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 Featuring creatures ranging from the Dodo and a giant sloth
to a 33-foot (10-m) long snake and a terrifying sabre-toothed
cat-like animal, "Alive at the Natural History Museum" had a
premiere showing at the museum on Wednesday night for a crowd
that included Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge.
The film will air on Britain's Sky satellite channels on New
Year's Day and is clearly aimed at a family audience, with
children sure to laugh at the antics of the awkward Dodo or the
ostrich-like giant Moa bird.
But Attenborough in his narration admits "there is no more
alarming animal in the museum than this" as computer imagery
makes the skeleton of a sabre-toothed Smilodon spring to life.
It is not entirely reassuring that, as he asserts, neither the
Smilodon nor the equally worrying Gigantophis prehistoric snake,
shown slithering around the halls of the Victorian-era museum,
would have eaten humans because they were extinct before mankind
evolved.
Attenborough said he had been particularly astonished by the
computer-generated movements of the skeletal Smilodon.
"Actually it is an extraordinary animal, those sabre-like
teeth," he said. "But the clever thing was to work out on the
computer how all those joints moved so that you could get it
stalking and actually leaping. Seeing how the joints moved was
actually more interesting than if you'd put fur on it."
The film by production house Colossus was made in collaboration
with the museum and its curators, some of whom were on hand on
Wednesday to show the actual fossils and skeletons on which the
computer-generated 3-D images were based.
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 "It does help to visualize some of the things that I
only have in my head," Dr Paul Barrett, head of the museum's
Vertebrates and Anthropology Palaeobiology Division, told Reuters
when asked about the computer imagery.
"To be able to translate that into something that looks like a
living, breathing animal is actually challenging and more
intellectually interesting than you might guess, from a scientific
point of view."
Attenborough, 87, whose films and television programs over the past
60 years have mostly focused on living creatures, from wildlife in
Africa to the insect world, said he'd been fascinated by the
museum's collection since he was a young boy.
He said he had relished the chance to make a film based on the
collection of some 70 million specimens, including the huge, though
plaster, skeleton of a Diplodocus dinosaur in the room where the
film was screened.
"I came here as an 8-year-old and came in through that door and
saw this thing and I thought, 'Gosh it must be so exciting to see
the basement where they keep all those secret things'," he said.
"And to be able to come here over the years and ...to be lucky
enough to be taken behind the scenes is a great thrill."
(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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