The Basque film, Mi Pias Vasco, was live-action and shot with an IWERKS 360-degree camera. It is one "huge fish eye" lens that is the size of "a big spaghetti bowl" that points straight down. The lens is so wide it sees 12 degrees beyond a normal camera's peripheral view, over scanning behind itself. Pointing down, it can partially see upward. Bartlett went around Spain with this camera and shot the story of a child touring his homeland and talking about his country. "This boy has got this crazy camera and he is taking it around the Basque country on a family vacation. The idea was to go to as many great locations in Spain as possible as if this kid was taking you along."

Bartlett's background in animation did not prepare him for such a wild shoot: "It was so weird. I had to learn everything. The first thing we had to figure out was where to hide while we shot the film. So, often I was under the camera, on the ground, huddled inside the tripod. It was really fun. We quickly learned that in a 360 degree film, you concentrate on the near and far. So I would have the kid that was the star of the film close to the camera and the other people in the middle distance ten feet away. I would have things miles away. We put the camera on boats and in cars, hanging from cranes, and made it as insane as we could. I also under-cranked the camera for a lot of fast-motion stuff. It was meant to be just funny, like a kid's home movie." When the film premiered in Seville, Bartlett returned to Spain for the screening at the Expo '92 pavilion.

Craig Bartlett hard at work on Hey Arnold! Photo © Nickelodeon.

Stranger and Stranger...
Next, he continued his association with Bob Rogers, although he had an open invitation to return to Rugrats. Rogers hired Bartlett to direct a nine-camera film, similar to the CircleVision films at Disneyland. The film, named "Postcards," was sponsored by Korean Air for Expo '93 in Taejon, Korea. It took a full year from pre-production to completion and was shot in seven countries on a budget of US $4 million. "We just went nuts," Bartlett recalls. "We traveled all over the world for a year -- Korea, Paris, France, Botswana, South Africa, Grand Canyon, Canadian Rockies, Bali and Rio de Janeiro at Carnival. Completely filled up our passports." It was, however, intense and grueling work. Bartlett would hit the ground in some new country, set up and start scouting or shooting. He quickly got used to air travel and falling asleep on planes. The Taejon Festival played the summer and fall of 1993.

After that Rogers put Bartlett on his next project for the Southern Californian amusement park, Knotts Berry Farm. Another pavilion show, Mystery Lodge has become a permanent exhibit at Knotts. Mystery Lodge is based on a pavilion show Rogers had done for Expo '86 in Vancouver, Canada called Spirit Lodge. The story is based on the culture of the northwest coastal Indians, the Kwakwaka'xwakw who lived on the northern end of Vancouver Island in the town of Alert Bay. For the new film, Rogers went back to the same Native American advisors he had worked with before. Bartlett and Rogers went to the island in the fall of 1993 and visited with the chiefs of the tribe, took notes, attended Indian ceremonies and worked up a script for Mystery Lodge.

The illusion of the show involves an old Indian who comes on the stage, which resembles a big house made of cedar logs. There is a fire in the middle of the room. As the old native tells his story, the smoke of the fire starts to illustrate it. Bartlett created the special effects film that appears to rise out of the smoke using BRC Imagination Arts Holavision 3D system. Mystery Lodge went into production in the fall of 1993 and opened in late May on Memorial Day 1994.