With a lull in the weather, I have had time to begin work on the several DVD projects I have slated for the coming fall.  One of which, Lubacca 2010, should be released by August 30 assuming I manage a string of days like I’ve had where I can knock these things out.  The tornado compilation and Lubacca 2011 will be released later in the fall as I have to wait for the finale of “Storm Chasers” before I make the official release.  I will take pre-orders and will probably offer some special to be determined as my release gets closer.

First to be finished oddly enough will be the last to be released.  Lubacca 2011, name still undecided, is rendering the last of the 14 current chapters I am including on this production.  The main feature will of course be the Canton/Fairview, Oklahoma tornadoes from May 24.  That 17-minute chapter takes the crown.  The remaining 13 chapters cover various chases throughout the year, including April 8, April 24, April 26, April 27, May 11, May 17, May 21, May 22, May 23, June 13, June 17, June 20, and June 24.

As it stands right now, the full feature with all chapters lined up runs just about 85 minutes.  With extras I am adding/planning to add, it’ll be right around two hours.  I am undecided if the blu-ray will host any additional features, but think the main difference will be more interactivity on the blu-ray verses the DVD.  I haven’t authored a blu-ray before, so I really don’t know off-hand how that will differ from a standard DVD.

The other two productions that are being worked on include the 2010 highlight DVD as well as a blu-ray only compilation of tornadoes from 2008 through 2011.  I do not plan to release that one on DVD at this point, but if the downgrade is easy, I may opt for it.  Lubacca 2010 will be released on both formats as well and be released along with the tornado compilation.

I figure to have Lubacca 2011 wrapped up by week’s end and will burn test copies on both formats to ensure its authored correctly and everything looks smooth and nice.  I just found out today that some of my lower thirds were on different heights on the screen and had to go in and change the wonky ones.  Those things, along with some small audio clean-ups, are the main issues I am seeing so far.  But overall, I am liking how things are turning out.  I can promise you, these will be some of the most well produced DVDs/blu-rays that are available from chasers.  I spent a lot of money and time getting some high-quality graphics and music for these and they will not disappoint.  Oh yeah, the weather footage is pretty good, too!

I’m still unsure on price for the blu-rays.  The DVDs will remain at $20, no need to change those I don’t think.  The blu-rays are obviously more costly to produce, so they will be $5-$10 more than the DVDs.  I’ve seen other chasers as high as $30, so I’ll see where it all shakes out.  I’ll offer bundle prices and discounts, so I’ll figure all that out as we get closer.

So stay tuned for more information.  I am very excited to have these complete, even if it’s just so I can sit down and watch them as a viewer and not as the producer!

If you’ve been to my site over the last couple of weeks, you immediately noticed yet another new look for the site, the third in as many years for me. The change this time had more to do with the behind-the-scenes components as opposed to the design itself, but with those items, came the new and what I think to be a much more improved look. I soft-launched the site as I had to have a working version up and running to get some coding help with a few areas I was wrestling with, but with it being up for a while, I figured I would pass along the reasons behind the change and point out a few additions.

1. Design and color-scheme are the most immediate change noticeable to the viewer.  The reasoning behind this particular color scheme were to match the colors of my Circleville high school in the red and black.  I did this as the 2010 season saw me in different attire other than a Redskins jersey which consisted of a Circleville High School shirt with my #81 on the back.  Given the exposure it’ll receive it the coming weeks on Discovery Channel, I decided to sway the site colors to go along with it.
2. Gantry layout, the real reason behind the change was to allow for the flexibility and ease of the gantry coding that allows me to change up pages much more easily and quicker than having to work through codes for each page.  For instance, I can change the contents of my sidebars on a per-page basis.  You can notice such differences between my front page, my chase log pages, video listing pages, and chase report pages (where there is none).  This new layout and the workings behind the scenes allow me to go in and make these change seamlessly and quickly and on a per page basis.
3. Elaborate menu system, if you place your cursor over the chase reports button, you’ll see a dropdown menu with sublines below the main titles.  This was a way cool addition with this new theme that allowed me to give a sneak peek at the stats of each chasing season and pass along other information per whatever the menu item dictated.
4. No more IE errors (for now anyway), the old theme previous to this one had constant issues with older versions of IE not able to bring the site up.  I think the new theme eliminated those issues and those with IE should be able to pull up the site.
5. The addition of Tornadoes Kick Media and the added domain tornadoeskickmedia.com, which does nothing more than point viewers to my business area of the site (stock video, DVDs, consulting, videographer, etc).  I am not starting a new business as the market is pretty well flooded with them as it is, but I wanted an address to directly send people there.  A few items will go up describing my services, but none of it is anything new for me, just making it more findable to people.
6. Photography pages no longer use Gallery2, but NexGEN software that better wraps the photography sections into the site.  Gallery2, while amazing, was too much for what I needed of a section I don’t really dedicate a lot of field time to.

There is still a lot of work to be done in the coming future, but my attention will shift to the completion of a couple DVD projects I am working on.  Given my lack of free time compared to previous years, I need to learn how to better schedule my time to allow for the extra work.

Meanwhile, a few notes on the site and the upcoming features and/or tweaks..

1. Tornadoeskickmedia.com will be linked to the page under MEDIA SERVICES where it’ll have a front page listing the work I do, etc, and add those links to the menu bar.
2. Some coding issues with the chase reports page (the bottom graphics are shifted to the left).
3. Touching up photography pages.
4. Update my video sections, create the air-check sections, and add remaining videos from my YouTube account into my site.
5. Add a working blogroll to the sidebar of the front page.
6. Three links at the bottom of the page link to the jersey story, my first chase & tornado, and the ’99 Circleville F3 tornado.  I need to write up the jersey and first tornado stories (Circleville tornado is active).
7. Change up the footer.
8. Tweak the single page layouts to accommodate various sharing applications and other information I want to convey.
9. Get the winter weather section up and running.
10. Fix the headed clock which seems to display the wrong day/date at the end of the day.

So far, the initial comments have been very good as the new layout has received a lot of praise from those who have taken the time to comment.  Still some work to be done, but I think I am ready to settle with this design for a bit.

Spent a good chunk of the evening getting my mid and late June chases cataloged and getting my imagery sorted out.  While there is still a lot of work to be done to get the full logs online and updated, I have updated my 2010 Chase Reports page to get it current with all the chases up through this week.  It looks as if I’m heading out for at least one day if not two this weekend, so hopefully I can muster out a couple more good days with TWISTEX before we wrap up operations for the season.  Tomorrow is a ferry day, but holds some slight chase potential, particularly if we can get storms to fire along I-80 in Nebraska or I-76 in extreme northeast Colorado.  Otherwise tomorrow is mainly to get into position for a shorter drive to what looks to be a central/eastern Dakota chase for Friday and perhaps an Iowa chase on Saturday (slim, and logistics come into play for that).

So with that, I’m outtie for the night.  My video thief has seen a couple of his accounts removed and of course, he has not replied to messages I sent on either account, so I figure he’s hiding.  That and I am sure my breaking of the news lead a few others to get in touch with him, so I’m sure he’s hunkered under a bunch of rocks now.  Coward..