Filming A Hurricane!

B

brystew_512

Member
So here's the story. I have been given the opportunity to film with all emergancy services in a certain county in Texas. My goal is to capture as much footage as possible with one camera and jumping from service to service. When everything is done I am going to donate the footage to the county museum. I am offering these services for free other wise this would be a large multi-camera event to show all services working together.

Why am I doing this? To give back to a community that has given me so much.

Why am I here typing? I am one person with no support. Well maybe no support. DVXuser is always a great place for advice :cheesy:

What I have:
- HVX-200
- 2x 16gb cards
- LitePanel
- 2x 8 hour batteries /camera
- 2x 4 hour batteries /the litepanel
- Wireless mic lavs/shotgun
- Shoulder mount
- 1TB external hard drive
- Macbook Pro
- P2 reader
- Hellicopter
- Airplane
- Plus other small things that are important but I have not made the detailed list.

What I need:
- As soon as I land in Houston I will be renting a tripod.
- Some advice, off of what I've said so far what would you tell someone that was doing this? Thanks for the help.

Things I have been working on:
- I have found releases that I can use for interviews.
- shot ideas and b-roll ideas
- who I will interview and what I will be asking
- what emergancy services should I ride with in what order. The reason for this is to be with each service when they would be getting used the most. ie. fire during the storm, police before, and national guard after.


I will continue this later. My battery is dying. Thanks for the help?
 
you have to be mobile so just you and the camera.
leave the helicopter at home.
leave the lightboz and all that stuff at the hotel. bring extra tapes/cards.
an extra belt or two (or climbing ropes if you have them) can teather you down where needed.
unless shooting film, you are not filming.
 
Not so fast there, I have shot a lot of destruction from tornadoes. I'd be all over using the helicopter & or airplane, I have a backpack that carries my audio kit, extra batteries, litepanels, laptop etc. and another duffell bag I bring with me that has a hard drive, rain jacket for the camera and a few other things. I am constantly downloading in the field to a hard drive, you will not be able to go back to the hotel to offload every time your 2x 16 gig cards get full, it just isn't practicle.

For the helicopter I'm sure you can leave your bag at the airport where the plane or chopper picks you up and drops you off at, so you can just take the camera for those trips.

I would bring several mini DV tapes so you can shoot when your P2 cards are full.
 
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My first rodeo

My first rodeo

This was a learning experience for me and I have to say I learned allot. Thanks ChipG and grinner for the great advice. In the end I was not able to get a large amount of footage but I was able to figure out how I needed to work the system to get into restricted areas and areas that were not known about unless you talk to the right people who will say take you on a tour of the flooded out hospital basements and such. I will be posting some stuff on vimeo soon. When its up I will let yall know. Thanks again. Oh, and the hellicopter shot was scraped because the one we were gonna use had a hanger door fall on it at the airport during the storm.
 
Brystew,

Our tornado chasing crew always jokes around wanting me to buy a used ambulance for next season so we can have full access to the damage area's that are shut down :)

I'm looking forward to seeing your stuff.

Chip
 
subscribed to this thread to keep up with it. Cant wait to see pictures/footage. Im not to far from Houston and have thought myself to drive down and shoot something even if its nothing.. :)
 
Everything is going well

Everything is going well

While I didn't get to film the CRAZY action of the storm I have been lucky enough to run into the right people to be able to document the damage and clean up of some very important places. Also the job is paying and its paying very well. I will have footage up as soon as possible. By the way it is a mess here and the damage is at least a year away from completion. Thanks for the great advice I now work out of a suburban with a desk in the back and we are a crew of three. Filming, Photographing, and writing down file names and locations for every building.

,
 
Hey man!

No worries, I have some but limited footage I can show.

The adventure is the best part!

Chip
 
FYI our tornado crew would have car jacked you guy's with the Suburban's... We had Extarra's for 20 hour days, very painfull...

And our days / adventure lasted for 4 months!
 
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