Thanks, everyone! I'll try these ideas out. The main problem I've been having with rotating ecosystems is that whenever I edit the ecosystem after the plane's been rotated, the figures snap back to the "original" orientation, so that all the figures end up facing the same direction again. But saving the plane as a .vob is certainly intriguing, and something I should have thought of. And Bruno's link looks useful, if a little over my head at the moment (gives me something to shoot for, eh?)

But in the short term, I decided to try it with a crowd of oblivious bystanders instead of fleeing refugees. Given the subject matter of this particular image, that works just as well --but I still want to solve the original problem, so back to work for me! Thanks again.