How to Film a Tornado

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."

Comments

Sometimes words are enough

[DataSquid]

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.

literacy

[Alien54]

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 because the technique of photographic illustration had not really made into print yet. The first issue of The Atlantic Monthly 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.

Re:Hurray for tornado filmers

[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...)

Re:Totally tech ignorant yet "brave" stupod people

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

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)