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Storm Chaser and Spotter Video Tips

By Chris Novy
College of Science, SIU-C

Every year I learn a little more about videography and become more critical about the footage I shoot. While it's probably more important to experience the tornado (or whatever) with your own eyes, you will no doubt hate yourself later if your video footage turns out bad. Storm footage is becoming more and more commonplace these days --as everyone is trying to cash in on the action/real-life video craze. If you have any thoughts about shooting your own storm footage with the idea of selling it or having it used in quality TV shows like those aired on PBS or TLC, it had better be something spectacular or unique. The days of poorly shot, poorly edited "chaser videos" are gone --hopefully!

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are very dangerous. Unlike the movie Twister, you will get killed if you are hit by debris traveling at 150 MPH or you drive your chase vehicle through an exploding gasoline tanker. You can also get killed by careless acts like walking out into highway traffic, looking through your camcorder's viewfinder, and forgetting to look both ways before you cross the street. With ever-increasing numbers of amateur chasers these days, chasing is becoming more dangerous all the time. It may get to a point where other chasers, not the storms themselves, become the most hazardous part of chasing. Safety starts with where you decide to park your chase vehicle and begin photography. Park so that neither you nor your vehicle is a traffic hazard. Consider where you are shooting from at all times. What would happen if the power lines over your head suddenly snapped? What would happen if the tree you are standing under was struck by lightning? What would happen if, while hanging out the passenger window of a speeding chase vehicle to get a cool shot, you fell out? Are you in a position where other drivers can easily see you? Ultimately you must ask yourself the question "is the shot really worth it?"

When shooting tornado footage or footage of damage you should always respect other people's right to privacy. While you may have a legal right to shoot anything in plain-view from a public street, you must consider the moral side of what you videotape. Documentary photographers know that a close-up shot of a grieving family carries a lot of power and emotion. If you are shooting a documentary you might risk getting a brief shot of a scene like this. However, if you are just out for the fun of the chase and you stumble upon a neighborhood that has been destroyed, the last thing you need to be doing is sticking your camcorder in the face of someone who has just experienced a trauma. In short, get the shots you need but be considerate. While on the subject, don't be surprised if the law demands you turn over your tapes. While the police have no legal rights to confiscate your tapes without a court order, they may insist anyway --especially if you have crossed that imaginary, yet delicate, line of decency with your photography. If such a situation arises, ask to see the court order and then start thinking about leaving the scene quickly. The police can always "detain" you (that means jail) for an indeterminate amount of time and release you later --just to prove a point. The best advice is to avoid disaster scenes altogether. If you cannot, try to be stealthy and avoid trespassing on private property --even if that "property" has been blow into the next county!

While the old saying "tape is cheap" is true --at least compared to film-- it doesn't mean you should be using the cheapest tape you can find. Whether you're shooting VHS, Hi-8 or digital, the quality of the tape will make a huge difference in the final outcome. Cheap tape may be more than adequate for recording TV shows and high school football games but it can come back to haunt you when chasing. High-grade, name-brand, tapes typically handle color better as well as being better able to handle the physical demands of editing and copying. Always use brand new tapes. While it is possible to re-record over your old, unwanted, footage, using fresh tape reduces your chances of encountering technical difficulties and of accidentally recording over "priceless" footage. Besides, that "unwanted" old footage might just contain a scene or sound bite you desparately need later --in the editing process-- for a cut-away (to cover a jump cut) or to establish continuity.

You should be thoroughly familiar with your camcorder's operation before you go chasing. Simple things, like not knowing how to turn off the auto-focus, can mean coming home with 15 minutes of video of a rain drop on the windshield going in and out of focus as opposed to clear pictures of the tornado you thought you were taping. Your chase partner(s) should also become acquainted with the operation of your camcorder --as they may find themselves doing the taping while you do the driving. Navigating a slick road while trying to dodge a tornado is probably not the best time to be teach your partner how to make your camera record.

Take Care of Your Equipment

Keep your equipment dry. Water, especially when mixed with dust, is a lethal combination that can destroy your equipment. If you don't have a true rain cover for your camcorder a clear trash bag wrapped around the camera will work. Even an umbrella is better than nothing. Always try to change tapes while inside the chase vehicle and have the windows and doors closed. Opening the tape transport door while outdoors can expose the camcorder's internal parts to dust and moisture. Should your camcorder get really wet, turn it off and dry it out before using it again. In a pinch you can use the hot air from your vehicle's heater or from a hair drier but avoid getting the camcorder too hot. Never place a tape into a camcorder if its internal workings are wet. The tape may stick to the video heads --destroying the tape and possibly damaging the transport.

Rain isn't the only form of moisture that can ruin your gear. Dew or condensation can form on your equipment as you take it from your cool, dry, air-conditioned vehicle out into the warm, humid, outdoors. To keep your gear from having problems avoid using the air conditioning or use the air conditioning with the heat selector midway up. Doing the latter will provide you with a comfortable interior, via less humidity, while at the same time not making your vehicle (and equipment) so cold that moisture condenses on it.

When chasing you need your equipment to be ready at a moment's notice. You may not have time to search for it. Never just throw something back into the chase vehicle. Tangled cords or smashed equipment can ruin your entire day --not to mention the equipment! Using a jump kit allows you to have everything (camcorder, filters, batteries, lens cleaner, etc...) all in one convenient place. It also makes it a lot less likely that you will leave something expensive behind on one of your stops.

Keep the lens clean. If there's only one drop of rain that falls from out of a storm Murphy's Law says it will somehow find its way to your lens. Water drops can be very distracting and diminish the picture's quality. When cleaning off the lens be very careful about rubbing-in the dirt. Dust and rain make an abrasive compound that can scratch the lens and result in distorted images and/or light streaks. Use compressed air to blow off excess dust before you do any cleaning. ALWAYS use a protective filter over the lens. Some people like clear or Uv/haze filters, others prefer neutral density or polarizing filters. You might consider carrying several clear filters in case one gets scratched or broken. At the end of each chase day, wipe off any dust, mud, or water on your camcorder. Carefully clean the video heads with head cleaning fluid and swabs. Avoid using head cleaning tapes as they are abrasive and not designed to be used on a daily basis. Finally, clean off the lens and viewfinder assembly (monitor, mirrors, and eyepiece lens).

There's nothing more frustrating than having your camcorder battery go dead just when you need it. It's recommended that you carry several batteries with you and charge them each night (or in the chase vehicle). Some batteries have a little switch you can flip to indicate whether they are charged or used. If your batteries don't have such a switch simply place a little piece of masking tape on each charged battery. Then, before placing the battery in your camcorder, remove the tape. Doing this makes it a lot less likely that you will accidently put dead or near-dead batteries back into your camcorder by mistake. At the end of the day you'll know which batteries need recharging. If you plan to do a lot of shooting from within the chase vehicle you might consider using an adaptor cable and running the camcorder off the vehicle's DC power system. Make sure you get the right adaptor as not all camcorders can handle 12 volts directly. Also, you might want to invest in a DC noise filter to clean up your power vehicle's. Some vehicle electrical systems produce an annoying high-frequency audio whine that can be heard on your recordings. In the worse cases the whine can cause interference to the video picture.

Autofocus

Most consumer-grade camcorders have an autofocus mechanism. The latest generation of consumer camcorders actually watch your eyeball and attempt to focus on what you are looking at in the viewfinder. Professional camcorders on the other hand, like the kind used for TV news, do not have an autofocus at all. Autofocus is very convenient but it can burn you. The most common problem occurs when you attempt to videotape through the windshield. The camcorder may attempt to focus on the windshield or drops of water on the windshield itself instead of the tornado. Another common problem occurs when shooting out an open window during a rain shower. Here, the autofocus may attempt to focus on the raindrops at varying distances resulting in the focus racking back and forth. Racking can also occur when people or vehicles pass in front of your camcorder, when someone transmits on nearby high-power two-way radio, or when some other moving object (like tree branches) are partially in your shot. For best results, never use the autofocus. Instead, focus manually. This guarantees the focus will correct and that it will not drift off on its own.

Make sure you white balance or have the correct filter selected for *every* shot. Cameras are basically stupid and need to be told what white really looks like. A poor white balanced shot can result in wild color distortions which will greatly detract from the shot's usability. Natural lighting can change rapidly from shot to shot. The white balance you did 20 minutes ago might not be correct for the present situation. On home video cameras white balancing may be automatic but make sure you have the indoor/outdoor filter switch (if so equipped) set to the correct setting.

Image exposure varies depending upon ambient light conditions, camera sensitivity, filters, and gain. Perhaps the single most important device on any camcorder, next to focus, is the manual iris switch. This switch, if you have one, bypasses the camcorder's "smart" circuitry allowing you to manually adjust the iris. Overexposure results in scenes to losing subtle details (like virga falling beneath a backlit cloud). Underexposure can result in color distortion and poor contrast. For the most part you can probably leave your exposure control on automatic and come up with some pretty decent shots. However, you may want to consider using the manual iris when shooting scenes that are brightly lit or have a single, very bright spot in them (which would cause the automatic iris to over-compensate). If you are shooting a scene with a lot of lightning or shooting the sky across highway traffic manual iris control is desirable. If the automatic iris were used here, the entire scene would vary from bright to dark anytime bright objects such as light-colored automobiles pass in front of the lens. After a nearby lightning strike your camcorder will recover sooner if you use the manual iris setting.

Gain and Grain

Many consumer-grade camcorders can operate under incredibly low light situations. They achieve this by increasing the gain in the CCD chip(s). This gain, however, comes at a price --signal noise. When it comes to shooting at night, however, boosting the gain may mean the difference between having an acceptable picture versus no picture at all. Before using gain, however, make sure your camcorder is set to the right filter setting (if so equipped) and that you have removed any special lens attachments such as polarizing filters or telephoto extenders --which can steal light. Also, make sure your camcorder's iris is wide open. Finally, try not to boost the gain any higher than you need to. Too much gain will introduce grain (a term borrowed from film photography) into your pictures.

Time Stamps

Most camcorders have a button that will superimpose the date/time over the video. It's a good idea to periodically time stamp your video so that you can keep an accurate record. However, excessive use of the date/time stamp is an obvious clue to amateur video and detracts from your video's quality. You only need to time stamp your video for a second or two at the beginning of each scene. If you are continuously recording there is no need to time stamp again because you can always figure out how much time has elapsed by timing the video during playback with a stopwatch and comparing the time against the initial timestamp. If you change locations or a sufficient amount of time has elapsed since you last recorded, then timestamp your video again. Also be sure to set the time stamp for the correct timezone you are in.

Avoid using built-in special effects. Many cameras today have special effects like fades, wipes, dissolves, and solarization built in. Don't mess around with this stuff while shooting a scene. If your footage is really something spectacular these effects can always be added in later --at someone else's expense. Most of the special effects (like titling or fades) tend to look tacky and/or cover up important/interesting information in the shot.

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement but a little forethought can make for a much more pleasing shot. Where you place your camera can also make a big difference. A shot of a tornado or wall cloud, when surrounded by a few objects in the foreground and background, helps increase the apparent depth of the shot, makes it easier for people to perceive movement, judge scale, and it just looks a whole lot nicer than a shot of something against an open sky. Experiment with camera positioning and height. Perhaps a very low shot (the camera shooting the tornado from just over the top of the waving prairie grass) would be a nice effect. Avoiding excessive zooming. If you are going to zoom there should be some reason for doing it --like power lines suddenly start exploding or debris starts rising. However, there's nothing more boring than watching five minutes of the same tornado from the same position. So shoot the entire scene at wide-angle for a bit, then zoom up for a bit, then get a close up. There area lot of tricks that can be done later during the editing process but some things can only be done with the camera. So shoot footage of everything your eyes "want" to look at and hold the shots for a while and let your viewers get a chance to comprehend what they are seeing. If several people in your crew are videotaping, try to coordinate different shots. For example, perhaps one person can leave his/her camcorder on a wide shot while another focuses on the debris and another on the chase crew itself.

Digital zooming is more of a gimic than a useful feature in my opinion and I strongly recommended you avoid doing it. A digital zoom simulates having an optically longer (more powerful) lens by electronically enlarging the image from the CCDs. On some camcorders the digital zoom automatically takes over as soon as you have reached the maximum zoom range of the physical lens. On others, digital zoom is is accomplished by pressing a special button. Regardless of how it's done, you can't get something for nothing! What you gain in enlargement you lose in resolution. A tight digital zoom of a wall cloud for example will produce less detail than a similarly-framed close-up with no digital zoom. You may think you'll end up with an extremely nice close-up but what you're more likely to end up with is a bunch of large, non-descript, pixels. The tiny viewfinders on most camcorders make scenes shot with digital zoom look a lot better than they it will look on your big TV at home. Optical zooms, close-ups which use the magnifying power of the lens itself, are preferable but keep in mind that the longer the lens the less light reaches the imager and the darker your video may appear. And remember, with either type of zoom the more you zoom in the more camera shake, even minor shake, will look like an earthquake.

It is recommended that you use a tripod or mounting bracket whenever possible. This is especially important when performing tight zooms and when videotaping from within a moving vehicle. Camera shake is not only annoying but it can, in extreme cases, cause your viewers to experience motion sickness. Even those cameras with elelectronic image stabilization will perform better when mounted on solid footing. While shaky footage and off-level shots may be appropriate for music videos, they can make "scientific documentation" footage look amateurish. This is not to say, however, that *all* your shots should be (or can be) made from a tripod. Some camera movement (and I don't mean MTV's overused "shakey cam" shots) will make your video more appealing by adding a sense of urgency and reality. A quick-release tripod mount will allow you to easily get your camera on and off the tripod should you need to move quickly. Using a stabilizing device like a Steadicam Jr. or a monopod will also give you stable shots with minimum weight but you must continuously hold onto the equipment --a tradeoff. Some photographers use a small bean bag placed on top of the chase vehicle to help steady the shot. Bean bags have the advantage of portability but they are no match for a good steady tripod. And just because your camcorder is on a tripod doesn't mean you should walk away from it. All it takes is a sudden gust of wind or a clumsy fellow chaser to send your camcorder toppling over. Ideally, you should set your tripod at the lowest possible height necessary to get the shot. Doing so makes it less susceptible to wind sway and may make it less of a target for lightning. It should be noted here that all tripods are not created equal. If you've got the money it's definitely worth investing in a quality fluid head tripod. The fluid head, as its name implies, provides fluid (smooth) movement during panning and tilting. You'll really appreciate this feature when trying to videotape while fully-zoomed.

Use a noise-canceling or windproof microphone. Most amateur chase tapes have poor audio quality because often all you hear is the wind roaring across the microphone --a sound that is completely different from what the chaser actually heard while making the recording. Many camcorders have an earphone jack. Bring along a set of headphones and listen to what your microphone is *actually* picking up. You may be able to improve the audio just by putting something between you and the wind --like a bush or fence post. While it's important to capture the mood and spirit of the event, try to avoid excessive vocalizations (both yourself and from others). At a get- together at Tim Marshall's house a couple of years ago I coined the term "stormgasm" referring to the animal-like howling sounds that chasers typically make while watching a tornado. While I'm not suggesting that every shoot you do needs to live up to the standards of PBS or National Geographic, a certain amount of self control goes a long way.

Many storm chasers like to narrate to their video, describing everything they are looking at. This is OK if you are shooting scientific log file footage but may diminish the quality of your video if you plan to use it for training or sell it. In most cases, the picture will speak for itself. Having clean, natural, background sound with your shots makes them more realistic and interesting. You can always add narration later but natural sound is something that can only be captured while you are taping in the field. When you timestamp your video it's not a bad idea to briefly narrate your exact location, time of day (just in case you forgot to set the date/time stamp) and the direction you are looking. Some people like to record radio scanner traffic onto their chase tapes. If your camcorder has multiple channels of audio try recording the radio traffic on a separate channel from the natural sound. This way you can choose whether or not you want to hear the radio traffic later on in the editing process. If your video is chronicling a specific person (say an 80 year grandmother out for her first chase) you might consider purchasing an inexpensive (under $200) 900 MHz wireless microphone and keeping your subject "wired" at all times. When using a wireless, however, it is important that you always monitor your audio with headphones. Without headphones you might not realize it when the wireless batteries have gone dead or when wind noise is covering up everything your subject is saying.

Make sure you are really recording. Get in the habit of looking at the record indicator in the viewfinder each time you press the REC button. While this sounds trivial it can save you a lot of grief later when you discover that the camcorder was in pause all the time you thought you were recording and that you were recording all the time you thought the camcorder was in pause. If you are shooting a major event, like an actual tornado, never stop recording. Not only might you forget to push the REC button again in all the excitement but you might miss capturing something spectacular. Even if your camcorder is not focused on anything in particular, there may be interesting background sounds (howling winds, boards breaking, power lines buzzing, or people screaming) that you can edit into your masterpiece later. These noises, when properly placed, can make your footage a lot more dramatic. Remember, tape is cheap compared to overall cost of making the chase trip. It's better to shoot too much footage than not enough.

Periodically review your video. Many chasers bring along a small color TV so they can have a look at TV weather radar while on the road (beware of state laws prohibiting viewing of TV while driving). If your TV has a video input you can use it to playback portions of your tapes shortly after recording. Reviewing your video allows you to spot subtle problems such as bad tape, dirt on the lens, no sound, and poor white balancing. It's better to have messed up one or two shots and correct the problem in the field than it is to have all your shots messed up and not catch it until you get home. Once you have recorded on a tape, remove the record tab or flip the tape's record toggle switch so that you cannot accidentally re-record over your priceless footage.