Page 132 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

chosen a member of the Fellow of the American Meteorological Society that presented
me with their Outstanding Service Award for Public Education and Development of
Weather Animation.

I have also benefited from networking with notable broadcast meteorologists such as
Neil Frank and Bryan Norcross and community leaders in a multitude of Jacksonville
civic organizations including a myriad of Churches, the Woman's Club of Jacksonville,
and the Garden Club. In knowing all these people, I’ve been truly blessed.

CHAPTER 39 - Innovation and Animations
My first experience with film animation was when I purchased a Sears Tower 8mm
movie camera. It had a shutter lever on it to snap single frames on a roll of movie film.
I found it fascinating that I could set the camera on a tripod, point it towards the horizon
and make a time-lapse movie of cloud motions by repeating “one-two-three click”.
After doing this for 10 or 15 minutes, the movie showed dramatic motions in the sky.
When I joined Channel 4, I found a Kodak Cine-Special 16 mm camera that had been
used by the Sports Department that also had a small lever to snap single frame pictures.
I soon spent 30 to 45 minutes each day taking “one-two-three click” movies with the
camera mounted on a tripod at different locations. I could get one of the quickest views
of the sky by carrying the tripod and camera up a ladder to the roof of the Channel 4
building, but I often could catch better scenes and clouds motions by setting up at
various locations along the river or at different towns, like Waycross, Lake City or
Palatka.

I also could mount the camera on a Polaroid stand, that had four photo lamps for
filming indoors. I devised a way to animate weather features maps by cutting out fronts
and various weather features from colored art paper. By placing them on a piece of
glass over the weather map, I could then push the glass bit by bit, taking a picture for
each motion so that the film would contain images of things moving by themselves.
Prior to each weathercast, I had to send the film to someone like Joe Burnsed for
processing, then hand it over to someone like Audrey Dyer in the Telecine Department
to run while I was doing the weather.

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