Fulldome Deep-Sea Immersion

Exploring the Deeps

Those in the immersive and large-format film worlds often say that there are basically two environments the dome is really good for: outer space and under water. Not only are both immersive, they take audiences to places very few people get to visit.

Such is the case with Into the Deep, a project from Austria’s Ogrefish Filmproduktions GmbH.  These talented producers created an exquisite trip to the depths of the ocean bottoms, complete with alien-looking sea creatures and a good historical grounding in humanity’s interest in the deep seas.

In 2012, we made our second pilgrimage to the Jena Fulldome Festival in Germany, and after seeing it there, immediately knew we wanted to add it to our distribution titles. We had the good fortune to meet with Hannes Fally, the producer of the show, at the festival. We worked with Hannes to update the script, and we hired veteran voice-over actor Jon Mohr to provide a new U.S. English narration. Into the Deep has been in our catalog ever since.

Into the Deep is a beautifully visualized exploration of Earth’s deep oceans. When people venture into the deep, they travel in vessels every bit as insulated and pressurized as the spaceships astronauts use to travel to and from space. In a very real sense, Earth’s deep oceans are one of the last frontiers on this planet, and pose the same challenges as interplanetary space.

Exploring Earth’s deep seas also opens our eyes to an abundance of strange life forms that have adapted quite happily to cold temperatures, crushing pressures, and complete darkness. No one is quite sure how much life is “down there”, but there’s enough to keep armies of ocean biologists busy for quite a long time.

Into the Deep is the ultimate underwater adventure, and turns the dome into a private vessel of exploration. This is why I personally like the show so much, and why we unhesitatingly began working with Ogrefish to get it ready for an expanded world-wide audience.

It teaches oceanography and marine biology, and presents a wonderful history of deep-sea dives right up to modern-day explorations. Into the Deep fits neatly into many different slots in the Next Generation Science Standards, emphasizing science, history, exploration, and engineering. But, what really impresses me the most about the show’s usefulness to fulldome theaters is that it can be used for so many different audiences—from school groups to science and natural history museum visitors alike.

The fantastic immersive space of the fulldome theater really attracts a lot of new and exciting content like Into the Deep, Chaos and Order, Earthquake, Magic of the Otherworld, Natural Selection and the other wonderful content we have in our catalog. Once the realm of star shows and deep-sky exploration, today’s fulldome facilities continue to offer the starry deeps. But, at the same time, producers can paint the dome with explorations into other sciences and even with artistic entertainments.

And, in increasing numbers, savvy fulldome educators are seeing the possibilities for expanding their audience reach to new topics and vistas. We’re pleased to be carrying Into the Deep and happy to see it gaining an audience in fulldome theaters. We’ve just shipped the show to the Millholland Planetarium at the Catawba Science Center in Hickory, North Carolina. And, it’s the public feature show at the Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, where attendees of the Western Alliance Conference in September will get to see it on the facility’s 18-meter dome.