The Cosmos of Fulldome Content

Posted on 10 March 2016 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Last month, we added a new show from Melbourne Planetarium called Starlight to our catalog of fulldome content. It’s a very worthy addition to an amazing repertoire of shows; the 38th show we acquired for distribution, joining 14 of our own fulldome creations. And, we have more coming!

With so many titles available, Mark set out to create updated sampler showreels. Now we have three available for you to peruse (simply click on the images to get to the samplers).

LNP Blast!

LNP Blast!

These are the feature-length shows we’ve made ourselves over the years and still popular with fulldome theaters. They feature carefully crafted scripts, original soundtracks, and — in some — celebrity narrators who bring extra cachet to the shows.  We’re rightly proud of these shows, and pleased that so many fulldome theaters around the world have acquired and continued to run them!

LNP Collaborations Blast!


LNP Collab Blast!

This reel features shows we’ve collaborated on with other producers. These include astronomy and entertainment pieces that continue to dazzle audiences around the world. Depending on what the shows have needed, we offered our expertise to their producers to refine narrations and scripts and add original music. We’re very pleased to be associated with these fine producers and their wonderful shows.

LNP Distribution Blast!

LNP Distrib Blast

These are all the other fine shows we distribute. We scour the world’s festivals, looking for shows for our curated collection of fulldome content.

They’re all available to preview online, using players on our YouTube channel, or Flash players here on our site if your institution’s nanny filters block streaming videos.

They’re also available for download, so you can play them on your fulldome system and see how they look on your dome. Bring in your administrators and give ’em a taste of which shows you want to order next!

Whether we supply music and soundtrack expertise, script editing or voice-over work, we’re incredibly pleased to work with such talented colleagues on fulldome production and distribution.

From Astronomy to Zoology in Fulldome

As you watch the clips for all of the shows blaze by, you’ll marvel at the incredible breadth of content that’s available for fulldome theaters. The most popular type of content in the market covers astronomy and space-related topics. That’s only natural, considering the history of the planetarium theater. About three-quarters of the shows we make available are in that category.

Fulldome show Dream to FlyHowever, there’s so much more. As you watch the videos, you’ll see music and arts entertainment. We have a show for children on how atoms and molecules work. Other shows cover biology, climate science, geography, geology, history of flight, oceanography, and zoology.

How do we find these offerings? For the past few years, we’ve traveled to fulldome festivals to see what’s “out there”. It’s been a privilege to witness the premieres of some amazing showsand think to ourselves “Wow, planetarians will love this!” That’s when we know we’ve got something lovely to add to our catalog.

For example, the gorgeous and elegant Dream to Fly, one of our favorites, combines history, art, and drama to teach audiences the history of flight. It got a standing ovation at its first showing at the Jena Fulldome Festival in 2013, and it never fails to touch the audience’s emotions with its beauty.

Or, another of my favorites, the elegant exploration of exoplanets in the Boston Museum of Science’s Undiscovered Worlds. Their latest show, From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA, is a tour de force that takes you inside the U.S. space agency to see things most people never get to experience, and it’s been recently updated with the latest Pluto findings.

Fulldome show Bella GaiaAs domes continue to expand their repertoires, I hope planetarians will consider adding more music and art pieces — Chaos and Order, Magic of the Otherworld, MUSICA, and Bella Gaia. Or, even to have some fun with the SpacePark360 offerings we have. All these presentations prove you can have fun in the dome, enjoy a beautiful experience AND learn something, all at the same time!

I could go on and on about the wonderful shows we have in the Loch Ness Productions catalog, as well as on our sister site FULLDOME OnDemand. There’s a big wide cosmos of content out there! Check out our showreels and trailers to see for yourself!

 

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“Starlight” and Fulldome Storytelling

Posted on 15 February 2016 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Tell Your Personal Story and Captivate Fulldome Audiences

Writing a fulldome planetarium show — or indeed, any documentary about science — is a complex task. You find all the facts you want to present, figure out ways to illustrate them, get a narrator, find music, and then assemble it all into a show. However, even before the visualizations and soundtracks and dome masters, you start with the story.

As a scriptwriter, I’ve always kept the mantra “It’s the story” foremost in my mind. Hence, the story of a little cat who goes to the Moon becomes a way for kids to learn about the Moon in Larry Cat in Space. Or, the idea of stargazing through the eyes of a cowboy is the central tenet of The Cowboy Astronomer.

A scene from the fulldome show "Starlight".I thought about “story” when we picked up the fulldome show Starlight from Melbourne Planetarium for distribution. It tells a lovely story of a young girl who learns to love the stars from her father.

After watching the show in the Pixeldome here at Loch Ness Productions, I wrote to Dr. Tanya Hill to find out what spurred the tale she told in her script. Tanya told me that the story of “Margaret” is based on her own experiences as a child being afraid of the dark and having her father show her the stars in the night sky.

“One of the things we always try to do with our documentary shows is to bring some element of story/narrative to break away from presenting only ‘facts’,” Tanya told me. “By doing that, our aim is to capture as wide an audience as possible. Beyond the traditional science buffs who love planetariums, we want to enthuse ordinary Jo Public — what’s the emotional hook that would have them investing time to see/enjoy the show?”

She’s right on about the story having an emotional hook. People remember that which moves their emotions, and a well-told story can help them retain knowledge we want them to recall. It’s the essence of being a good storyteller — and a teacher.

I’ll be sharing these and other thoughts about scriptwriting during the upcoming IMERSA Summit in March at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I recently finished the script for Evans & Sutherland’s Edge of Darkness show, and as always, it came down to telling a story and working through the challenges of weaving very recent events about Pluto and Ceres and Comet 67P into something to capture an audience’s attention.

Over the years I’ve taught script courses at IPS meetings and regionals, and even at Women in Science Day at UMASS-Lowell and other schools. Each time, I taught the very simple idea that we’re all storytellers. LNP once advertised ourselves as “Storytellers of the Universe”, and we are among good company with people like Tanya and others who write for the dome. Whether we’re creating new shows or helping a colleague license their shows out to the fulldome community, I like to think that we’re continuing a wonderful storytelling tradition that unites us under the dome in a love of the stars.

Posted in Fulldome, Fulldome shows, Scriptwriting | 2 Comments

FULLDOME OnDemand Goes International

Posted on 15 September 2015 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

FULLDOME OnDemand screen grab

Now that we have most of the fulldome shows in our distribution catalog available for rent on FULLDOME OnDemand, we’re turning our focus to the requests we’ve gotten from our international customers for shows in their languages.

There are currently more than 40 fulldome titles on our service. For each one, we make the show and the trailer available, in both prewarped and fisheye formats. When you start to consider other languages, some titles have ten or more translations. In all the formats and versions, well… it’s a ton of movies to encode and upload! For now, we’re asking FULLDOME OnDemand users to help us prioritize what we work on first.

When you select any show page on FULLDOMEOnDemand.com, you now see two choices below the “RENT NOW” button: “US ENGLISH” and “OTHER LANGUAGES”. Selecting either one gets you the menu of the shows we have posted already. If you see the language you want, great! Rent and stream it!

If not, select “Don’t see the language you want? Ask for it!” for a quick fill-in form to let us know you are interested in renting it. If the show exists in the language you want (and we can get it), we will post it as soon as we can and send an email letting you know it’s ready to rent. It really is Fulldome On Demand!

We’re just starting out with this service, of course. We always planned on expanding the repertoire to include international titles, as well as some shows from producers we don’t already distribute.

Thanks for your support!

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