross of small, clear plastic balls (this can be substituted by a large number of the clear plastic eggs that silly putty comes in...)

    (2) For a solid week, every time you see one of those highly-annoying X-10, wireless camera ads [x-10.com] while cruising the net actually purchase one - if my calculations are correct that should give the average browser approximately 538 wireless cams within a seven day period... :-)

    (3) Insert a single X-10 wireless cam (with newly hacked, longer lasting self contained power source) in each of the clear plastic balls/eggs.

    (4) Next...as they learned in 'Twister' [movieweb.com] , you need to attach twisty-twirly-thingy-mabobs ® made from old pop cans to the balls to help them enter the tornado's vortex safely.

    (5) And finally, create a large tin can with a half-moon Plexiglas top that looks like a cross between R2D2 and the first Lunar Lander to house all of these video-balls.

    Now that we have created the device, it is time for deployment. Once again, I will take a page from the movie 'Twister' [movieweb.com] and suggest that you strap the launcher into the back of a very large (not to mention, expensive) 4x4 truck. Then, simply find a big-ass tornado, put on the cruise, drive straight at it and jump out at the last minute!!!

    Oh well...just a thought!!! :-)

  • Heh. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <slashmail@in i t ialized.org> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @10:44AM (#3134864) Homepage
    IANAM (I am not a meteorologist), but...

    Civilians film a lot of the tornado footage with their home video cameras. I would suppose that it is more dramatic, considering the majority of these people don't have any training, are terrified, and escape unscathed by chance. Their emotions are in strong contrast to tornado enthusiasts, who, from most peoples' observations, usually appear intrigued, not frightened.

    Of course, to capture a tornado, a number of variables must be correct and you must meet several objectives first.

    Obviously, there must be light (or you must have nightvision). A great number of tornadoes occur during the night hours and probably aren't captured on film due to this reason.

    You must actually locate the area of a storm that is most likely to produce a tornado. The advent of Doppler [sic, it's named after a person] radar has made this task much less difficult. Meteorologists will usually search for the classic "hook and coil" [ou.edu] signature that is indicative of a tornado.

    Finally, you must arrive at the target location before the tornado activity disippates. They usually last less than 20 minutes.
    • IANAM, but I am an experienced tornado chaser.

      It isn't as easy as looking for the hook on the radar. In fact, by the time the hook has formed, you had better already be in the vicinity. Also, many tornados are not associated with hooks. Finally, dopplers have not made hooks easier to see - the dopplers provide a lot of *other* information (especially velocity data) that is useful.

      A real tornado chase (as opposed to a lucky catch by someone who lives in the vicinity) involves making a forecast of a target area (not an easy thing to do), driving to that area (often 300 miles or more away), picking the right storm that goes up (most will not be tornadic even if conditions are right), and properly (and safely) positioning with regard to the moving storm.

      Do all of that, and on the average of once out of 7-10 times, you might see some kind of tornado (but most tornadoes are weak and not spectacular - although all are beautiful to the storm chaser).

      The most successful chasers are those who live in tornado alley, study meteorology seriously (whether or not they are meteorologists), spend a lot of time at chase forecasting and driving, and are lucky!

      I know lots of chasers who sell video, but few who make any money at it. Jim Leonard (mentioned in the article) is one who does - but he specializes in hurricanes (which are easier to catch). In fact, one summer he moved to Guam to catch the violent typhoons that are so common there!

      Most who make money do so from still pictures of post-card or publishing quality - mostly of non-tornadic phenomena.
  • All I know is, you can drive through a house, admire the flying livestock, and then test out your "cool" invention. All without much more risk than a few bruises and a repaired love interest. I wish I had a tornado to chase.
  • Here are some simple guidelines to follow when chasing the tornado.

    • Go straight into the tornado. The closer the shot, the better it will look. Don't worry if you drop the camera - you'll be able to find it within a 20-mile radius, and the tape will be safely housed in the camcorder.
    • If you are in a plane trying to get a really interesting shot, try to get as close as you can and then fly somewhat low for a very cool effect that very few manage to get. Shots like that are extremely rare.
    • If you're a true pansy, go home and rig up some pantyhose to a large tube with a motor and send it a-spinning, then videorecord it with a cheap black-and-white recorder. If moviegoers from the past 50-60 years have fallen for it in The Wizard of Oz, the meteorologists won't know the difference.

    Thank me later when you make millions off of my hard work and dedication.

  • Crazy, DUMB S.O.B. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Saturday March 09, 2002 @11:23AM (#3134934) Homepage Journal
    The guy who wanted to drive a fortified SUV INTO a tornado shouldn't be allowed to breed. We will be hearing more about him in the Darwin awards, rest assured.

    Look, I live in Tornado alley, and up to a few months ago lived in "pre-fabricated housing", a.k.a. a trailer home (a.k.a. "tornado bait"). I'm a part-time storm spotter, and I've seen the damage a "little" F-1 gustnado can cause, let alone an F-5 monster. An F-5 will quite literally suck the asphalt off a highway.

    If I were out tooling around in, say, an M1A1 Abrahms Tank, and I saw a tornado coming, I would turn tail and run (at right angles to the path of the tornado) as fast as that tank's treads would take me. Wind speeds in the vortex of a tornado have been measured at OVER 300 miles per hour with Doppler radar. Even a tank will be blown over.

    This fool, in his SUV, will be waking up wondering what all these midgets are doing around him. Either that, or wondering where all the harp music is coming from.

    I just dodged around a storm last night trying to get home. By local standards it wasn't anything much, but it left the roads covered in hail, dropped over an inch of rain in thirty minutes, and had 60 MPH sustained winds. I was driving, listening to the two local storm spotter nets on 2 meters, and trying to spot the rain and hail shafts in the lightning. It wasn't fun.

    I've seen the shows about tourists coming to the US to see a tornado - they spend 2 weeks driving from Texas to South Dakota to see a storm, covering over 3000 miles! Word of advice folks: just come over in the spring, and plan a normal vacation. See [cosmo.org] the [roadsideamerica.com]
    sights [ukans.edu] and enjoy yourselves. The tornados will find you. Trust me.
    • The tornados will find you. Trust me.

      One smashed through the middle of downtown Fort Worth, Texas - right past a camera on top of a large office building *live* during the six o'clock news. See it here [usatoday.com]. I would just deploy a large number of cameras, and play anoymous coward during the storm.
    • Exactly....Now as for that dumb S.O.B. If he's really wanting to die that badly, I'll happily trade him Dr. Kevorkians phone number for the keys to that SUV. (hey I've got an unpaved driveway)
    • You drove in that shit last night? You, my friend, are also a crazy S.O.B. I was south of Oklahoma City last night, and only saw the weak tail of the storm. I was still afraid it would rip the carport to shreds. It did manage to rip loose some siding.


      As far as knocking over a tank, I could believe it (despite what the retired military men might say). Look at photos of the damage done by a storm, a 65-ton tank is just more grist for the mill.


      These storm chasers are not just endangering their own lives. They are forcing local police and rescue to overextend themselves at an already busy time. They are also in the way of the real storm chasers, the ones from NSSL and CAPS, driving trucks [ou.edu] (with doppler radar dishes on the back). (Check these trucks out. They are really cool.) I have heard that people tend to stop in the middle of the road to get some footage, making it difficult for researchers and rescue crew to pass.


      I have a message to all would-be storm chasers: If you want a thrill, do something safe, like sky diving. At least there you have a backup plan (the reserve chute). What are you going to do when a piece of wood comes flying at you at speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour?

      • Beleive me, I was not out in the storm by choice - it took me be surprise, and I was trying to get HOME just as fast and safely as I could.

        And were I to "chase" a storm, I would be doing it under the auspices of RACES and the National Weather service, not merely for kicks. As a licensed amatuer radio operator, I get just as angry with these rubbernecking yahoos as you do. They put OUR lives in danger when we have to go help coordinate rescue efforts.
      • Sorry, but you don't understand storm chasing.

        Yes, there are a few "yahoos" who don't know what they are doing and cause trouble. These are usually local folks who hear about a tornado and drive around looking for it.

        Serious storm chasers stay out of the way of emergency vehicles, and out of the way of tornados. We study the severe weather and know a lot about it, even those of use who are not meteorologists.

        We also report our data to NWS or NSSL, and are respectful of their needs to get data.

        Finally, I would estimate that half of the serious storm chasers ARE members of emergency services. Many are from NSSL, OU, NWS, and other professional meteorological organizations, out chasing on their own time.

        Furthermore, many NWS offices have liason setups where they provide info to storm chasers when we drop in (time available - we don't interfere, and we provide ground truth to them when we are out on the road. Many hand out reporting forms.

        Most of us have lists of phone numbers for reporting damage, and are trained spotters at the lest.

        I do agree, though, that the chase trucks are cool. The neatest IMHO are the DOW's (Dopplers on Wheels). The NSSL chase vans are pretty neat, and the smaller chase vehicles are ordinary sedans tricked out with wierd looking meteorolical stuff on the roof (if you see a car going down the road with a bunch of white PVC pipe sticking up above the roof, with an anemometer attached to it, you are looking at an NSSL chase vehicle or copycat).

      • "These storm chasers are not just endangering their own lives. They are forcing local police and rescue to overextend themselves at an already busy time. "

        I'm confused. How can they be chasing a storm, and sitting next to local police and rescue teams, holding a gun to their head, and forcing them to 'overextend' themselves?

        This is quite typical of the American populace in general. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions, and the police ... choosing to make choices on the behalf of others ... want you to believe they simply have no choice in the whole matter. Guess what, the self-righteous often die horrible deaths as a consequence of their self-righteousness. And well they should. If they don't want to risk their lives they should simply not do so, rather than trying to be heroes and then blaming the storm chaser when they don't get to collect the medal and the glory.

        Become a 'Brain Surgeon in Blue'
        Do what you will do
        But don't you cry like a little girl
        When the martyrs bill comes due.

        - William Shakespeare 2002
    • Agreed.

      People truly underestimate the power of these storms. I have relatives from England, and they were asking me how many tornadoes I've seen, as I live in Kansas. When I replied "None, I hide in the basement when the sirens go," they looked at me like I was a scared child.

      Two weeks later when the sirens went off, they wanted to go outside and look at it. We made them come into the basement with us and spend an entirely uneventful 30 minutes. Didn't hear anything, and obviously didn't see anything.

      The next morning, when we flew over the damaged areas, they got a real education. Suddenly it was a lot less like the movies. You couldn't see them; but you knew there just had to be people dead in those buildings.

      Hurricanes have longer sustained winds; but they don't match the tornado for windshear.
    • Agree and disagree... The guy with the fortified SUV would be paste if he got into anything F2 and above.

      Disagree... An M1A1 wouldn't have any trouble with an F-5.

      Disagree... Tornados are hard to catch. I spend 2 weeks every year, driving 7000 miles each time, chasing them in the midwest. I know what I am doing, often travel with people who do this for a living, and I can tell you... they are HARD TO FIND. Some years we never see a single one.

      When I lived in tornado alley, I saw a few (including the Topeka Tornado of 1966 - see my pictures [tinyvital.com]), but don't count on finding one just on vacation.

      There are also folks who run professional tornado chase safaris. These folks, for the most part, really know what they are doing, and provide a good value for the money. If you are really interested in chasing, a trip with them is a good way to get started.

      There is also a tornado chase mailing list: WX-CHASE at LISTSERV@PO.UIUC.EDU or here in HTML [centerone.com]. It has a lot of serious chasers and good information in it.

      BTW... I do know a guy who has a fortified SUV. But his is fortified against hail - a real hazard on the chase. I have seen many folks have their cars trashed by 2"-5" hail on a chase.

      My chase pages are here [tinyvital.com] if anyone is interesting.

  • Just say no to tornography... (Score:4, Funny)

    by scubacuda ( 411898 ) <scubacudaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday March 09, 2002 @11:46AM (#3134994)
    ...and tornographic images!

    It is a gateway, leading men to watch more violent things like police chases, boxing matches, and hurricanes.

    It changes values and attitudes such as desensitization and "tolerance" which leads to more depraved tornography.

    There are reports in many urban areas of increased trailor parks around tornography outlets.

  • Lewison tapped on the window of the housing, to draw my attention to its strength. "Supposedly, it will stop a twenty-two," he said. It hadn't yet been tornado-tested, but earlier in the year Lewison had used a homemade potato gun to fire a spud at 160 mph directly at the Lexan-shielded lens. "It didn't do any damage," he reported. "And we got some pretty interesting video."

    Lewison: Check out this tornado camera I made.
    Dude: Hey that's neat, how strong is it.
    Lewison: The guy at the hardware store says it can take a bullet.
    Dude: Lets shoot potatos at it.
    Lewison: Ok.

    That actually sounds more interesting than torn porn. They should use high speed photography so they can make time last longer when the storm hits.
  • For tornadoes, there are two styles: either to clearly show the force or a tornado from a distance, or to get close up, and show the power affect everything, including the camera.

    From afar, we can see the power of the beast very clearly and in focus. From close, we feel placed in the torando, as the shots are out of focus, there are tons of whip-pans, etc. This is why there are not as many good documentarians out there. It is an art form to use both sytles in a clear manner.


  • Great novel by Bruce Sterling about hacking and tornados!

  • When I lived in Missouri, I remember having to run from our neighboors house to ours (about 50 yards) as one of those supercells was going over.

    At 7pm, the skies where an honest-to-god GREEN. It was the erriest thing I've ever seen (and I am on USENet :) I remember another afternoon watching funnel clouds drop out of a cell to the north of us, but that was nothing compared to the green skies.

    If I ever get back out there, as cool as I think nature can be, I'll be buring my ass deep into the ground.
  • Deploy Darwin award wannabes with telephoto lenses. Put them in trailer parks (tornado bait). They are expendable (especially if you can get sponsors for cameras, lenses and film) and if you deploy enough of them, you may even find several usable rolls of film afterwards.

    Other than that, I'd suggest Troy's bear suit and magic materials [improb.com] for the fashion-impaired tornographers. :-)

    • If you can, try to track down some video of this guy... I've seen some on a crazy-things-people-do type video show... it was very interesting.

      This guy used big swinging logs to nail himself in the chest hard enough to throw him back a good 20 feet while wearing the suit, repeatedly stood in front of a jeep driving at him at 45mph or so and just let it cream him, multiple people beating him with bats as hard as they could... very entertaining stuff... he was perfectly safe, but the version of the suit he was using was so heavy that he couldn't really get up after he was knocked down.

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