Northeast Times

Dinosaurs:
‘Kids Stuff’ dino might!

Kids Stuff
By William Feldman

Welcome to Kids Stuff. Today’s column includes a look at Walking with Dinosaurs, a new show that will be coming to Philadelphia, along with an interview with one of the show’s performers. The show starts from the beginning of time, with the first traces of dinosaurs, starting with fossils. Then they proceed to what they believed to be a meteor strike that wiped out the last remaining dinosaurs.
Extra, extra read all about it! Dinosaurs will be invading Philadelphia in August! Take cover as Walking with Dinosaurs will be preying on the audience at the Wachovia Spectrum from Aug. 16 to 19.
Walking with Dinosaurs was a $20 million investment to launch the tour. Hundreds of people including scientists, artists, sculptors and engineers spent six years to make the life-sized dinosaurs almost resurrected from the depths of our past.
These creative minds helped develop and create 15 life-sized dinosaurs powered by animatronics, along with conventional puppetry and physical theater, including a 20-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Brachiosaurus that is 75 feet long from head to tail! I was told these dinosaurs will walk and roar.
The larger dinosaurs are controlled by a team of operators consisting of two animatronic puppeteers who manipulate the beasts from a position in the audience, and a driver hidden below the animal who maneuvers it around the arena. There are also five smaller dinosaurs, of a mere few feet in size, which are operated by specialist suit puppeteers from inside the creature.
This live experience will take audience members of all ages back 220 million years to the birth of dinosaurs, and it follows their evolution through the various eras of their existence.
A paleontologist, the only visual human actor in the show, will be the host. Paleontologists are scientists who study fossils of animals to learn about what the Earth was like many years ago.
They find these fossils by digging into layers of sedimentary rock. The show’s creatures range in size from the small hatchling puppets, who appear out of a nest of eggs, to the titans like the Brachiosaurus and, of course, the ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex.
To help my readers fit into the time period of dinosaurs, I decided to write facts from my seventh- and eighth-grade science notes.
o Triassic Period, 251-200 million years ago: The earliest dinosaurs and mammals date back to the late Triassic period, about 225 million years ago. Most of the first Triassic dinosaurs were small and quick meat-eaters that walked and roamed our lands on their hind legs. By the end of the Triassic period (about 200 million years ago), larger prosauropods (20-foot-long plant-eating dinosaurs) were beginning to appear.
o Jurassic Period, 200-145 million years ago: The Jurassic period began about 200 million years ago and lasted about 55 million years. Many new types of dinosaurs, mammals and reptiles emerged during this period, including the plated dinosaurs and the sauropods — heavy, long-necked dinosaurs that walked on four legs. There were also large theropods, or meat-eating dinosaurs, roaming the Earth. The first birds (and bird-like dinosaurs) also appeared during the Jurassic period.
o The Cretaceous Period, 145 to 65 million years ago: The Cretaceous period began about 145 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Flowering plants and modern insects appeared. Dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes walked the land, including duckbills, armored, horned, and dome-headed dinosaurs. There were new forms of giant meat-eaters, as well as a deadly new breed of hunter, the "raptor" dinosaur, known for its sharp teeth and curved claw on each hand and foot.
These three periods, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, make up the Mesozoic Era, the Age of Reptiles. Remember, there were lots of different kinds of dinosaurs that lived at different times, some walking on two legs (bipedal), others walking on four (quadrupedal). When the dinosaurs lived, the Earth’s continents were jammed together into a supercontinent called Pangaea, and the Earth was warmer than it is now.
I had a great opportunity to interview Harley Durst, one of the performers who portrays the baby T-Rex in the show.
Harley said the idea for the show came from the BBC documentary animated show, Walking With Dinosaurs. It takes audiences back 220 million years to the age of the first dinosaurs as the arena itself evolves and changes to depict the various environments of this prehistoric world.
"We wanted to bring that to the stage and actually create life-sized, self-supporting dinosaurs," he explained. "The research that they had done, they had already looked into people in Australia where they had already made large- scale puppets. There were a lot of talented technicians and builders in Australia at the time, so that is where they went to look for the people that could actually pull it off."
The new stage show is directed by the internationally renowned Scott Faris, whose work includes Chicago, Michael Crawford’s EFX, and Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage.
I was curious about the creative process.
According to Harley, first they had to decide which dinosaurs they were going to use to get a good representation of what was around at the time. Once they decided on the type of dinosaurs, everything was entered into the computer. From here they made scale models, which were small, puppet-sized dinosaurs, so they could get the right body proportions. Next, they needed to research new technology using hydraulics, which would give the dinosaurs their best realistic movements.
I was informed that the dinosaurs are constructed on an aluminum frame with "muscle bags" filled with Styrofoam beads draped to simulate muscle tissue and movement, and they are covered in a fabric coated in acrylic paint, which creates a surface like skin, which is then painted with colored paint.
The most important external feature is the look of the skin, the structure and the articulation of the dinosaur. But the movement of each dinosaur is also very important, so it does not look robotic in its movement.
You might be wondering, as I am, how do they get into their dinosaurs?
"For the smaller, suit-sized dinosaur, you climb in from underneath, we then strap in our backpack from underneath," he said. "It is like a steady-cam operator would use on a camera. The smaller suit-sized dinosaurs are self-contained so we operate all the movement from inside. We are articulating the head, we are triggering all of the sound effects and doing our jaw mechanisms."
"In Australia we use shipping containers to store all of the dinosaurs and their accessories," Harley said. "Then we are able to put them onto trucks or trains to transport across the country. When we were finished in Australia, we simply loaded the shipping containers onto a ship and brought them over to America, which took eight to nine weeks. Then, over here because of the different trucks we use, we had to build different containers to move them around."
"For the larger dinosaurs, they have a walk cycle, which is actually driven by the vehicle that the dinosaur sits on," said Harley.
He described it as having one person driving the vehicle and two people operating the dinosaur by radio control.
"So, if at any stage the radio frequency drops out, it will still be using all twenty-six actions of the dinosaur just in the walk cycle alone so it will still look alive," he said.
"In Australia it was approximately a twelve-million dollar production. They had five suit-sized dinosaurs and each one was approximately one-hundred, twenty-five thousand dollars by the time all of the materials and work put into them was included," he said, adding that the larger dinosaurs are much more expensive, anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 each.
Jurassic Park fans: Harley said the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are digital on the computer. If they did use any live puppets, it was not a full-sized dinosaur. For instance, they would only use the head or face of the dinosaur. Walking With Dinosaurs are free-standing, fully articulating and they are life-sized real creatures.
Harley described the show as a real family event.
"Not only is it entertainment, but there is also a lot of education in it as well," he said. "The older viewers are going to be absolutely amazed at how well the creatures move. The younger kids are going to be blown away at how realistic the dinosaurs are, watching them blink and listening to them roar."
The show’s staff was able to put together their premiere in Australia in just over a month of rehearsal time. During that month, Harley said, they were getting inside the dinosaur suits three or four times a day, six days a week, about four to five weeks beforehand, just getting used to the weight of the suits. They also wanted to find out what their limitations were due to the weight of the suit and what they could achieve to make it realistic.
The present tour is only going to be in the U.S. and Canada. Believe it or not, they toured in Australia for more than three months. In the United States they are going through 21 states in 26 weeks.
For tickets, visit ComcastTIX.com or call 1-800-298-4200 and the Wachovia Complex Box office, or visit select Acme markets
Personal comment: This looks like it will be a very unique and educational event.