A THRILLING EDUCATION : BURBANK FIRM DESIGNS LESSONS AT THEME PARKS, GLITZ AT NASA EXHIBITS.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

A small company in the industrial section of Burbank has been carving out a niche for the past 16 years by bringing the flash of theme parks into museums and adding a heavy dose of education to theme parks.

``If you want a shrine, don't select us,'' warned Pat Scanlon, executive vice president of BRC Imagination Arts. ``But if you want the audience to feel like they're actually part of an adventure, that's what we're all about.''

Founder and chairman Bob Rogers believes BRC, which was Bob Rogers Co. in its early days, is in the midst of major growth because of society's soaring expectations to be both entertained and educated.

``The worlds of museums and theme parks are moving toward each other because the audience is more demanding and has a much shorter attention span,'' he said. ``We are where they connect.''

The origins of BRC go back to Rogers' teen days when he started working at Disneyland in the Magic Shop and spent his spare time finding out how rides like ``Pirates of the Caribbean'' worked. He then worked at Disney's story-development department and for Walt Disney Imagineering in theme park design before he founded his own company in 1981.

BRC's major projects are one-of-a-kind ``immersive'' attractions, incorporating movies, lasers and holograms, at the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center, the Magic of Disney Animation at Disney-MGM Studios, the Mystery Lodge at Knott's Berry Farm and a renovation of the New Jersey State Aquarium.

The company is working on redesigning the General Motors pavilion at Epcot Center this year with a complete re-creation of an assembly line, simulating a trip to Mars for a park to open in Germany in 1999 and creating a new theme park for Warner Bros.

To create projects out of thin air takes as long as five years. BRC usually needs a year of planning and design before the company even starts working on the construction drawings.

``Our customers often don't know exactly what they want, and we certainly don't have it on our shelves,'' Scanlon said.

Veteran theme park designer Harrison ``Buzz'' Price, who operates his own Los Angeles firm, said BRC is well-regarded within the industry for its versatility.

``Bob Rogers is one of the most creative talents in our business, with layers and layers to him, like peeling an onion,'' Price said. ``He's able to combine show production and design, which very few people do, so he's right in the middle of what's going on in the business.''

BRC's latest effort opened last month at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. It includes re-enacting the window-rattling liftoff of a Saturn V rocket at the ``Firing Room Preshow,'' complete with launch consoles, status boards and countdown clocks. BRC also built the Lunar Surface Theater at the center to re-create the touchdown of Apollo 11 on the moon and bring back the

highlights of the five subsequent lunar landings.

To ensure that the exhibit had the most realistic feel possible, BRC featured some of the more memorable parts of the journeys, as when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had only 15 seconds to land the lunar exploration module because most of their data links failed above the Sea of Tranquility.

``What we're trying to re-create is the joy and the adventure,'' Scanlon said.

The center also features one of the world's three remaining Saturn V rockets - all 363 feet of it on its side - and the command and lunar modules used in missions.

Jim Ball, branch chief for the visitors center at Cape Canaveral, said the new exhibits opened in December and have been drawing record crowds.

``Our greatest strength is that we're showing people something that's real,'' Ball said, noting that the tour includes aspects of the ongoing space shuttle program. ``It's not just history but something that's happening today, so people who come here are not looking for a fantasy. So we have borrowed the techniques used at theme parks but in the context of telling a story that's factual.''

NASA's original goal, Ball said, was to find a way to display the artifacts from the Apollo program. BRC designers were given a great deal of license in presenting the story, and they interviewed astronauts and control room personnel to ensure that details made sense.

``I think they came very close to how things were during the launches,'' Ball said. ``It's a very high fidelity re-creation of the firing room and the light that comes into the room from the outside, and the lunar landing has a high degree of authenticity. It's not precisely the way it was down to every rock on the moon, but it's quite faithful to the story.''

BRC has equally ambitious plans for the German project, dubbed Space Park Bremen, billing it as a chance to meet aliens and experience the thrill of space travel by combining the romantic vision of science-fiction writers with the real-world technology of space exploration. Spread out over 200,000 square feet and designed for 1.3 million visitors annually, it will highlight contributions of Russian, other European and U.S. scientists.

``We're being entrusted with the story of man going to the moon and beyond,'' said George Wiktor, vice president of production and a 14-year veteran of BRC. ``That's quite significant.''

``We think this is the next evolution of the science center. . . . We're making it about real things in the training to be an astronaut, so you can touch what they touch, try on what they wear and eat the same things they do. You fly to Mars and you wind up eating in the cafeteria on Mars as if it's really there.''

All this requires painstaking planning and execution, with four to six months of initial concept work, then six months for technical design and engineering, six to eight months for construction drawings and 14 to 18 months to build and install. So a major project usually needs three to four years to complete with the idea of minimizing costly surprise problems that appear late in the process.

BRC has about 25 full-time employees, most of them with engineering and entertainment backgrounds, and another 25 that it uses on a project-to-project basis.

``There's a lot of high-tech in this industry, things like control systems, audio and projection engineering along with a lot of show lighting,'' Scanlon said. ``In greater Los Angeles, we have an abundance of employment sources with people who have experience in theme parks, graphics, exhibition and design and free-lance from place to place.''

Additionally, Scanlon noted, BRC is able to attract people who want to expand their work beyond a single area of theme park design.

``We often have people who have been with Disney or Universal and want more opportunity,'' he said. ``We need people who aren't limited to being specialists.''

BRC's niche is expanding these days.

``What we're getting asked to do is bigger and better,'' Rogers said. ``We started out doing parts of things, and now we're getting asked to do huge buildings.''

Rogers and Scanlon trace the origins of mixing education and entertainment back to the late Walt Disney and his opening of Disneyland in 1955.

``Disney had the courage and the financial will to try new ideas,'' said Scanlon, who worked for the entertainment giant for 18 years before joining BRC in 1991. ``Before Disneyland, the models for theme parks were roller-coaster places like Pacific Ocean Park in Venice.''

``Disney reinvented the theme park industry,'' Rogers said. ``Before then, it was a carnival industry.''

Edward H. Able, president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Museums, said technology put to use by companies like Disney and BRC has widened the audience for educational exhibits.

``It used to be that we would serve mostly those who were already educated,'' he said.

Rogers and Scanlon believe that for any facility to succeed these days, it needs to mix showmanship and storytelling skills.

``If you ask people to pay to get into a museum these days, you have to show them a good time,'' Rogers said. ``And if they go to a theme park, you're going to need to do more than have them say, Well, I got there at 9 a.m. and I now it's 5 and I have not been bored.

``If you can engage them emotionally, you can talk to them intellectually.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--color) The real heads inside an assembly line model for the Epcot Center belong to Pat Scanlon, left, and BRC Imagination Arts founder Bob Rogers.

(2--color) George Wiktor, BRC Imagination Arts vice president of production, is guiding the firm's Space Park Bremen, scheduled to open in Germany in 1999.

(3) Peter Hyde is among BRC Imagination Arts designers whose clients range from Disney to NASA.

Myung J. Chun