New Storm Chasing Series on Discovery

[Warren Faidley]

I posted this on social media. This looks like an AI-generated image or maybe a heavily composited image? If it is fake, then it's kind of sad they could not find a genuine image from someone they are featuring. Did not even know they were doing a new show until today.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2047432314280681864

 

[Boris Konon]

That image looks all AI-generated.

Ever notice the tornadoes are always "ragged" for the funnel? Except that's not reality, not for strong/intense tornadoes, esp. the drill bit type, which have smooth edges! I ask Google AI to "draw a tornado" and it came up w/ the same generic style w/ the ragged edges!

Also, and this is more subtle, but do we need foster the idea that chasers just randomly drive into fields/crops? That does not paint chasers in a positive light for land owners and farmers!

And as if we need another tornado series? This has been done ad nauseam for so long, you'd think just re-running all that already exists would be more than enough for the avg viewer.

And how original for a title -- "eye of the storm."

Don't get me wrong, this kind of stuff was great back in the day (90s) when storm chasing became front and center and new to the public, but now this is just mere canned "lazy" recycled content IMHO. And the content itself leaves much to be desired. These "documentaries" do sleazy/devious things. Perhaps the most egregious was some years ago, a show on mermaids (titled something like Mermaids: The New Evidence), and they showed ppl from NOAA talking about the subject and veracity. But they were not actually ppl from NOAA, but you'd never know that except for a quick line that showed up in the glaringly fast end credits! And that upset a lot, so much NOAA has to issue a statement about it.

I would keep a sharp eye out for AI-generated tornadoes and other things in wx shows/series now. Why pay chasers for actual footage when you can generate your own for no cost?

 

[Warren Faidley]

They must be following the wrong people if they cannot get a real tornado picture!

 

[Jamie H]

Features: Reed Timmer, Randy Hicks, Brandon Copic, Tanner Charles, Freddy McKinney, Sarah Kassabian, and Connor Croff.

AFAIK most of those are good chasers in terms of quality of footage, but I expect Discovery + Reed = TORNADO! TORNADO ON THE GROUND! TORNADOOOOOOO.

 

[Randy Jennings]

Be careful judging a movie or tv show by it's poster. These are often done by an "art department" or "marketing department" that had nothing to do with the actual production of the movie/show without their approval or input. I used to do corporate trade shows and I would always cringe when I saw the graphic products that the outsourced media/display folks would come up with. It would take a very serious product and make it look like a cartoon joke. While I could sometimes get major problems corrected, I never could tell them to start over and try again (despite knowing that the way they presented our product was a turn off to our customers).

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. It is a spin off of the existing series and they gave camera rigs to these chasers who self filmed. Not expecting much, but I will hold my judgement.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I actually feel more sorry for the participants. First of all, I hope they are not encouraged to take uncomfortable risks to make the cut, either directly or by passive aggressive suggestions. News crews began to drop me like a hot potato when I refused to take insane risks. Secondly, I hope the participants realize that anything captured in their clips can be used for any purpose or messaging — if their contracts are like most releases. In other words, they could make you look like a hero or an idiot, and they might have rights to your footage in perpetuity. Lastly, any stunts or illegal moves you make, just like on social media, can come back to haunt you legally in the future if someone needs to prove negligence.

I learned a long time ago that it's sometimes entertaining to see yourself on TV, but it's generally not worth it in the long run.

 

[J Miller]

The first thing I'm worried about is the scripted scenes. The original series had obvious scripted scenes. In 2010, there was this whole plot line where TIV had to remain 75 miles from VORTEX2 operations because they were trying to remain professional after TIV did some reckless driving (which now that I think about, could have been encouraged by producers). In a written statement, Wurman had to say that they had no way to enforce this, and that he didn't have any sort of control over funding for Sean's film. But for awhile, people treated it as if Wurman was an egotistical douche, because that's how they told the story. People's reputations will be tanked, whether they like it or not, because that's what TV does for entertainment, because the general public doesn't care about pretty storms and seeing people get excited about them. I'm not super concerned about the show getting people to do dangerous things. They can cut and splice audio and video to completely change the sequence of events to tell the story they want to. The second big thing I'm worried about is that people will take these sequences of events as verbatim. They'll see something and that "the professionals did this, and they made it out alright, this must be what storm chasing is all about". I feel like it's not a matter of if, but when, we have a parade of vehicles in bumper to bumper traffic while the violent wedge approaches the highway at 60 mph because of someone up front who refuses to move and just wants to film.

 

[Warren Faidley]

As usual, they will likely need to find some clever way to justify why people are chasing. e.g., to "save lives." Then again, they could be honest and just admit that 90% of chasing now days is competing to provide the closest, stunt-filled, death defying social media content. There is really no longer a need to try and justify chasing as some heroic or ground breaking scientific pursuit — it's not.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I’ve been a fan of Connor Croff’s videos. He’s the livestreamer I usually default to. Sometimes annoying in the repetitive shouts “IT’S VIOLENT! IT’S VIOLENT! VIOLENT!” Hard not to be envious that the kid has more tornados already than I’ve had in 30 years. I like that he usually shows his position on radar, which Reed does not. He has already scored big this year and the production quality of his videos has increased markedly from last year. Although one annoyance is when the date of the chase is not included in the video titles/thumbnails. But I digress from the original topic, I only mention him since he’s one of the “new generation” in the Discovery show. Kind of glad to see him get this exposure, I think he’s pretty good. And although he takes risks I wouldn’t feel comfortable with, you will often hear him express caution about getting too close and saying when it’s time to turn around.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I'll echo Warren's point, one of the things I've learned about working with TV production folks is that your continuing working with them is contingent on your willingness to do whatever they ask and not push back on *anything*. They're so used to the average person being starstruck and just going along with whatever that they're incredulous against anyone that actually sticks to their guns about something. As an example, putting my foot down on not releasing the El Reno rear camera view was very costly to me, I'm now "that guy" who is too difficult to work with.

I don't envy any on those shows now, nor do I judge them for things that end up on the air. A lot of it may not be in their control, even if they try to assert it. The higher ups and producers are going to get their way, no matter what, and if they don't, that's the end of the road for you.

Again, I don't mean everyone working in that field, I've met and worked with some very nice people. It's just like the news field. Lots of good people there, but unfortunately they don't have the ability to steer the machine.

 

[Warren Faidley]

You would think that after 40 of storm chasing becoming a thing, the media would eventually discover they are still missing the storyline. Why are people chasing? It does not matter if they are getting dangerously close to feed an audience hooked on this type of material, but frame the story that way. They don’t need to try and legitimize dangerous road antics as some righteous pursuit to save humans when it’s not.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I know nothing about this show besides what I gathered from the onslaught of social media posts by its participants this past week. At least one of them described their contribution to the show as "self produced" or something like that. So this may be a glorified corporate repackaging of hobbyist video, with no dedicated producers having been in the field at all. In many ways, that actually sounds like a better recipe for a final product we'd appreciate than the old "produced" show.

I just hope the chasers involved were compensated within a galaxy of fairly, assuming they're handing over their best footage (from a generational run of recent years) for national syndication.

 

[Warren Faidley]

I don't know about their specific contract, but I'll bet they (the contractor) is allowed to use the footage in perpetuity without further compensation. I backed out of a couple of shows that wanted to use my own footage this way. You are basically feeding them free stock footage forever.

 

[Warren Faidley]

My recent post on X kind of sums things up.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2048406229672997087

 

[Evan Hawkins]

I posted this on social media. This looks like an AI-generated image or maybe a heavily composited image? If it is fake, then it's kind of sad they could not find a genuine image from someone they are featuring. Did not even know they were doing a new show until today.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2047432314280681864

I'd say it's AI but at the same time, the show "In the Eye of the Storm" is a real show, but it wouldn't be on Disney, it would be on HBO or something like that