Why the need for post after post saying "No, I won't give my footage away for free..."? What good does that do?
I try to play nice in my posts and give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'll lay it out the way honestly I see it.
Someone who is loosely associated with the project (from what I can tell) registers an account on Stormtrack and immediately posts that they are looking for free footage which leads me to believe they may not have intentions of being a member of the community. Under the 'Announcements' section they post a thread with the ambiguous title 'Calling All Storm Chasers'. I think it's something horrible, like we've lost a member or something and there is a donation drive for the family, dive into the thread, and it's a link to a project headed up by a California surfer dude that gives poor interviews. I'm only half-kidding
I think people are irked that this seems like less of an opportunity and more of a request. Compounding the issue is how many chasers relate to their footage. Some of them live on their chasing money, some of them can only chase with it. I'm guessing all chasers have an emotional attachment to their footage regardless of its market value. I spend weeks looking at models, preparing to make 1500 mile trips - just so that I can try to get close to an unpredictable force of nature that easily kills people and destroys millions (billions) in property. It's not the same as grabbing a camera and shooting fireworks on the 4th of July as we all know.
If someone from OU, NWS, etc. asks for my footage I'll gladly give it up because it's furthering science. If someone wants my footage for a 'Storms Of' DVD with proceeds going to charity, I'll gladly give it up because it's helping people. I'll be blunt, it seems like this '10-10-10' project is more about getting the founder's name out there and making money. What about all the awareness of causes that the project is raising? It reminds me of the grandstanding that many celebrities and musicians do - let's talk about something instead of actually doing something! Using social networks and a distributed model to produce a low-budget theatrical release sounds like a great business plan to me, but I'm not going to see it for anything besides that at the moment.
If Herbert is truly representing this project, it might be in his interest to try and understand how chasers view their media and to better explain the charitable goals and how they will be met. I hope my current assessment of this project is wrong because it could be a wonderful thing, but I'm laying the odds on human nature.
edit: Here's my ray of sunshine, I guess. Is there any way that Stormtrack could use this as an opportunity to do something good? I emailed Herbert and asked him to provide more details here on the thread.
