Museum
Boot Hill Museum
Eisterhold and Associates invited Wide Awake Films to partner on an extensive museum installation project for the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City, Kansas.
We created video content for the museum to inform patrons of the various aspects of frontier life at the time and introduce them to some of the main characters of Dodge City. In total, the project included a main interpretive film entitled “Rumble on the Prairie” and four other interactive “talking portrait” films scattered throughout the museum in various exhibits.
Rumble on the Prairie Exhibit
The interpretive staff at the Boot Hill Museum sought to include an experience that would honor the importance of the buffalo to the Kansas plains and simulate the power of a buffalo stampede for modern audiences.
We created a narrated film depicting the critical importance of buffalo herds to the Native American tribes of the region and the history of the buffalo herd population, from its vast herds numbering 60 million to dwindling numbers of less than 1,000. Our team provided all research, scripting, and archival sourcing.
Our biggest challenge was animating the buffalo stampede, which required research into herd movements as well as developing solutions for crowd simulation, herd action, and fur simulation. The final installation is an Ultra-Wide aspect ratio with three projectors and a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix.
Talking Portraits Exhibit
Another exhibit in the Boot Hill Museum features a collection of four “talking portraits” designed to interact with each other. These portraits show a few of the key figures in the early days of Dodge City, featuring Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Mayor Alonzo Webster and Long Branch Saloon owner, Chalkley Beeson. We shot the actors on greenscreen and composited them into a parlor setting apt to the time period.
Other Featured Exhibits
As you walk through the museum, other characters from the early days of Dodge City present themselves and reveal their story. A hospitality worker of the Wild West days called a Harvey Girl preps her restaurant for dining service and fills us in on the town gossip. Dora Hand, a dance hall singer and actress in Dodge City, visits us after a performance at the town theater. George M. Hoover, an early founder and future mayor of Dodge City, tells of his plans to expand his small sod and wood plank bar into a bigger operation in due time.
