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.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and said hello, roll on IPS 2012, Baton Rouge!

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.

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.

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.

Full job descriptions and application info here http://www.nsccreative.com/jobs/

Please don’t let the picture put you off applying.

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.

Time to go read the article >

We also did a WordPress skin for the marketing blog, go check it out and find out more about the project here www.projectapollo.co.uk

Personally we think the new exhibit sounds ace and can’t wait to go and check it out, you should too!

Big and juicy high res over on Flickr

We had submitted some of our content from the shows ASTRONAUT and STARS in the competitive section. It was against some tough competition from around the world. There were also public and school screenings for all the competition entries.

After a weekend of back to back screenings of a varied selection of creative Fulldome content it was down to the final day on the Sunday with the award ceremony. This was presented by António Pedrosa and Lina Canas at the Centro Multimeios Espinho, who had organised and looked after us all for the event.

NSC Creative were delighted to pick up 3 awards for the following entries:

Best Soundtrack - The Hunter and His Dog taken from STARS
Best Visuals - Launch from STARS
Finalist – Living in Space from ASTRONAUT.

After a long but successful weekend it was time to return back to the office. We met some great people who share the same passion as we do. Striving to improve awareness and help get as many people into the exciting format of Fulldome as possible.

Full info on the Immersive Film Festival awards via the official site here

Please enjoy the award winning pieces for yourself below:

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

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.

For more information head over to http://iff.multimeios.pt/

Ruth will be in attendance flying the NSC Creative flag so be sure to say hello.

Immerse Yourself!