Director of “Tornado Alley” will present film at DMNS

    When a tornado is fast approaching, filmmaker Sean Casey and his crew are running to the heart of it while everyone else is steering clear. The crews ambitious effort to capture the birth of tornadoes has evolved into the IMAX film “Tornado Alley.” The 43 minute documentary is playing at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science through July 12. Even more exciting, this coming Friday, Casey will share behind the scenes stories before the film plays.
     Casey was filming crabs migrating on Christmas Island when he decided to be apart of something more unpredictable and exciting. The answer resolved to storm chasing. On his first chase, Casey jumped in his Nissan Pathfinder and soon realized he needed a tougher structure to get closer to the storm. “I felt like we needed footage that did justice so I had the idea to to build a platform to get exceptional shots.” The platform Casey is talking about is the Tornado Intercept Vehicle.
      The second TIV was built in 2008 over eight months time. Tougher than the first, this one has a 92 gallon fuel tank, bullet resistant windows and weights 14,000 pounds. A beast that has carried the IMAX Camera and crew through tornadoes with speeds up to 240 miles an hour. The structure is so resilient there have been no serious injuries to the crew or the camera Casey has been using since 1999.
      Casey was saturated with the film world even before graduating from University of California Santa Barbara with a degree in film studies. His father is IMAX filmmaker George Casey whose directing credits include Alaska: Spirit of the Wild, Africa: the Serengeti and Ring of Fire.
Casey has worked on several other projects covering a wide spectrum but plans to continue his mission to catch one of Earth’s most awe-inspiring events. “I am a filmmaker that fell in love with storm chasing.It’s about finding subject matter that you want to become part of you life.”