Themed Entertainment

Theme Perks

Video still from "Lost" rollercoaster presentation. The presentation was made to Universal Studios in Hollywood as part of the themed entertainment class.

University life can feel like a theme park in a lot of ways; there are long lines for food at the Union Building, the death-defying thrill ride of finals week and aching feet from walking the forty acres between classes. Those are some of the encounters that make up the day of a typical Longhorn. In the Department of Theatre and Dance, students in professor Drew Campbell's themed entertainment class have the opportunity to step out of the normal roller coaster ride of student life, and into the real world of what it takes to create the next big attraction for Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in California.

Prior to his appointment at the University of Texas, Campbell worked for four years as the technical manager at Universal Studios Hollywood, overseeing lights, audio, video and electronic show control for the "live venues" like Terminator II, Waterworld, and Blues Bros. He says it's important to expose students to all kinds of live entertainment, including ones they might not know about. "The theme park industry, in terms of guests, is one of the biggest and most profitable sectors of the entertainment industry." A big Broadway show might play to a couple of thousand people a night. A major theme park like Universal Studios handles that many people every hour. For a theatre design graduate in search of a job, that's a promising fact. But theatre majors weren't the only students invited to take Campbell's course.

In planning the Themed Entertainment course, one of the first things Campbell did was contact professors in Engineering, Architecture, Music, and Radio/Television/Film about recruiting outstanding students from their departments. Ajay Waghray, a junior majoring in electrical engineering, was one of those students. An internship at Walt Disney World allowed him to peek into the world of themed entertainment, and he was eager to learn more. "Engineering is a very structured and concrete discipline which can leave plenty of itches longing to be scratched. I've always had a creative side to me [and] I really got the chance to unleash [it] in this class."

Design sketch of "Lost" themed attraction.

The first few weeks of the themed entertainment class addressed the issue of how to combine talents and skills from the various disciplines. Campbell says, "[the students] had to understand that everyone was good at something, and no one was good at everything." Campbell then revealed the subject the class would spend the rest of the semester working with: the hit television show Lost. He says he decided on Lost because he wanted to choose something that was an entire world. "These types of [theme park] attractions are about creating a total experience, and Lost came with a complete and established environment, he says. Campbell adds that another deciding factor was that the show is rife with potential for the most important aspect of theme park design, something known as the 'illusion of peril'-the feeling of danger even in a safe environment. Lost's plane crash, supernatural occurrences, and ever-present threat from "The Others" provides plenty of possibilities for peril.

DW Jones is an M.F.A. student in technical theatre who also took Campbell's class. Initially, Jones says, "I was expecting a really structured process where everyone has their specific roles, and that role would be wholly tied in to your focus in school. But the process was much more holistic." He adds, "I didn't think the story would be as important as the physical elements." But in fact, the crux of the group's job came down to working together to create the 'through-line'-the general plot that moves park guests, physically and psychologically, through the experience of the ride-so that the students could then decide what physical experience best created the illusion of peril implicit in the story.

Students from the themed entertainment class and professor Drew Campbell at Universal Studios Hollywood where they "pitched" their themed attraction based on the tv-series "Lost" to executives.

The class culminated in a presentation in which students had to "pitch" the ride, first to peers and professors and then to Campbell's former boss and other executives at Universal Studios in Hollywood. "The guys at Universal said their expectations were high, but that they were totally blown away," Campbell says. Monique Norman, an M.F.A. lighting design student, says, "It was a little nerve-wracking, but they were incredibly impressed. They actually wanted to keep copies of the work."

Both professors and students seem to agree that the experiences gained working as a team were some of the greatest lessons of all. "I learned so much about communication," says Jones. "We get so set in the way we communicate [with others from the same field] because there's a set basis of knowledge we share without having to define terms. That wasn't the case here." Waghray agrees, noting, "In engineering or any other technical or scientific field, it's really important to remember that anyone outside of your field will have no idea what you're talking about if you use techno-jargon. To borrow from some of the 'Imagineers' (the term Disney uses to refer to its imaginative engineers) who I know, you really have to be able to understand the 'descripto-speak' coming from your set designers, artists, and even some of your own ideas you've thrown into the creative melting pot. You don't get that real-world, large team design and presentation experience in very many college classes, if at all."

Waghray and the other non-fine arts students weren't the only ones to have their horizons broadened by the class. Jones says, "When I started my program [M.F.A. Technical Direction], my career path was set in my mind; a full-time technical director in a regional theatre. This class really kick-started a change, mainly because it's made me realize there are many other forms of theatre than just plays on a stage. There are other ways to be a technical director, and the class broadened my definition of what my job can be."

Story by: Corey Atkins

Images provided by: Drew Campbell