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Team Films the Fury of Hurricane Ivan for StormStock
For Immediate Release
September 17, 2004
Contact: Erin Brown, Prairie Pictures, (817) 276-9500, info@prairiepictures.com

ARLINGTON, Texas - Prairie Pictures photographers filmed Hurricane Ivan as it pounded the US Gulf Coast yesterday.  Ivan made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of over 130 mph, making it the most powerful storm to strike the US in years.  Prairie Pictures photographers captured dramatic footage of Ivan on both 35mm and digital video.  "Ivan was one of the most dynamic storms I've ever tracked," said StormStock founder and cinematographer Martin Lisius.  "The hurricane was on a course to strike Mobile, Alabama for hours but made a sudden turn to the east just prior to landfall.  The change in course spared Mobile, but resulted in significant damage for areas in the Gulf Shores to Pensacola, Florida region.  Ivan was especially dynamic in that it was a significant producer of all the elements including wind, flooding, storm surge and tornadoes," he said.

Lisius says the environment within a hurricane is both surreal and incredible.  "The visuals that a hurricane creates are exceptional.  All around, things are blowing horizontally in one direction, sometimes for hours.  Stratus clouds are streaming by at more than 100 mph just overhead.  And with a nighttime hurricane, exploding electrical transformers illuminate the sky with brilliant green flashes.  The sounds that a hurricane makes are especially eerie.  A constant roar that rises and falls can be heard, punctuated with both near and distant sounds of things cracking, breaking and dragging across the ground.  Everything is just falling apart," he says.

In addition to Ivan, the team intercepted and recorded Charley and Frances as those storms made landfall in Florida earlier during this unusually active hurricane season.
 
The StormStock team of photographers track and capture dramatic weather imagery for licensed use in film and television productions.  It is considered the premier source for storm footage by industry professionals worldwide.  Sample clips can be viewed on-line at www.stormstock.com.