Imbibe: Get Ride Inside Your Body


As part of a talk on showmanship and engineering thrill on a larger experiential scale, I was invited by Professor Brendan Walker (Thrill Laboratory/aerial) to act as a model maker (and performer) for his talk with Sam Bompas (Bompas & Parr) and Ally Martin (Talented Mr. Fox) at Imbibe Live!, Olympia Grand Hall, London (1st July 2014).


The talk focused on the importance of creating a consumer experience and how environment, sound design, scripting and narrative enhance the relationship of food and beverages. It was my job to construct (and navigate during the talk), a ride that enabled the audience to follow one group of friends' journey to sample a new ride being developed at a very special theme park. Highlighted along the way were the many wonderful opportunities a showman has to engineer to create a thrilling experience.


The audience would then witness a roller coaster journey that literally went “into the giant’s mouth”. This was succeeded by using a Pill Cam to display a live journey into someone's stomach, where the audience saw a cocktail being consumed, all whilst having the journey described to them by the charismatic presenters.


Most of the concepts from Brendan’s talk are covered in his excellent book “The Taxonomy of Thrill”.


Concept sketch by Professor Brendan Walker.

Images taken by Richard Heald and footage recorded by Freshly Made Films (apart from that of the GoPro footage which was recorded by Justin Ramsden).

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