Funworld November 2007

Engaging the Imagination

Through the years, a great deal of Bob Rogers’ life has been one of contradiction. The two worst grades Rogers received in high school were a “D” in typing and a “C-” in creative writing. “Those are the only two skills I now use every day,” he laughs. “I no longer use Spanish or do algebra or geometry, and I rarely do ancient history anymore.”

He was kicked out of the sixth grade band because he couldn’t keep time on the bass drum. Today, as chairman of BRC Imagination Arts, Rogers directs and advises some of the world’s top film composers.

He has been nominated twice for Academy Awards as director/producer in the Live Action Short category. He lost each time to the person sitting next to him, and each time the winner stepped on Rogers’ foot as he headed to the stage to pick up the award. “Each time the winner came back and sat down next to me with the Oscar in their lap. I had to stare at it for the rest of the evening,” he recalls.

Rogers’ professional career didn’t officially get started until after he was fired from Disney—three times! On one of those firings, the head of the Disney Studio story department told Rogers that “people like you are why we have guards at the gate.” While each of those dismissals helped him grow his talents, the last firing in 1980 from Walt Disney Imagineering was the catalyst that lead to the formation of the Bob Rogers Company, the precursor to BRC Imagination Arts.

Today, BRC is regarded as one of the most creative firms in the world. When it comes to providing original concepts for attractions, theme parks, and museums, it certainly has been Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood for 26 years. The company’s latest achievement is the “Shuttle Launch Experience” at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Opened in late May 2007, the attraction has received kudos not only from the general public but from industry colleagues as well.

Exactly what does BRC do with its creative team, who Rogers claims to be the greatest people in the industry? “We do an astonishing variety of work,” Rogers notes. “There is no pattern to what we do. It’s not like we’re a coaster company that only creates new coasters.”

Simply put, BRC “specializes in public engagement,” he tells FUNWORLD. “We combine magic, special effects, technology, and theatricality while making sure we leave the brainlessness (shallowness and trivialization that falsify scholarship) out of the equation. We know how to present material so it engages the imagination and emotions of a broad general audience of all age groups.”

Other major successes through recent years have been the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois and the “Shoot for the Moon” immersive adventure at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum in Chicago.

Cameras Started Rolling
Much of what Rogers & Co. does today draws its entertainment structure from film—a skill set he began to learn at an early age. His first experience with a camera was a “great parental scam” Rogers admits today. “I was 5 years old, and I starred in my own 8mm movie. I told my parents what, where, and how to shoot each scene,” he laughs. “By age 10 I would then take my film down to the drugstore, get it developed, and buy more film, all on my parents’ charge account!”

By age 13, he was creating and filming his own treatments. “No story, just close-ups of things exploding and blowing up,” he recalls. Following college, at 23, he was program director for a small local origination TV station. He and his staff of two produced more than 200 hours of original programming in only four months. “All of it was dreadful,” he admits. “The cumulative total of all finished product produced at BRC in its 26-year history doesn’t come anywhere near 200 hours.”

The Mouse
His first job in the industry was as a magician in the Magic Shop at Disneyland in 1968. “I was fascinated with the place and wanted to know everything. How many hamburger buns they used and how they know how many to order. Where do the horses go at night? Where does all the cash go? Who maintains the steam locomotives?”

He would arrange his work schedule at the Magic Shop so he would have weekends off. He would then call in on his days off to see if any extra help was required anywhere else in the park. “I worked in all areas, learned a lot, and still was paid time and a half! Instead of my regular rate of $1.20 per hour I’d get $1.80.” He would wander the park, go backstage, and peek behind everything. He eventually found a hidden door for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride and would sneak in, sit in the dark, and eat his lunch watching the boats leisurely go by.

The costume that Magic Shop cast members wore was not well-known, and often he would be given the wrong uniform. When that happened, he would put it on and head into the area where that costume belonged and explore. It was a long summer—before he got fired. “No rehire” was written on his exit interview, and he went off to college.

However, all was not lost that summer. Rogers learned the basic principle he uses to succeed to this very day: “As a magician, I was supposed to demonstrate the tricks so the guests would buy them. I thought it was all about me. One day I was complaining about a guest and one of the other magicians, a guy named Steve who had worked there for a long time, set me straight. He said my job was not to show the guests how good I was but to make them feel magical, feel smart, and good about themselves.” That lesson translates into how he creates attractions today.

Disney: Round Two … and Three
At 22, Rogers somehow was rehired by Disney, this time as a writer at Disney Studios. He lasted one summer before he was booted.

From 1972 to 1979, he stayed out of Disney’s way and concentrated on making educational films, winning several awards as an independent producer. In 1979, he once again was hired by Disney to help produce films for the forthcoming Epcot park at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He was there for about a year “developing one horrible idea after another” when he was assigned by Walt Disney Imagineering chief Marty Sklar to create a five-screen film about France for the new park. Rogers spent the fall of 1980 in France filming it as co-producer; it still shows today, he says.

In early 1981, Rogers received a call from Sklar: “Bob, I’m thinking about letting you go. But here’s the deal; I’ll let you go and at the same time I will recommend you for a project that I think you can do on your own.” True enough, Rogers was out of a job but was recommended by Sklar to produce the post-show for the General Motors pavilion at Epcot. “That was a great way to get fired, and it was the beginning of BRC,” claims Rogers.

Ironically, each time he was fired from Disney, he improved his status when he was rehired. “Who would have thought getting fired was a career move?” kids Rogers. “I figured if I got fired three more times I’d be running the entire Disney company.”

A GM Project
In the early 1980s, the practice of using robots on assembly lines was attacked, as they took jobs away from people. General Motors asked Rogers to create a presentation to show that robots were valuable because they performed the dangerous and toxic jobs that were detrimental to human health.

After viewing “Bird and the Robot,” which opened in Epcot in 1982, people were siding with the robots. “It changed the mythological understanding of a subject, and that was the defining moment for me,” Rogers says. “At that point I knew that was what we would do from then on. We were going to be highly entertaining while changing an attitude toward a subject in a constructive, enriching way and hopefully leaving the world a bit better than we found it.”

The deal with GM allowed BRC to own all the outtakes of the background film. After viewing those outtakes once the project was complete, Rogers went to GM and told them another film could be made from the leftover footage, but GM wasn’t interested. At his own expense, Rogers created another film from those leftovers called “Ballet Robotique,” which featured an original score by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at Abbey Road Studios in England. That short earned Rogers his first Oscar nomination for Live Action Short.

A few years later he received a similar nomination for a short called “Rainbow Wars,” which he created for the World’s Fair in Vancouver.

BRC Today
With corporate headquarters and 50,000 square feet of studio and shop space in Burbank, Califonia, BRC also has offices in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The company has created entire major museums, various theme park attractions, and educational exhibits and films. Currently BRC is master planning three entire themed attractions in different parts of the world.

Now that BRC is 26 years old and Rogers has a great team, he has the ability to pick and choose in which projects he becomes deeply involved. “When we work on a reality-based project, our client is usually able to provide us access to the primary source from whom we learn the topic,” he says, adding that for the “Shuttle Launch Experience” he and his team interviewed and worked with 27 flown shuttle astronauts. “On one project for Knott’s Berry Farm our guides were the tribal leaders of the Kwakiutl. On another it was the ultimate Civil War professor who consulted with us for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. We learn from only the best while doing our research. I really enjoy that part of the process. Then the fun really starts.”

While remaining the company’s “ultimate writer,” Rogers has identified three major things he is responsible for today. The first is to calm team members down; the second is to stir team members up—all depending on what he sees they need at the time. The third is to be the head cheerleader. “It’s hard for me to do it, but sometimes I have to tell the team that their ideas are just not good enough—yet,” he says.

Rogers spends a great deal of his time putting his myriad thoughts and ideas to paper. One of his favorite topics is what museums can learn from theme parks about things like making it fun, crowd flow, etc. He’s not sure what he will do with those writings: “They could be speeches, and they could develop into a book, but one thing for sure is that they will become workshops here at BRC. Our people keep getting better because we work at it. And we still have fun.”