Private Motivation
Bob Zraick, onc of the chief developers of the exhibit, says, 'When I saw Cloase Encounters, I wished I could have
gone aboard the spacecraft, and I wanted to participate in the excitement of one of the battles in Star Wars; not
just watch it, but experiance it. Now I think we have succeeded in Providing people with this kind of experience.'
It wasn't easy, according to Zraick-and he should know-he was involved with writing the script. developing the
special effects, art direction, costuming and even choreography. Thc enthusiastic Zraick (dressed in jeans and
a Mickey Mouse T-shirt) says with pride that he and members of his team had 'worked 121 hours the week before the
ex-hibit opened' to whip the multi-media SF experience into shape.
Tho initial idea for Ihe exhihit came from Jay Stein, chief executive ef MCA (Univasal's parent company)
Recreational Services. Stein's first idea, even before Galactica arrived. says Zraick, 'was so fly a tram full
of tourists into outer space-or at least give the illusion.' Thinking back, Zraick laughs. 'It would have cost
a small fortune!' Then Baslestar Galactica came along. Zraick was brought in to annlyze the problem and was
shown the three-hour Galactic pilot, only a week or so before its air date. 'Then we knew what we wanted to do.'
'The first major problem: how to do it all in just over two minutes. The timc limit is imposed by thec frequency
with which trams are dispatched from the gate area.
From the moment he previewed the Galactice Pilot. Zraick envisioned the abduction and laser battle. His initial
two-minute draft script convinced him that 'you can't do a show totally with robots. There's just no way to animate
a humanoid hero realistically. So we decided to use a live Colonial Warrior, There was one other problem: 'How on
Earth were we going to do the lasers?' In a film, says Zraicak. 'you can animate the laser beams, but here we
had to deal with a real-life setting. We first considered using hidden strips of Iight in the walls. You know, a
Warrior Cylon would raise his gun and touch it to the wall, and out would come a beam, apparently. But that just
wouldn't have been covincing. Then we started asking ourselves if we really had to have a laser battle.'
Realistic Effects
Terry Winnick. director of architectual services at Universal, then arranged for a demonatration of real lasers
through Dr. Sandor Holly of Interscience Technology Corportaion. 'Terry was instrumetal in pulling the project
together.' says Zraick. 'He was also responsable for the use of Disco-vision (Universals videodisk system) to
provide the video monitor readouts and images from the TV show that are used in the exhibit.'
Zraick was amazed by the laser demonstration and resolved to use real lasers, somehow. In order to get the movie-type
effect, it was obvious that upwards of five wattsper beam would be required. That's enought to blind or burn a person,
and about five times the wattege of the entire laseriun planetarium show-but five watts it had to be.
In order to conform to the standards of the U.S. Bureau of Radiological Health, which governs the public use of
lasers, a system was devised using photoelectric devices that automatically shut down should stray toward the
danger area.
There are actually only two laser generators employed, and these are situated underground. The beams travel
through a trench, where they are split with prisms into 22 watts of blue and green beams and five watts of red.
The prism-split beams are further directed by computer-controlled mirrors, until the resulting effect is that
of lasers blasting from everywhere.
The audio portion of the explosion-illusion was accomplished by
Bruce davy, accoustical engineer with Long-Davy & Associates. 'There was just no way to solve the first problem.'
says Zraick. 'The first explosion occurs outside the Cylon ship, as the Cylons fire the laser cannon.
In the end, Davy included a track fro Universal's theater-rattling Sensurround low-frequency generator, in the
16-track directional soundtrack recorded for the tour show. Sensurround is now used to augment explosions and
to create a rumble as the ship prepares for takeoff.
Smoke effects turned out to be another problem, Zraick admits. 'Finally, after investigating other possibilites,
we decieded that CO2 was the way to go. Universal was reluctanttant to use CO2 beacuse they had had some bad
experiences with it. But I told them it was better to go with something we're familiar with rather than to start
with some entirely new process.' Carbon dioxide gas is harmless and dissipates rapidly. Backstage, one can see
stretches of steamy frozen pipes that carry the explosive puffs. So far, engineers have had no problems with
moisture condensation; and their $I50,000 'smoke' system is running smoothly. CO2 is not real smoke, though, and
has no lingering effect. An atmospheric haze was desirable-for several reasons. The haze obscures details and makes
the spaceship interior seem more vast; it augments the CO2 smoke effect; and, most importantly, it makes the laser
beams glow much more brilliantly.
'We consulted one pyrotechnical advisor after another,' Zraick explains. 'We were directed to a mad scientist with
frizzy wispy, hair who assured us he had just what we needed. We went to his shop to see what turned out to be a
rig on a wooden plank, held together with staples and bailing wire, that had a spoon wired to dip into a container,
scoop out somc powder and drop it onto a hotplate. Pure Rube Goldberg stuff.' The gadget was not just a mock-up;
this was it. 'I thought maybe we could use the powder, though, if it was certified safe.' The scientist assured
the Universal engineers that it was certified for use in toys-but he could not find the certification papers. 'We
had it checked by an independant~ lab, and it turned ouc to be toxic as hell.' The testing lab suggested an
alternative powder-one that passed with flying colors and produces a haze that is odorless and nontoxic.
The most complex feature of the exhibic-more expensive and time-consuming to produce than even the building and its
spaceship faced (made of plastic, wood, sheet steel and polyurethane, fire-resistant finish)-are the robot
actors for the action drama.
Sophisticated Robots
'Humans have played robots, and robots have played humans.' say Zraick. 'but so far as I know, this is the
first time in the history of theatrical events that robots have played robots-unless you want to count R2-D2.'
Zraick enlisted the services of the foremost robot-maker, Alvaro Villa, to engineer the Cylons and aliens of
the exhibit. Villa worked on the 'Audioanimatronic' figures at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
(Villa also assisted Zraick with special effects and in interfacing the robot circuitry with the computers.)
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