National Maritime Museum

Beakus has worked with the National Maritime Museum on a range of projects over the years - in-gallery installations, online explainers, foyer projections, and interactive pieces. Here are some of them.

Royal River

For the National Maritime Museum's major exhibition Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames, Beakus created a sweeping animated painting that looped across four screens above the museum's reception desk. We took Canaletto's London: The Thames on Lord Mayor's Day (circa 1750) - on loan to the museum and back in England for the first time in over 260 years - and turned it into a fully realised 3D environment. Water ripples, cannons fire, flags billow. The exhibition was curated by David Starkey and visited by the Queen in April 2012. We like to think she paused to appreciate it.

Old Weather

We made three films made for the National Maritime Museum's Old Weather project, explaining how data extracted from ships' logs spanning the 17th to 19th centuries can help us plot changes in our climate. Directed by Steve Smith and animated in a mix of live-action and 3D CGI, the film brings a quietly remarkable archival research project to life with clarity and warmth.

Longitude

We also made three films to announce the digitisation of the Board of Longitude archive at Cambridge University Library. Directed by Steve Smith, the films draw on an extraordinary array of archival material to explain why Britain took such a central role in the discovery of longitude - one of the great scientific challenges of the age.

Mobile Learning

We made five short animations to illuminate objects in the National Maritime Museum's collection as part of an interactive installation. Students visiting the museum could pick up tablet PCs and use them to trigger animations linked to specific objects in the gallery - shedding light on subjects including slavery, trade across India, and the role of ships in early intercontinental commerce.