Who is still selling and/or still creating chase highlight DVD/Blu-Rays

Maybe I am biased because of the crappy internet connections we have out here in southwest Colorado, but I would much rather watch a Blu Ray on my big-screen TV than an unreliable stream on my computer monitor or phone. Or maybe at the age of 66 I am just old-fashioned. Anyway, I have been working on my 2014-16 compilation, and when it is ready, I would be happy to trade with anyone else still bothering to make highlights videos. Oh, and BTW, I would be happy to share my footage for Storm Assist also, once the call for video goes out.
 
It's been rather interesting to watch the evolution of video / digital productions since I produced my first amateur production of "Thunderstorm" back in the early 1990's. I put a $50.00 ad in Weatherwise Magazine and nearly fell over when I found my PO Box stuffed with 20-30 checks. That was not a lot of money, but just enough to make the effort worthwhile as I was living on water and rice. The changes are many: Cost effective advertising is all but gone. Even with clever marketing on the Internet, you will be lost in a sea of related / junk advertising. To place yourself at the top of search engines now days would not be cost effective. YouTube and social media has taken over as the depository for free entertainment with little return for the producer. People have become desensitized to violence. Does not matter if its gruesome terrorism or a tornado shot from 50 feet away, who cares? The news cycle now days is decreasing my the minute. It will also be possible in the not-so-distant future for anyone to create 100% realistic digital footage of tornadoes, lightning, etc. And forget copyright laws. It will be interesting to see where this all leads.
 
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Good day all,

Only the older footage is used for such discs, almost all newer stuff is on YouTube (and social media) that same day, within minutes sometimes.

The only thing I see DVD/BlueRay for now is benefits for general audiences, not to mention special productions (Storm Assist to name one).
 
Taylor Wright said:
Doing it primarily for fun, so not really worried about pulling a profit.
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In 73 characters you just summed this thread up. The fact you and so many others are just 'doing it for fun' has saturated the market. Youtube ads seem the best route at this point, I still make money off there every few months so that isn't too bad. DVDs/physical media is dead.
 
Ben Holcomb said:
In 73 characters you just summed this thread up. The fact you and so many others are just 'doing it for fun' has saturated the market. Youtube ads seem the best route at this point, I still make money off there every few months so that isn't too bad. DVDs/physical media is dead.
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So we shouldn't make our own DVDs because it hurts your sales? All I'm saying is I'm not betting the farm that my DVDs/BluRays are going to sell. That doesn't mean I won't sell them if I can. If people were giving away DVDs, I could see your point, but it just seems like you're angry because someone other than you wants to make a highlight DVD. I also haven't seen many highlight videos at all over the past couple of years. Admittedly I'm not looking very hard, but the ones I've seen have been either low quality or uninteresting. I thought trying to make a profit off chasing was dead? A few people making highlight DVDs is not what saturated "your" market. Camera phones and the influx of more chasers is what saturated it.
 
Re-read what I said. I said you summed it up in 73 characters because you and many others don't care to make a profit and many will just blast their videos to YouTube. Tornado video has a saturated market and it only gets worse every event.

I didn't say you shouldn't sell a highlights DVD or give one away. If you think it's cutting into "my market" you would be sadly mistaken as I haven't even sold a DVD in 2 years as I took my store offline in 2014 or perhaps January 2015. I am, however, always willing to trade highlight DVDs with folks.

I just don't see the effort payoff anymore. It's hard to make a DVD and it's a dead medium. Skip is right on the money that more production to tell a story is needed, even in storm assist which is a conglomeration of some of the best stuff shot by chasers.

I know you took personal offense at that but it wasn't intended as a personal attack. Hard to give boring text a context. Turn down the sensitivity knob in the future!

Sent from my XT1254 using Stormtrack mobile app
 
Ben Holcomb said:
Re-read what I said. I said you summed it up in 73 characters because you and many others don't care to make a profit and many will just blast their videos to YouTube. Tornado video has a saturated market and it only gets worse every event.

I didn't say you shouldn't sell a highlights DVD or give one away. If you think it's cutting into "my market" you would be sadly mistaken as I haven't even sold a DVD in 2 years as I took my store offline in 2014 or perhaps January 2015. I am, however, always willing to trade highlight DVDs with folks.

I just don't see the effort payoff anymore. It's hard to make a DVD and it's a dead medium. Skip is right on the money that more production to tell a story is needed, even in storm assist which is a conglomeration of some of the best stuff shot by chasers.

I know you took personal offense at that but it wasn't intended as a personal attack. Hard to give boring text a context. Turn down the sensitivity knob in the future!

Sent from my XT1254 using Stormtrack mobile app
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I thought you were referring to DVDs saturating the market, not YouTube videos, so it seemed more like a personal attack than a point being made about YouTube videos, as if you were saying "YOU making DVDs is infringing on MY ability to sell mine" but I see what you're saying now. I just want to see my stuff put together in a clean, edited format with some narration and music here and there. I've pretty much come to terms with the fact 50 other people will have video of the same tornado. So I guess my question is, what's the point of not putting your stuff on YouTube if the market is saturated one way or another anyways? Are there people putting tornado videos on YouTube solely for the purpose of making money? I guess if you can consistently get hundreds of thousands of views that's viable.
 
I get mine up quick and get a steady, albeit small, income stream from it. Made a couple grand though off Moore video in 13 by getting it up fast. Otherwise mostly to complement my own website. It's all self serving.

And it's any medium not just YouTube, but YouTube is more prevalent. It's the reality in 2016. The only one with what I'd call original content of the same tornado shot we all have is Hank Schyma, but he obviously spends a lot of time working on his videos.

Sent from my XT1254 using Stormtrack mobile app
 
Ben Holcomb said:
Skip is right on the money that more production to tell a story is needed, even in storm assist which is a conglomeration of some of the best stuff shot by chasers.
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If you like a production to go along with the tornado footage I cannot say enough good things about what @Blake W. Naftel put together for volume one of Storm Chasing: The Anthology. It was quite an involved project to produce the Blu Ray and DVDs earlier this year, but the final product was a class act. One run of DVDs and Blu Ray discs were produced and going forward the product will only be available on Vimeo On Demand, including new material. Here is where the announcement was made. On the home page Blake mentioned there are a few left for anyone interested in purchasing one.
 
If you have a 4K TV the next thing you should do, and I do mean immediately is go see Mike Oblinski's 4K Vorticity.
I watched in on my 65" 4K, and its nothing less than spectacular. He used huge resolution, (8K) images, one by one to build the time lapse video at 30FPS. The music is just as good however.
 
In the past, I had hoped to cover some expenses with DVD/Blu-ray sales but mainly did it for fun and as a way of putting my edited video together in a nice way for me to watch or my friends. More recently, I've just been throwing up quick edits on YouTube. Having that video available on YouTube for myself and others to see has really taken the incentive away from making more polished and time consuming productions.
 
Take a look at Hank Schyma's Youtube channel - there you can see how the online medium really is the way to go these days. Hank's videos are IMO the gold standard for well-done chase videos distributed online - and just look at the audience that results: in the millions! And the income potential is hundreds of times more than what you'd gross in DVD sales, without all the hassle of burning discs and mailing packages.

Hank has a real talent and personality for these that me and most others probably won't match, but I would imagine a well-thought out production by most anyone might get a respectable audience that would far surpass viewership and revenue from traditional DVDs. I know most don't do DVDs for money, but it is nice to get *some* return. On YT it's a no-brainer to monetize your channel and give it a try.
 
I'm not really selling so much as I'm offering to trade with other chasers who also have DVDs (or even VHS or whatever). I basically have "long edits" that I can burn on demand for the hardcore weather weenies who are interested. No fancy packaging or anything like that. The average viewer usually has an attention span of 2 or 3 minutes for anything that isn't Hollywood level drama, so I post shorter stuff on Youtube. I mostly shoot video for my own records.
 
With so much video content available nowadays on social media, I think making a hard copy production is possibly not worth it unless you really put some time and effort in. Like Skip said about SA videos and having a documentary feel. It's something I've wanted to do, but it is a lot of work if you really want a good production.
 
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