So, just to finish off the thoughts I started in the previous entry… writing for the dome requires that I conceive of my story in more than the square or rectangular dimensions that most of us are used to in movies and TV. But, there was also another constraint. For the longest time, we could only see the stars on the dome as a “flat” backdrop, much as we do when we step outside and stargaze. This isn’t such a bad thing, especially if you want to teach people how to find various stars, constellations, planets, and so forth. But, with the advent of fulldome digital video, suddenly all the databases of stars that scientists work with could be plugged into a computer program and used to take people out through the stars. Add in more databases and suddenly you can travel through galaxy clusters and the large-scale structure of the cosmos. This is ‘way more than we used to get in the old days of planetariums, when we were limited to slides of galaxy clusters, for example.

There is some ferment in the planetarium industry about the “old ways” going the way of the dinosaur. It’s true. Slide projectors aren’t being made by Kodak anymore; nor is much of the film we used to make our slides available. It’s a digital video age, and as expensive as the changeover is for those places who are contemplating the leap to fulldome, it’s also a leap into methods of doing our jobs that are much different from the “old days.”

Today, a planetarian using fulldome video will find him or herself running shows from a variety of producers (such as myself), and likely also wanting to create some of his or her own presentations. All of us planetarium folk who create shows are finding ourselves learning new tricks of the trade: video editing and compositing software, graphics creation packages, and so on. Instead of slaving away over a hot copystand and photographing artwork to make panoramas and all-skies, we’re all slaving away in front of computers and learning the true meaning of “babysitting a render” just like the big boys at Pixar and other studios.

So, what does this mean for me as a science writer? Basically, when I set out to write a show these days, I’m finally getting to see my shows on the dome the way I’ve always pictured them in my mind as I write them, thanks to advances in digital video technology and computerized visual editing and compositing.

Change over Time.. that’s What It’s About

As long-time readers know, I write about astronomy and space science in a variety of formats. Of course there are the books and magazine articles, this blog, and the Griffith Observatory exhibits, which I wrote during 2005 and well into 2006. And, in the very near future, I’ll be debuting some short video documentaries online for a group of scientists at an observatory near my office.

I also do documentary scripts, mostly for planetariums. That is what I’m best known for among the world’s several thousand planetarium professionals. Sometimes in the course of my work, I find myself telling somebody about the planetarium shows I’ve written. Yep, there have been several dozen of them over the years, and they’re something of a unique art form. Mostly this is because the show’s action takes place projected on the domed ceiling of a round room. It’s a different kind of medium than the big squares/rectangles you see at your local movie houses or in your living room. For one thing, stuff can’t go “off screen” or “exit stage left” as you would see in a movie, TV show or in a live play. There’s no “off” or “left” in a hemisphere. Oh, you can have stuff go “down” (that is, below the level of the dome”) and that’s legitimate. Another difference lies in the immersiveness of the dome. You can literally put your audience into a scene, which immediately affects the types and speeds of motion you can use on the dome. There’s a lot of experimentation going on these days with just what you can get away with on the dome before you make your audience sick or lose their interest or just simply overwhelm them with the show. And that experimentation has been brought on largely by the advent of fulldome video systems.

Planetarium shows are a hybrid of documentary and immersive entertainment. In the planetarium community, there’s always some ferment over how much something is educational versus entertaining, but that debate lacks the teeth it used to have. For one thing, educational programs can be entertaining, given the right mixture of talent and skill among the creators. In the beginning, back before there were slide projectors and video projectors, planetarium folk had a round room with a star projector. They used this space to give lectures, pointing out the various stars and constellations. Before long, somebody thought of adding some music to enhance the mood of the lecture. Then somebody else thought of sticking some slide projectors in the room to show pictures from telescopes, spacecraft, space artists, and other sources. Eventually, planetarium shows divided into “live” vs “taped” presentations, and there were great fermenting hullabaloos over which was better. Turns out that each kind of presentation had/has its strengths, and the wise planetarium person uses them both as appropriate.

Today, the fulldome video presentation is the digital child of the old slide-tape format show. Technology has progressed well enough that you can stretch several hundred to several thousand pixels across a dome. Naturally, all of us who produce shows are embracing this as a way to do ever-better and more exciting shows.

This hasn’t changed my scriptwriting goals too much, other than now I can add “documentary fulldome video writer” to my list of marketable skills. And, like everybody else in the planetarium community who is going or has gone to fulldome video (either with or without the accompanying opto-mechanical star projector), I’m having to learn some new skills (video editing and compositing, for one). Planetarium shows have come a long way since the first one I did, which was a slide-tape show about the speed of light. I wonder where they’ll go in the future?