Mike Olbinski Films (August 8, 2023) – Vorticity 5 took two years to film. Tens of thousands of miles across the central United States, from Montana to the Texas/Mexico border. A few hundred thousand shutter clicks. Loads of McDonalds, Subway and Allsups.
The most epic, cheap motels. And countless, stunning storms. This is the first time for any movie of mine where I have tornadoes AND haboobs make appearances. The haboob (dust storm) happened in May of 2022 in southwest Kansas. It was amazing and unexpected. Of all the clips that make up this film, I’m the most proud of that one.
It was like my world of chasing in Arizona finally collided with the universe of supercells and tornadoes on the plains. I hope you enjoy this film. The colors, the storms, the lightning, the twisters and the dust. It’s everything I love, everything I am continually awestruck by no matter how long I do this.
Níłtsą́: the Navajo word for ‘rain’. Two years in the making. Almost 80 total days of chasing. Tens of thousands of miles driven. All packed into 12 minutes of the best storms and moments from the 2021/22 monsoon in Arizona. These films are my entire heart and passion for what I do.
Sometimes I’m so tired I don’t even want to chase, and I have to MAKE myself get into the truck and start driving. And it’s almost always worth it. One of my supporters on Patreon answered my call for a possible new name for the series. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, and it would take something special to get me to do it. Leonard’s wife suggested Niltsa, and I immediately fell in love with it. It’s a gorgeous word.
I’ve never spent two years making a Monsoon film before, so this was a first. Part of it was wanting to put out the best possible film I could, but a good chunk of it was the fact our recent summer storm seasons have been subpar at best, with 2020 the worst I can remember. 2019 wasn’t horrible, but there was about zero dust storms, with only a single haboob clip to salvage from that summer, so I wanted to wait until I had something more to add to it.
Luckily for me, August 16th, 2020 happened and we scored a fantastic haboob chase from Casa Grande to Gila Bend along Interstate 8. It was what I had been hoping and praying for to complete this film. That was the only legit haboob day of the past two years and I’m glad I was there for it! Not only for this film, but for the BBC and one of their upcoming projects I’m proud to be a part of!
A lot was left on the cutting room floor, in fact, it might be an entire other film, but it was important to me to include only the best, most unique stuff I saw the last two years, plus keep it under 9 minutes long! Finding music was a struggle, so I decided to work once again with Péter Nánási and have a custom score created for Monsoon 6. And boy, he knows me well and hit it out of the park! Thank you sir!
I hope you enjoy this film! It’s the result of 30,000+ miles, hundreds of thousands of time-lapse frames captured and 60+ days chasing. Some highlights include epic downbursts, gorgeous light, mountains, desert, a stunning supercell and yes, rainbows. Photographed all across the great state of Arizona, where I’ve lived my entire life.
This past spring was definitely a crazy time. I wasn’t even sure how much I’d be able to chase with everything going on, but luckily the storms waited until the middle of May to truly get going and things seemingly had gotten much better then and made chasing possible.
One thing you will notice in this film is a lack of tornadoes. It was a bad year for them right up until July when I stopped chasing! But the structure was magnificent. So many legendary days. I wasn’t even planning on doing a film this year, as I was figuring to do what I did with the previous Vorticity: Wait to gather up two years worth of footage in order to give you nothing but the very best. Incredibly, this year was so good, I had no idea how NOT to do a film, because if next year was anywhere close, I’d be making a 30 minute movie or having to leave a ton of clips on the cutting room floor.
So I started to work on it, first with the music as always…and I love Ryan Taubert. His album “Fool” actually had four tracks on it I love, but individually they didn’t quite have it all. So I spent a few hours, blended four of them, came up with a nine minute song and boom, went to work!
I wanted to do something a little more methodical, slower paced and majestic this time, fitting with the music and the footage. I hope you enjoy that! The lightning was off charts this year for me, so much night-time structure and awesomeness, plus the daytime supercells were incredible.
A couple years ago I made a black and white time-lapse film just for fun, and now here we are with the third installment in the series. It’s a way to play around in the winter months with something new and different, get creative and also help pass the time until spring returns!
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this one, and couldn’t even find the perfect song for it, until the duo Bullet & Cass emailed me about wanting to use my footage for their upcoming debut single. I get a lot of those kinds of emails, so I didn’t think much of it…until I clicked on the preview links for their two tracks…and wow, I was blown away by how much I loved “The Way You Do.” A few seconds into the song, I was immediately laying down tracks to it in my head. I listened all the way to the end and knew I had found my song. We did a straight up trade…footage for the track, and the editing began in earnest.
After I finished editing back in November, I needed a title. It took me weeks. The song has a sort of folksy haunting old west vibe to it (at least to me) and I needed the perfect name to go along with it. I finally pulled up a list of old west terms and when I stumbled across Reverent…I knew it was the one. Not only did it sound and feel right, but it actually is how I feel standing out there a lot. These storms are powerful and deadly, and sometimes you are just staring out at them with this deep respect and admiration for what you are witnesses. Or perhaps, in my case, for the one who created it.
I hope you enjoy this film as much as I do. All footage in it is from 2019, with some unseen monsoon clips in there as well. Definitely felt like it was taking a risk on the song choice itself, especially as lyrics aren’t my normal deal. But I love it, love it, love it and I hope you do too! And if you do, please visit the links up top and buy the single and check out their website!
Boomers Daily 