Working on the project as AV producer, our main challenge was to strike the right balance between the variety and scale of the operation and the limitations of our budget, never forgetting that the audience’s experience is really what counts the most. Here’s the story behind just a handful of the 10 AV presentations we created...

Right Whale

For the glass-bottomed boat exhibit, the museum asked us to create the effect of looking over a parapet onto a plate of glass with temperate sea creatures swimming beneath it. So we needed to provide moving images of a whole host of creatures, from whales to whitebait as viewed from above. Of course, the problem for us was that most of the time, anybody who videos fish will do so in the water face to face, not looking down at their dorsal fins!

The first solution was to computer generate them, and we were ready to do that, but it just wasn’t possible within our budget. Instead, as well as trawling the best film and video archives in the world I took my own camera to several Sea Life Centres on the South Coast and dangled it into the water to capture footage of desirable species from above. Luckily for us, the larger creatures we found in the libraries - whales, dolphins and turtles etc - often swim on their side, so there’s plenty of footage of them swimming by with their backs to the camera. When the display is seen from above, this gives you just the right effect.

In a way, a lot of what we did is based on illusions. To a certain extent, editing and special effects can be about fooling you into believing things aren’t quite what they really are. The point is to engage the audience by creating the effect originally intended, and without being dishonest, you can always come up with ways to get around the inevitable limitations that come with this kind of project.

The Hours of Darkness

The Egyptian Journey to the Afterlife was probably one of the most gripping displays we worked on. Here, visitors enter a tunnel and, guided by the god of mummification, Anubis, experience the journey to the afterlife as described in the ancient Book of the Dead. You’re taken through a series of challenges to determine your ultimate fate: life in paradise or eternal damnation.

In the book there are 12 Hours of Darkness ,each with its own challenge. We picked seven which would transfer most easily to an ambient AV format, since the pictures would be projected onto the area where the visitors themselves would stand. All the sections, an abyss, the deep sands of the demons cave, a pit of snakes, the field of reeds and lake of fire were created using 3D animation techniques and were designed to transition seamlessly into one another, finished with a full surround sound design to give an awesome atmosphere.

Sound was a vital, powerful dimension for this particular experience. The ‘Abyss’ Hour of Darkness is silent and out from the silence emerges a subtly disquieting drone, by way of contrast the fires of damnation carry a symphony of over 20 stereo sound effects playing at once. We think that, when displayed within an enclosed space, these AV effects combine to create a truly memorable experience.

A window on a prehistoric world

Working on the exhibit in the dinosaur gallery was a personal highlight, mostly because of the sheer impact of the finished piece. Here, we created content for four different screens, one in each corner of the room. The screens each show unique content but are synchronised to provide an attention-grabbing burst of activity (for example, a T-Rex roaring) every now and again, to make visitors stop for a moment and go, “wow!”.

The museum imagined the screens acting as a ‘window on a prehistoric world’, showing moving images of life on earth millions of years ago. The costs of doing that sort of thing from scratch are enormous. So, thanks to the BBC Motion Gallery we were able to repurpose selected Walking With Dinosaurs footage for this exhibit.

Once we had the footage, the real challenge was to re-edit the material to our story, rather than the one the program makers wanted to tell. We were also limited to the length of shots that the programme makers created, which was certainly in short supply in this case! Through smart editing of both sound and video, we transformed the footage into a museum gallery experience, which was not what it was originally intended for. I’m sure the program makers never expected to have a synchronised show of their creation, and I hope they’re pleased with what we’ve done with it!