Prairie Wind

Directed, produced and photographed by Martin Lisius, "Prairie Wind" represents the world's first film produced on 16K video. Lisius' goal was to photograph the storms of America's Great Plains on the largest canvas possible. "The storms over the prairie are huge. I wanted to create a medium large enough to capture and properly present it on," he said.

Lisius shot the film utilizing two 50MP Canon DSLRs attached to a custom-made mount to keep the two cameras aligned. The production required 8,000 miles of travel through six Tornado Alley states, and dozens of carefully prepared weather forecasts.

During post-production, 12,000 images were stitched together to create one 15,985 x 5792 pixel image. Each 10-second shot required 5 days to process with a computer workstation running around the clock.

Since its release, "Prairie Wind" has attracted the interest of large format producers worldwide, all of them wanting to consider its possibilities as image resolution continues to evolve and grow.

  • Martin Lisius
    Director
    Wakinyan, Buffalo Bayou Rising, The Chasers of Tornado Alley
  • Martin Lisius
    Producer
    Wakinyan, Buffalo Bayou Rising, The Chasers of Tornado Alley
  • Kim George
    Producer
    Wakinyan, Buffalo Bayou Rising
  • Martin Lisius
    Cinematography
    Wakinyan, Buffalo Bayou Rising, The Chasers of Tornado Alley
  • Tricia Brioux
    Key Cast
    "Mother Nature"
  • Benjamin Botkin
    Music Score
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    documentary, time-lapse, timelapse, experimental, short, new media, nature, innovative
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 6 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 1, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    9,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    16K Video
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.76
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Los Angeles Independent Film Festival
    Los Angeles
    United States
    August 24, 2019
    Best Experimental/Travel/Time-Lapse Short
  • Woodbury Film Festival
    Salt Lake City
    United States
    March 7, 2019
    Winner - Short Experimental
  • Prairie State Film Fest
    Dekalb, IL
    United States
    June 29, 2019
    Award Winner - Shorts
  • South Dakota Film Festival
    Aberdeen, SD
    United States
    September 26, 2019
    Official Selection
  • CORE International Film Festival
    Boston, MA
    United States
    March 12, 2019
    Official Selection
  • Utah Film Festival and Awards
    Provo, UT
    United States
    April 5, 2019
    Finalist, Best Cinematography
  • Americana Film Festival
    Barcelona
    Spain
    March 5, 2019
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Martin Lisius

Martin Lisius is a Texas-based producer, director, and cinematographer.

In 1993, Lisius founded StormStock (stormstock.com), a unique collection of premium weather footage. His material can be seen in hundreds of TV programs, documentaries, feature films and commercials including the Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth", "The Avengers, "Into the Storm", "Lucy", "Tomorrowland", Disney's "Cinderella" and "The Current War."

Lisius produced, directed and wrote several award-winning television programs relating to severe weather including "The Chasers of Tornado Alley" which first aired on public television in 1996. The same year, he worked as a technical advisor for the Warner Bros. box office hit "Twister."

He is responsible for photographing the first-ever violent class tornado on 35mm motion picture film (1998), the only 35mm footage of Hurricane Katrina making landfall (2005), the first tornado in 3D (2011), and one of the few people to intercept and document the two costliest disasters in US history (Katrina, Harvey). And in 2018, he shot and produced the world's first 16K film, "Prairie Wind."

Lisius has produced and directed a variety of other projects in addition to his weather related work through his media production company, Prairie Pictures.

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Director Statement

The resolution depth of 16K is amazing. Zooming into the imagery, we were able to see license plates on cars that were a mile away.