How to get inside a T.Rex head
and live to tell the tale Angle Park brings Sue the T.Rex to life with creative programs and innovative digital solutions in this award-winning exhibit. | |
In May of 2000, The Field Museum of Chicago dropped the curtain on the world's largest and most complete T.Rex fossil, better know as ''Sue.'' The exhibit relies heavily on A/V elements to help visitors understand both how Sue fits into our view of science, as well as our view of popular culture.
The Inside Story: A year before The Field Museum unveiled Sue, this video played in part of the exhibition space that was to eventually house many of the A/V elements Angle Park produced for the permanent exhibit.
This video promoted the upcoming Sue exhibit by telling the story of the fossil's acquisition. It also gave visitors a glimpse of behind-the-scenes scientific work being done with high-tech CT scans of the creature's skull.
Sue Construction Timelapse: Using off-the-shelf Apple iBook laptops and Kodak digital cameras, Angle Park shot over 40,000 images over a six week period while Sue was being assembled. A short timelapse sequence compresses the entire period into under two minutes, including the fanfare surrounding the internationally broadcast unveiling event.
Sue CT Scans: After acquiring Sue in 1997, Field Museum scientists shipped the skull to a Boeing facility in California to have the 700 pound hulk CT scanned. The resulting X-ray images were so detailed that they required a stack of 16 CD-ROM's for storage.
Shortly after being awarded the Sue job, Angle Park combined medical imaging and traditional animation software to create a true three-dimensional model of both the outside and the inside of the giant skull. Revealing structures deep inside the skull, this project gives museum visitors detailed views previously seen by only a handful of scientists.
This video plays in the traveling Sue exhibit that currently tours the country with casts of Sue's bones. Word jazz icon Ken Nordine lent his appropriately huge vocal sound to the project.
Custom Quad Screen: For the permanent exhibit, Angle Park helped the museum's exhibit designers create a specialized quad screen to show two videos in a loop. "The Ever Changing View of T.Rex" shows the fascinating interaction between paleontology and popular culture in the 100 years since the original T.Rex was discovered. It utilizes the entire 6-foot expanse of the four screens, filling up from left to right as time marches on. "Fact, Theory and Speculation" features Field Museum scientists debating the intersection real science and wild conjecture. The scientists debunk some of the wilder speculations about dinosaurs that were propogated during the press frenzy surrounding Sue. This video won a Gold Muse Awards from the American Association of Museums, who recognized its "bold editing" as the best of the year.
2000 Sue T.Rex exhibit
Client: The Field Museum
Project Date: 5/2000
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The timelapse monitor compresses six weeks of exhibit construction into 90 seconds.
This image was created with medical imaging software from over 700 high-resolution x-ray slices.
Two three-minute videos play on a custom-designed display that stretches across four widescreen displays.
Fact, Theory and Speculation won the top award for exhibit video in 2000.
The Ever-Changing View of T.Rex shows 100 years of paleontology and pop-culture in 3 minutes.
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