Archives

I’m traveling right now, but it’s not what it sounds like. I’m actually dealing with a family crisis and trying to work in the scant time in between. Still, I took a short break today and visited a wonderful model train display. I would say toy trains, because it sounds more fun, but I think the serious train guys might object.

The display is located at Garden Spot Village, a retirement community in New Holland, Pennsylvania. It was open for a couple of hours today during a fall festival. So I spent a few minutes decompressing and imagining myself in the tiny world of the trains through the eye of my iPhone.

This is a laid-back little video. The models range from various gauges traversing sophisticated settings to cute Thomas the Tank Engine trains. The attention to detail is fantastic. If only I’d had more time to capture it all! I suppose the same could be said of life. My thoughts are certainly running that way as I see a dear family member struggling with age and illness.

Treasure the time you have, friends.

Back in 2001, when I’d been chasing storms for just a few years, Dave Lewison and I met up with Scott Blair and Jason Politte on May 30 and headed into northeast New Mexico in pursuit of supercells. We found one that formed on the high plains. There were cold temperatures aloft and the perfect ingredients for rock-hard hail. We knew the storm was producing this hail – we could see it, falling from the cloud like a white waterfall – and we were determined to get ahead of it.

Even now, chasers get caught by hail. Hell, some chasers rush into it. But back in the days of no in-car radar data, when we’d “go visual” to figure out where to be in relation to the storm, it was even easier to screw up. And boy, did we screw up. We got on I-40 and were caught by the storm just inside the Texas Panhandle, with no exits or shelter in sight. Our cars were bombed by sideways-blowing hail for about ten minutes, including stones up to baseball size. To this day, I avoid chasing storms on Interstates because of this experience. See more pictures and a thorough account of this chase in the 2001 storm chasing report.

I’ve posted a new edit of the video from this day. Be warned: THERE IS CURSING. This was also way before everyone was shooting in high-def. And listening to my angst makes me cringe a bit. But because of this experience, I kept my cool when I got into an even worse hailstorm on May 12, 2005. You might say I’ve become a bit hail-avoidant since then.

I’ve never attempted a stop-motion film before, and that news won’t be a surprise to someone watching “The Chase: a silly storm safari.” It’s primitive, but it’s a fun first try. I just need to cultivate a great deal of patience before I try to shoot another one, given the painstaking frame-by-frame photography in each stop-motion clip.

The film is a combination of short video clips and stop-motion, all shot with my Nikon D7000. I set up the maps and toys, including several miniature storm-chasing vehicles, on our pool table and lit it well. I used shredded cotton balls to make the clouds, and a posterboard for the sky. Check it out:

Here’s one of the ways I earn a living these days: doing video profiles of people and businesses. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Roxanne Guy of Brevard Plastic Surgery & Skin Treatment Center and seeing her at work in surgery, which was fascinating. This is the video we just posted.

Let me start by recommending “Holidays with Dino” at Melbourne Civic Theatre, starring the incomparable Alfie Silva, who absolutely channels Dean Martin in this breezy, fun Christmas show. It’s a tribute to Dino and the TV hilarity of that era.

Alfie and his co-star Henry Caraballo, who’s a scream as Sammy Davis Jr., were kind enough to co-star in my hubby’s entry into the Sinatra/Drinking Made Easy cocktail competition. I filmed the video, and here it is. The drink, Come Fly With Me Ring-a-Ding-Ding, is really good, too!

The Melbourne Chamber Music Society has been described as a jewel. It brings top-notch performers from around the world to Brevard County, Florida, including the Juilliard String Quartet on Dec. 2. I had the opportunity to do a video profile of this group, which offers world-class music with a small-town atmosphere.

I’ve been busy shooting and editing videos and photos, and writing articles, too. So I need a break, and so do you. Here it is: an adorable video in which a GoPro camera was cleverly used to film a dog doggedly running and hanging on to a stick (by YouTube user Lorduss1). You might also call it a stick-cam. It’s a hoot. I love watching the pooch’s eyes move. I used my GoPro a lot to shoot video during the Art of Sand festival, both for time lapses (constructed from stills) and as a tractor-cam from the big machines that move the sand.

Did you visit Art of Sand this year?  The festival ended today, amid beautiful weather. The sand sculptures will meet their end, soon, making the fest a real moment in time – if you weren’t there, you can’t re-create the experience. But I did capture a lot of it on video, and I’ll be posting at least a couple more videos in the next several days.

In the meantime, if you didn’t get a chance to scan all the QR codes and want to see the interviews with the sculptors – or videos like the corporate challenge time-lapse, below – you can check them out on the Art of Sand playlist on YouTube.

So this is what I’ve been up to for the past couple of weeks – watching Art of Sand grow out of the green grass of Space Coast Stadium. OK, actually, it’s growing out of piles of sand that were packed into forms on the infield track, and I haven’t just been watching, but filming the process. It’s been an amazing journey – an appropriate word, as the theme is “Travelers.” The sculptors have come back from the massive deluge of last weekend, and their beautiful pieces are ready to see. The festival officially opens Friday, Oct. 14, and extends to Oct. 23. More info at artofsand.org.

This video shows the build, with several time-lapses to give you the flavor of the work. But you’ll have to go to the festival to see all the amazing detail in these sculptures. After watching the masters, I want to make one myself.

My short documentary film “Chasing Reality” will appear in the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 9-10, at The Oaks theaters in Melbourne, Florida. It’s about the decidedly non-extreme ordeals storm chasers endure to get a glimpse of that elusive tornado.

You can download this month’s Brevard Live magazine, which contains the festival program, or pick it up at local bars and restaurants. There are lots of highlights, from “A Beautiful Belly” on Friday night and the red carpet reception, to a bevy of Florida, horror and short films. The Florida Filmmakers & More showcase Saturday morning at 10 a.m. will feature my movie and several others. Come out to see it! It’s $10 to get into Saturday morning’s program – as well as films and a filmmakers’ roundtable Saturday afternoon – and $60 for an all-access VIP pass to two days of events, including the Friday reception and Saturday night party. It’s a great deal, and all proceeds go to Unconditional Love Inc., a nonprofit HIV patient care center.