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Rhythm & Hues
Rhythm & Hues will conduct an August unveiling of their latest motion simulator ride film, 7770 Guardian, for the Kia Motors Pavilion at Expo '93. The totally computer-generated film is a 3 ½-minute excursion that explores the idea of technology becoming more human. To achieve this objective, Rhythm & Hues Studio conceived, wrote, designed, directed and produced a thrilling tour of futuristic Seoul in the year 2050, guided by a robotic nanny and complete with anti-gravity baby buggy.
Wanting a motion-based ride that would be futuristic and incorporate a human element, a car, the Pavilion's theme of man, mind and motion, Wook Dokko of the Washington lntertrade Corporation sought out Sherry McKenna, Rhythm & Hues vice president of special projects. McKenna is the show producer for The Funtastic World of Hanna Barbera at Universal Studios, Florida, and had just completed successful rides for Universal Studios, including the Back to the Future ride.
The Kia audience enters the ride through a pre-show resembling a laboratory, then files into a circular pavilion holding six theaters. Each theater is a motionbase platform holding two cars containing eight people apiece. The pre-show also establishes the identity of Mentros, a prototype car that can think for itself. In The Guardian, Mentros is being sent into the future to see how well she can reason independently of her creators.
As the motion-base platform rises, doors open and the audience is propelled down a digitally-created corridor that whisks its passengers through the decades to the year 2050. Mentros flies madly through unfamiliarforestand canyon. After briefly traveling the wrong way in the local air traffic, Mentros corrects her flight pattern and flies toward the beautiful city of Seoul and a majestic Kia tower. The trip to the tower is diverted by Mentros' highspeed chase after menacing sky punks who have stolen a baby's balloon. The ride ends as the passengers are taken from the theater to the Kia Motors showroom.
Rhythm & Hues director Steve Beck came up with several different story lines. "Designing a motion-base ride is very different from straight-ahead filmmaking," says McKenna, "because you have to keep people in constant motion while also trying to tell a story. We had to always keep in mind the...