Category: Uncategorized

I bought another Fn Hard Drive tonight, er, um, last night. I did not feel comfortable having the project on several drives so I edited down the best cuts and put them on a monster sized 500Gig drive.

Transferring over 400 Gigs of video is taking some time but it will be worth it. I also got most of the scripting outline done. I do have to go through the time line again this morning and right up a ton more stuff but from conception to rough draft this is coming along really fast compared to some projects I have done.

Part of me wants to spill the beans on the project but then again, I just want to see the look on some peoples faces when they see the final project!

I bought another Fn Hard Drive tonight, er, um, last night. I did not feel comfortable having the project on several drives so I edited down the best cuts and put them on a monster sized 500Gig drive.

Transferring over 400 Gigs of video is taking some time but it will be worth it. I also got most of the scripting outline done. I do have to go through the time line again this morning and right up a ton more stuff but from conception to rough draft this is coming along really fast compared to some projects I have done.

Part of me wants to spill the beans on the project but then again, I just want to see the look on some peoples faces when they see the final project!

Ok, just a quick update, still alive but just crazy busy. I’m working on all the stuff for the new project. Getting graphics and research is a huge pain in the ass but it is coming along and I have just a few more graphics projects to put together and I will have everything I need, I hope.
Also I have got the rough outline of the script up done. I need to review the script and the video a few more times and rough it out to the point of story boards. All I can say is this project is really coming along fast but I was hoping to have it further along by now. It is the graphics side of things that is holding it up but it is kind of like building a puzzle, you need all the pieces before you can actually put it together. The script is the picture to use to build the puzzle but it is not a fixed picture.
I can’t go into details just yet but I will say a lot of people in chasing will love the video and hate the project because it is so freaking good. The Hurricane Charley DVD will look like a POS when this project is done.
I will have the rough edit done by this weekend if all goes a planned.
I need to book sound studio time for the voice overs next week. Since the new runway opened up I can’t do the voice overs from home anymore in the temp sound booth I made.

Just an FYI, I’ll be locking myself in at home for the next week to work on another new project that was just put in my lap. I have 10 days to pull off a video editing job that should take a month or more.
So, I’m going to be forwarding everything off to Dan and Bill to take care of for BNVN stuff and let my agents at Conus deal with the stock stuff so I can focus on this project. When it is done, oh man, this is going to kick ass!!!

I have been looking over the net tonight at a lot of different video and still images of the recent ice storms in the Midwest, south and out in the Pacific NW. There is some cool stuff but I have to laugh at people that say they chased the ice storm when all they did was go out after the storm and document the aftermath.

Checking out aftermath is not a chase people. If you were there when the tree fell from the ice or the car crashed from the ice while the ice was forming, and you forecasted the storm a day before and drove to where the storm was going to hit, okay, then you chased.

What is a chase? You leave before the storm or during the storm to go more then few miles from home to watch active weather as it is happening or if you have a deck and a view like mine, you can forecast the chase to stay home and watch lightning. 
The only exception is, if your home area is getting hit then you did not chase because you were already there so “you documented” the weather and did a home chase.
Once again, YOU CHASE WEATHER, you don’t chase aftermath. Aftermath is no different then rubber necking while passing a car crash in rush hour traffic. It already happened and your just checking out the wreck.

In other news, the latest video project is now completed. This is going to change a lot of how everything is done in the digital age.

Just working with all the computers encoding video tonight on the latest project and the office is hot.
Between the 2 desktops with the 600w power supplies and the laptop with a total of 20 internal and external hard drives spinning, my office is heating up even with the window open. The outside air temp is 0.2F and the inside temp WITH the window open 79.4F.But everything is coming along right on time with the project.

Just a little funny with all the computers and fans making my office sound like a jet engine.

I just updated my photo page with a bunch of new images. I still have to work on the description.
Here is one of the images from the New Years Eve winter storm.

And this one from an aurora a couple months ago.

Ok today I was out by the river in St. Paul doing some photography along the bluffs. It was pretty cool and below are some images.

While editing the images I started to do some research about the bluffs and one thing led to another and I found this site http://www.actionsquad.org and  Holy Crap, this is cool.

Granted they are breaking every law in the book but its an fresh idea, not something like storm chasing that is copied and copied and rehashed but something that is new to me and the site, I read a lot of their “Chase Reports” (sorry had to say it.) and it was interesting.

I think they could get or have got in a shitload of trouble but the history side of it was just cool.

Oh yeah, here are the images of the Bluffs. 

Ok, one of my new years resolutions is to stop looking like Frank Blacks evil twin, or good twin. Someone told me yesterday that I looked like Frank Black from the band the Pixies. www.myspace.com/pixies to go and see for yourself. Wow, yeah well…

Yesterday was messed up. I was out shooting the snow storm when I came upon one of the fatal car crashes on 212 just east of Chaska. I did not shoot any video of the crash itself but I did shoot a lot of the traffic jam as as result of the crash. I got some great footage of people slipping and sliding that I’m going to post this week to the site. I focused mainly on stock video since I knew that with Denver getting hit hard again, TWC was not buying anything with the flood of footage out there from around the country from the TV Stations.
When I was leaving the Flying Cloud area after filming the traffic jam from 212 being closed, the drive into downtown was insane and I almost was hit head on. A driver who was fleeing the scene of a accident was driving down the wrong side of the road on 212 in front of the Eden Prairie shopping center and missed me by inches after I swerved to get out of the way. My first thought was not oh shit here comes a car but it was Oh Shit, my laptop is hooked up on the Jotto Desk and I got airbags and if this idiot hits me, my laptop is gone.
Oh what are my other resolutions? I plan on getting the weatherpaparazzi.com site done in the next few weeks. Almost all of the photos are now edited and on line. I just have to review some stuff that is going to be photomerged together for stiched photos. There are some other photos I need to work on as well but nothing that important. Right now, I just have to work on the site layout.
The other one is to slow down and take more time off from chasing and settle down. Maybe get back into the dating scene and have some fun.
The last is to finish college. I want to get the 2 year degree out of the way this year. I know I’m going to have to work on the math stuff but I think I can go back and knock it all out this fall and get the 2 year out of the way then go for my 4 year degree in mass communications. Yes, I settled on a degree, mass communications.
Why not get the degree for the crap I’m already doing.
Here is the video from yesterday.

The new DVD project is in full swing now.

Total time of the rough “Rough” master combined edit file is now 15 hours, 28 Minutes, 43 Seconds and 19 Frames.  That is the rough edit that I now need to break down to 2 hours total time.