We have just spent the last week or so at the 20th International Planetarium Society Conference held at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt.
It was a great conference with chance to catch up with old friends, make many new ones and see what the planetarium world has been up to lately.
We took lot’s of photos and chatted to lot’s of people so will be following up with more posts soon once we have all caught our breath.
If you entered our competition to win the free, 6 month, We Are Astronomers license and plush 2.0 we will be announcing the winner in about a weeks time once we have collated all the questionnaires.
We were handing out our brand new brochure and demo DVD so if you didn’t get one drop us an email and we’ll send you one. Our website is due a major update also to incorporate all the new information so please check back over the coming weeks.
We are proud members of BAP, the British Association of Planetaria. It was the annual meeting 7-8 May which we attended with over 90 people, a record for BAP, it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year. Thanks again to all involved at Intech and behind the scenes for making it a great conference. Our new Production Assistant, Rebecca Simpson who joined us recently shares her first BAP experience below:
So last Friday was my first BAP experience, in fact it was my first conference experience with NSC Creative. Initially I was slightly confused as to what baked goods had to do with Planetariums, but all was revealed upon arrival at INTECH Planetarium in Winchester. The British Association of Planetaria conference [ although, as of this conference the Republic of Ireland is now included so it should really be I-BAP!?] commenced with introductions and then we were holed up in a darkened room for 90% of the weekend.
There was a bit of an international feel to the event with presentations from Global Immersion, SCISS, Sky-Skan, E&S, R.S.A Cosmos and Mirage 3D to name a few. We also had teleconferences with IMERSA in Jena, Germany and SCISS wowed the audience with a Uniview domecast with Ghana and Minnesota. We watched the premieres of Violent Universe, Natural Selection and were introduced to art in the planetarium which was hosted by the Centre for Life and Think Tank. There was a show on caffeine that would have benefitted from the addition of aromas, they did say at the end that it was a shame that that type of technology didn’t exist…. they obviously haven’t been to see our 4D experience on biomes yet at Our Dynamic Earth.
There seemed to be a hint of revolution in the air regarding new topics for dome shows with a majority seeming to like the idea of trying something new that wasn’t Space related. Personally I think there’s a lot of uncharted territory with regards to space exploration and not all of it is outside our solar system. Maybe some sort of disaster dome show around the concept of ‘What if the 2036 asteroid Apophis actually impacts Earth?’
The Planetarium highlight of my weekend was We Are Astronomers, it’s not bias… honest! Outside of the Planetarium, my other highlight was definitely the rather competitive ‘design an alien’ on the final evening. This included the use of fire, explosives and five breasts! [ There were even attempts at bribery].
Becki
Thanks Becki and welcome to the team! We look forward to your reports on the upcoming IPS conference in Egypt.
Ok, sooo much going on at the moment… we just picked up an award for our dome film We Are Astronomers, we were at the BAP conference at the weekend, we have a new dome film in pre-production, we were finalists for a Leicester Business Award, we are busy updating show reels and planning for IPS2010 in Egypt, a new member of staff has just come aboard and we have lots of other ace things bubbling along! These are busy but exciting times for us all at NSC Creative. We will have a series of blog posts coming over the next few weeks to fill you in on our latests projects, acheivements and what events we will be at for the rest of the year, in the meantime why not check out one of the trailers for WAA?
We have been very busy the past few months and have lots to blog about. Our DomeFest ‘09 adventure and award win. The phenomanal success of We Are Astronomers since it’s UK launch earlier in the year and news of domes around the world who will be showing it soon.
We have new additions to the team who still haven’t learnt how to use the kettle properly yet. We have finished a couple of exciting smaller projects that we’ll be sharing soon and will be shouting about our awesome current big live project. So much news, so little time, be sure to check our Twitter stream for updates and why not subscribe to our RSS feed if your that way inclined.
We are currently looking for a CG Artist and Junior CG Artist to join the team and work on exciting immersive projects including S3D/4D rides, Fulldome 360′ immersive experiences and 3D holographic stage shows.
If you want to be part of a small team with big ideas and work on some cool projects a bit different than the norm then get in touch.
Just read a really good article on making a Fulldome show in Attractions Management magazine (2009 issue 3). We’re a little biased as we wrote it
Please go check out the article and see what we have to say about our workflow and approach to making our latest digital planetarium show, We Are Astronomers. They picked out some good quotes too!
“They asked for a gentle beginning, because our previous shows were quite dramatic and scared small children!”
“It was about making astronomy exciting and sexy but still credible.”
Thanks to Attractions Management for inviting us to contribute to the magazine, why your there you should subscribe to the digital version of the mag, it is a good read for anyone involved in the attractions/visitor centre arena.
We have been quiet on the NSC Creative blog lately as we have been busy finishing off our new Fulldome film We Are Astronomers but now that is all wrapped we hope to get much more content on here.
Here is a fun timelapse that we did with our Canon 5D and Sigma 8mm to capture the last day of production on WAA in the NSC Creative animation studio. Normally we are pretty still, staring at our monitors, pushing pixels around but this day was surprisingly active, enjoy!
Music by our NZ friend and collaborator Rhian Sheehan
NSC Creative are very proud to have several Fulldome pieces selected for the competitive section of the European Immersive Film Festival to be held at Centro Multimeios Espinho, Portugal, 24-26 April 2009.
The festival is also a great opportunity to see the latest Fulldome films and two of our past productions will be screened over the course of the festival to delegates and the public. The two films are ASTRONAUT narrated by Ewan McGregor, originally created for the National Space Centre, Leicester, UK and STARS narrated by Mark Hamill which we created for the Adventure Science Centre, Nashville, TN, USA.
Last year NSC Creative picked up a “Domie” award at DomeFest 2008 in Chicago.
The coveted prize was for “Best use of Dome” for the piece Centrifuge. The piece Neurons also made it onto the final juried selection. These two immersive Fulldome sequences adapted from the ever popular ASTRONAUT show joined an eclectic collection of international contributions covering a diverse set of disciplines. The packed audience at the Adler Planeterium enjoyed an evocative 45minutes of Fulldome followed by a real world explosive fireworks display.
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