Revealed: The Hunt for bin Laden
The Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden special exhibition illustrates the complex, decade- long search that culminated in Operation Neptune Spear, the raid on the Abbottabad compound which brought Osama bin Laden to justice. The exhibition’s 7 media pieces, including a 40-ft long panoramic wall projection, immerses visitors in the hard-fought teamwork of analysts, senior officials including President Obama and former CIA director Leon Panetta, and the Navy SEALs. Together with more than 60 artifacts, some of which were declassified for the installation, the exhibition offers an inside look at what inspired key leaders to continue years of painstaking intelligence work in pursuit of an elusive target.
Agency
batwin + robin productions
Practice Area
Client
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
Industry
Design + Execution
The exhibition media pairs first-hand video interviews and oral histories with archival media and intricate motion graphics, showcasing hand-written text conveying the intimate work of those on the ground and the rough-hewn nature of the hunt itself. Design motifs of redaction, declassification and surveillance are central components of the exhibition. The solid black bars of ink used to redact classified documents became a graphic motif throughout the space and media, complementing one another. At one point, declassified documents rain down upon the panoramic wall projection to convey the deluge of information the analysts needed to sift through daily.
In addition to numerous interviews and deep, meticulous research, the special exhibition was developed in part with the help of key advisors, whose backgrounds in counterterrorism intelligence and homeland security helped shape the exhibit narrative. Facts and imagery were meticulously checked and double checked.
What to depict visually was a challenge throughout the media pieces. Not only did audio-only interviews and video interviews of analysts obscured in shadow piece together a large part of the narrative, but when referring to bin Laden and Al-Qaeda operatives, there were not many usable assets to work with. We also needed to illustrate ideas like interagency cooperation and depict the day-to-day work of analysts and troops on the ground, without many available images or video.
We leaned on using maps and landscapes to convey a sense of place, featuring panoramic mountain landscapes of Pakistan and Afghanistan on the 40-ft immersive projection surface, newspaper headlines to convey the immediacy of that moment and seized upon the opportunity to use handwritten text to illustrate concepts, as if the audience were piecing together the puzzle alongside the analysts. To visually show the raid, the Museum was able to obtain the actual 3D digital model of the Abbottabad compound used in the planning of the raid, from the National Geospacial-Intelligence Agency.
The meandering pathways of the exhibition reflected the hunt itself; finding bin Laden was never a foregone conclusion, never a straight line. The special exhibition needed to not only cover a vast amount of time, the over 10-years to find Osama bin Laden, but distill the story into 7 distinct chapters of media, while respectfully acknowledging the work and honoring the lives of those involved in the hunt, many of whom must still remain classified.
Media at the beginning of the exhibition sets up the United States’ efforts in tracking Osama bin
Laden in the 1990’s and the events of September 11th.
Declassified redacted documents flood the screen to showcase the sheer amount of data and
information analysts had to sift through on a daily basis.
Hand-written text and obscured profile photos help tell the story of finding bin Laden’s
associates, and ultimately bin Laden.
Media shows the turning point in the hunt for bin Laden – a lead on his couriers and the
appearance of a mysterious man known as “the pacer.”
Hand-written text graphics depict the questions raised by the mysterious compound in
Abbottabad.
Projections tell the story of the raid, narrated by Navy SEALS and the officials present that night.
The media plays alongside the physical compound model used to plan the raid.
Project Details
Design Team
Robin Silvestri, (executive producer), Valerie Chin, (senior producer), Mark Paul, (art director, motion graphics), Russell Steward, (editor), Tim Kovolenko, (research associate, project coordinator), John Kuramoto, (motion graphics), Andy Green, (sound mixing), Beambox Studio, (color correction)
Collaborators
C&G Partners (exhibit designers)
Electrosonic (av hardware)
Hadley Exhibits (exhibit fabricators)
Northern Light Productions (original video shooting)
Photo Credits
batwin + robin productions
Open Date
November 2019