Smithsonian Channel

Are you looking for the perfect holiday gift for that museum loving friend or family member? Just in time for the holiday season, Stories From the Vaults: Season Two is now available on DVD.  Give the gift of discovery with the series that takes you beyond the public exhibitions and deep into the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.  Your friends will be impressed and in turn, might impress you with their newfound knowledge of flesh-eating beetles, endangered art and doughnut machines!

With over 136 million artifacts, many of the Smithsonian’s most interesting objects remain tucked away for safekeeping, waiting for their moment in the spotlight. Stories form the Vaults host Tom Cavanagh mines the “Nation’s Attic” to uncover some of these interesting artifacts and reveals some entertaining curators along the way. To find out just what it takes to keep up with our adventurous host while filming inside the Smithsonian vaults, we spoke with “the Vaults” Director of Photography Rob Lyall, who, after two seasons, has had quite a few adventures inside the world’s largest museum complex.

AN INTERVIEW WITH STORIES FROM THE VAULTS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY- ROB LYALL

You never know where the job will take you. Rob Lyall shooting a scene from “Vaults”.

GB: How many Smithsonian museums did you visit while filming Stories from the Vault?

RL: We visited Smithsonian museums that I never knew existed. We filmed in a dental museum, a postal museum, a sculpture garden, a zoo, galleries, hangars, halls, labs, shops, kitchens, crates, restaurants, cockpits, cranes, elevators, an island in the Panama Canal, greenhouses and a castle. I’ve lost count.

GB: Is there a particular object or artifact that really intrigued or surprised you?

RL: I was completely blown away by my reaction to being in the presence of many of Ansel Adams’ original prints. I was aware of the difference between being in the presence of a painting versus a reproduction of the painting in a book or on a screen, but I was caught completely off guard by the profound impact of seeing the Adams prints firsthand. There is subtle detail present in the shadows and a finesse in the highlights that I never knew existed.

Many of the objects in the collection hold similar secrets.

GB: If you could take home any of the Smithsonian collections, which collection would you choose?

RL: When I was a kid, I wired the front door and the door to my attic room- known as the “Greg Brady Suite”- to a small box with lights and a buzzer. I took the family television set apart. I built a small AM radio transmitter, from which I repeatedly broadcast Foreigner 4, a 45 single of “Another One Bites The Dust” and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack-both LP’s. My station made it all the way from the Greg Brady Suite to the radio in the kitchen. My folks remained loyal listeners despite the fact that my weather reports were grossly inaccurate and I sounded like Peter Brady.

But, the electronics collection in the National Museum of American History reminded me of those radio tinkering days and of the possibilities. It’s a fabulous collection, and let’s be honest; who wouldn’t love a Van de Graaff generator in their living room?

Oh, and while we’re at it, I’d also like the entire record collection of the Smithsonian Folkways label on my iPod, Cello lessons on a Stradivarius from Ken Slowik at the National Museum of American History, and the SR-71 Blackbird fueled up and ready to fly on the taxiway outside the Udvar Hazy Center at Dulles.

Rob Lyall and Tom Cavanagh pulling the night shift at the Hirshhorn museum.

GB: Were there any particular challenges to filming in the vaults?

RL: The biggest challenge was bringing grips, lighting equipment, and cameras into a curator’s workspace while working in close proximity to priceless artifacts. In order to film the scenes in a visually compelling way, we needed to get over, inside, on top of, beneath and generally all around the objects- which can be nerve racking for anyone observing the process.

The curators are entrusted with the care and preservation of the objects we’re filming and they understand that the safety and preservation of the collection is our primary focus when we’re working in the museums. Our crew has been working around precious objects for decades, and with the exception of that one Edison light-bulb Tom dropped in the freight elevator, we’ve never lost a thing. Ok, it was a modern bulb our production assistant purchased at a drugstore, but it was a funny gag on camera.

The curators were gracious, warm and accommodating as we moved in and out of their areas, and we couldn’t have done it without their patience, trust and enthusiasm for the project.

GB: What was it like to work with the host, Tom Cavanagh?

Tom is a brilliant actor, witty, charming and generally all around great to work with. He has a wonderful comedic sense and we found it easy to keep our shooting style loose and free, which comes across in the show. Off camera, you couldn’t have asked for a better crew dynamic. Often times, the funny bits that ended up on camera grew from the fun we were all having behind the scenes and jokes that had been beaten well into the ground before the cameras rolled.

We were shooting a sequence about the Aldrich Ames spy case and decided to shoot add funny bit where Tom would inconspicuously amble up to a mailbox, look around, mark it with chalk (as Ames had done as a signal that a drop was ready to be picked up) and then scamper off. I was perched on a hill shooting through some tree branches for added effect and Tom scooted out into the street, darting back behind a signposts, saplings or parked cars - even playing possum in the middle of the crosswalk - as other cars or pedestrians passed occasionally… the least inconspicuous spy on the planet routine. One of the funniest physical comedy gags I’ve ever seen.

Sometimes I laughed so hard during a take, you can see some unintentional camera movement. But it’s great to laugh at work. We all had such a wonderful time on this series. Thanks Tom!

GB: You guys had the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. Was that your first trip to Panama? How would you describe the trip overall?

RL: I had filmed in Panama several times prior to our STRI shoot, though I had never had the opportunity to film on Barro Colarado Island, which sits in the south end of Gutan Lake.
Any work abroad poses challenges, but this particular trip was in the midst of our second season of shooting, so we were a well-oiled machine. It’s always exciting to work in a special place like STRI, and little magic moments seem to just appear frequently.

Tom had stepped in at the helm of a ferry on the canal for a shot. He turned to camera and said, “Drive a boat on the Panama Canal: check.” Other things on the checklist included opening a lock on the canal, flying through the treetops in a canopy crane , researching fiddler crabs, and sloth wrangling.

GB: You filmed sloths while you were in Panama. They seem to be pretty well camouflaged, were they a challenge to film?

RL: The challenging thing about filming wildlife is that your subject doesn’t seem to care about your requirements for getting the scene in the can. We were having dinner in the STRI cafeteria when someone came running in and shouted, “S L O T H !!!!!” So we ditched our trays and ran outside- literally steps away from the cafeteria. The sloth was about 80 feet off the forest floor, so we used a telephoto lens to get up close and personal with “Flash,” who frequented the forest canopy near the STRI buildings.

“Flash” the sloth, enjoying his moment in the spotlight.

It’s widely believed that sloth spend most of their time in the forest canopy, but little is actually known about their movement through the canopy and between the canopy and forest floor. The goal of the researchers was to capture Flash, attach a small GPS tracking device which would allow scientists to track his daily movements, then release him back into the canopy.

GB: Fill in the blank: Smithsonian is________________________!

RL: like a box of chocolates… with all due respect to Forrest Gump.

GB: If you were to donate a personal item to the Smithsonian collection, what would it be?

I think Tom would make a nice addition to the collection.

I’ll check with him, but I think he’d say he’d like to be hung up in a harness where the pendulum used to swing in the National Museum of Natural History, where he could illustrate the rotation of the earth while answering questions from passing kids and knock over the occasional tourist who wasn’t paying attention.

Watch clips from Season Two of Stories from the Vaults.

OR

Watch a FULL EPISODE from Seasone One.