A PBS executive asked Tom Paradise if he was ready for what was coming.
Paradise, a geoscience professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, wasn’t sure what she meant. Well, she told Paradise, you’re about to be seen by 15 million to 20 million people.
On Wednesday, the TV series “Nova” will premiere its one-hour documentary special “Petra: Lost City of Stone” on PBS. Paradise, who has worked on the site in southern Jordan for 25 years, played a large role — on screen and off — in the production.
Paradise is one of a handful of UA professors and students who will have appeared on PBS. Dan Sutherland, a history professor, was one of the on-screen experts for a documentary on artist James McNeill Whistler, and members of the university’s Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies participated in the series “Time Scanners.”
Both of those shows debuted this past summer.
Petra’s name might not ring a bell, but its most famous structure is familiar with moviegoers as the backdrop for the climactic scene in the 1989 movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” “Nova” wanted to do a story on Petra and asked Paradise about 18 months ago for ideas.
“They wanted to do something that wasn’t like a TV show but was investigative stuff,” Paradise said. “Early on they said, ‘If we had unlimited amount of money, what would you want to do on Petra?’ I said no one has carved this stuff in 2,000 years. I think it would be really cool to get the best stonemasons and see how they really did it.”
“Nova” ran with the idea, but it was a long journey and not just to Petra. Paradise said the decision was made to carve a burial tomb that is approximately 15 feet high and 10 feet wide, but doing it in Jordan was impossible because of red tape.
Paradise and “Nova” began searching worldwide for similar sandstone formations and found plenty in the United States, but those were on federal or Native American tribal land that made them unavailable. Then, out of the blue, a television producer — whose name is a strictly guarded secret — told Paradise he had some sandstone formations on his 3,000-acre ranch in California and the production was more than welcome to use it, free.
Two stonemasons went to work on the tomb, using duplicates of the same tools the original carvers of Petra used, albeit attached to pneumatic hammers to shorten the process from three years to three months. Paradise helped write the script and appeared on screen giving background information about various points in the documentary.
On Feb. 9, Paradise said, he received an email from UA Chancellor David Gearhart praising him for the attention he was bringing to the university.
“We thought it would be a really cool exhibition for TV, and we actually created scholastic research,” Paradise said. “We found stuff. The cool thing is UA gets PR on this that is nuts. Every frame you see of me there is a bar across the bottom that says ‘University of Arkansas.’”
There was a moment — OK, more than one — when Paradise said there was fear that the project might end in disaster. Paradise said he was confident it would be successful, but the show was trying to recreate 2,000-year-old carvings.
“We totally nailed it,” Paradise said. “It was one of those moments you’re like, ‘Thank God.’ A lot of this stuff is dynamic. You’re building a boat with a design that has never been done before so you don’t know if it’s going to float. ‘Nova’ had the balls to say, ‘You’re the expert. We’re going with you. Take us on the ride.’”
‘It Does Attract Attention’
Petra was also one of the sites that the university’s CAST team visited for “Time Scanners.” That project had researchers taking exact computer-aided scans of famous structures — such as Petra or the Pyramids or St. Paul’s Cathedral in London — to help illustrate what made the engineering unique.
CAST Director Jack Cothren said five members of the team rotated through seven sites for up to a week at a time. The team uses sophisticated machines and is one of the few outfits in the country that has the equipment and expertise to do such exact mapping.
Cothren said CAST has five individual scanning machines that can map something as minute as a tooth to something as grand and spectacular as St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Cothren said the experience was fun for his team — he did not participate at any sites — but it also helped raise the profile of CAST. He said there is a waiting list for students in other fields to use CAST to help in their discipline’s work, and CAST’s prominence in the PBS series would help with federal funding, as well.
“It means a lot to Arkansas that we have this technology here,” Cothren said. “It does attract attention. We do get students from all over coming here instead of their local institutions because of the programs we have.
“[Federal grants] like publicity for science. It helps them make the case to Congress for funding. It helps bring technology to people.”
Getting to Know Whistler
Sutherland, a history professor, said he hopes the Whistler documentary brings that artist to more people’s attention. Whistler is famous to the masses for his iconic painting of his mother, but Sutherland said Whistler should be known for much more.
Sutherland, who has written 14 history books, said he became a fan of Whistler when he was 12 and saw his paintings in an art institute in Detroit. A producer first approached Sutherland a decade ago about the documentary, and Sutherland later took her for a tour of some Whistler sites in London.
For a man who has had a long career telling in-depth stories in print, the video world was a new experience.
“It was a lot of fun, but what startled me was how long it took,” Sutherland said. “It’s wonderful to see Whistler get the recognition, but it’s kind of frustrating too because it’s a 50-minute show. At the end, you cut a lot more than you actually add to the script. It has to be so precise.
“We could have made a three-hour show and not told the whole story.”
Sutherland said he’s not sure his seven minutes on TV will help Arkansas directly because he is not an art history professor. He has been invited to speak about Whistler at the Smithsonian and various art institutes.
If Sutherland got his wish, art lovers would come to know how influential Whistler was with other artists and how his work involves so much more than just a painting of his mother in a chair. (However, Sutherland said his next book is going to be a biography of Whistler’s mother.)
‘Future Donors’
For Paradise, the recreation of a Petra burial tomb helped dispel a few false theories about the city. He said the stonemasons’ work clearly proved that no scaffolding was needed to do the carving, even on some of the towering structures, as a simple step mechanism would work until rubble from previous carvings could serve as a ramp.
Petra has already helped Arkansas tangibly as well. Paradise said a top graduate student decided to attend Arkansas because of the “Nova” show’s publicity, which could also do wonders for the university’s reputation.
“This is going to be everywhere,” Paradise said. “Even in Petra I’ve seen all of these universities come and go, and it’s always Oxford, Brown, Harvard, Cambridge who work there. They would not take us seriously.
“I look at all of my students as future donors. That’s where our future money comes from. That’s what keeps us alive.”
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