Just got back from the Fiske Fulldome Film Fest at CU Boulder last week where we screened Grossology and You and The Longest Night: A Winter’s Tale to a crew of fulldome professionals and general audiences.

It seems the industry has stepped up their game in general in the past few years. We saw some great shows all around, but leading the pack was National Space Center’s We Are Stars. Not only did it win best show and best soundtrack, but it might have been the best fulldome show I’ve ever seen. Beautiful, engaging, informative and fun. Just a fantastic film.

Also great was California Academy of Science’s Habitat Earth. As usual, they started the show with a mind blowing immersive and dense scene but continued on to explore different beautiful environments and scales before moving to the more motion-infographic scenes of the Earth. A nicely done, highly polished show.

But overall, there were a lot of good entries. In fact, there were more good shows than I’ve ever seen at a fulldome festival. Hopefully, this trend will continue.

BTW, when I told people I was going to a fulldome planetarium film festival in Colorado, most people assumed it would be like the video below.

Next week we are heading out to Denver for the Feb 3-5 2012 IMERSA Summit. This year’s theme is “Lessons from our past, Visualizing our future: Winning solutions for the digital dome.” We’re screening our new show, Solar System Odyssey, at 5:30PM on Friday and then I’ll be giving a presentation directly afterwords entitled “Domenclature” about the need to create a “film language” for the dome and what we learned producing SSO. If you’re going to be there, please stop by, see the show and say hi.

Looking to the Spring, we’ll be also screening Solar System Odyssey at the Jena Fulldome Festival in Germany in May and our short, Jeepers Creepers, at the Buenos Aires Independent International Festival of Cinema in Argentina in April.

Have a warm and wonderful holiday season and a happy new year.

-Your friends at Morehead

We just found out that Jeepers Creepers won an Honorable Mention at the Jena Fulldome Festival in Jena, Germany last weekend. Thanks to Volkmar Schorcht and the rest of the crew that put that festival together.

Here’s the full list of winners:

Winners in the “VisuaLiszt” category:
“Liszt from Space” by Stefan Berke and Jan Zehn, Ten Art Communications,
Jena. (independent media artists), endowed with 3,000 Euro (approx.
$4,300),
“How to disappear” by Merlin Fluegel, Offenbach Academy of Art and Design
(students’ work), endowed with 2,000 Euro (approx. $2,900),
“The Metalliszt – Road to Victory”, by Robert Sawallisch, Samuel Klemke and
Hannes Wagner, Weimar Bauhaus University (students’ work), endowed with
1,000 Euro (approx. $1,400),
“Nanocam. A trip into biodiversity” by Laura Alonso, Producciones El Exilio
S.L., Madrid, Spain (professional media production), special prize of the
jury, endowed with 500 Euro (approx. $700),
“Hysteria” by Pedro Zaz and United VJs, Sao Paulo, Brazil (independent
artists), special prize of the jury, endowed with 500 Euro,
“Lisztrausch” (Liszt Rapture) by Adrian Woldt, Weimar Bauhaus University
(students’ work), endowed with 500 Euro.

Winners of the FullDome Awards:
“The Royal Pea” by Helena Doyle and Rob Bidder, University of Westminster,
London (students’ work), Creative Fulldome Award, endowed with 500 Euro,
“No 217” by Julia Wiesner, Lea Weber-Schaefer, Phil Schoell, Potsdam
University of Applied Sciences (students’ work), Performance FullDome
Award, endowed with 500 Euro,
“Schwimmende Einhoerner” (Floating Unicorns) by Stephanie Kaysz, Offenbach
Academy of Art and Design (students’ work), Audience FullDome Award,
endowed with 500 Euro.

Honorable Mentions have been presented to:
“Mephisto Cubic” by Philip Mayer and Bruno Mathez, GaiaNova Productions,
London (independent media artists),
“All We Are” by Norrkoepping Visualization Center, Sweden (professional
media production),
“Jeepers Creepers” by Morehead Planetarium & Science Center, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, USA (professional media production),
“Dynamic Earth – Marine Biosphere” by Spitz Creative Media, Chadds Ford,
USA (professional media production),
“Tale of Stars” by Kagaya Studios, Tokyo, Japan (professional media
production).

We just found out that Morehead’s fulldome short Jeepers Creepers won “Best Soundtrack” at the Immersive Film Festival last weekend in Espinho, Portugal. Additionally, our artist in residence, David Colagiovanni, won “Best Immersion” for his short, Charting Course for the Unknown. Next stop for both shorts is the Jena Fulldome Festival, which takes place May 12-14 in Jena, Germany.

Our first fulldome short, Jeepers Creepers, will be showing at the Immersive Film Festival this weekend. This year’s IFF is taking place from April 29 to May 1 at Centro Multimeios Espinho, Portugal.

They’ll be showing a lot of full length shows as well as a group of competitive shorts including “Charting Course for the Unknown” by Morehead’s own artist in residence, David Colagiovanni. Both shorts are screening on Saturday. If you’re in Portugal or nearby, go check it out.

Our first fulldome short, “Jeepers Creepers,” will have its world premiere at the Fulldome UK 2011 festival in mid-March. We’re pretty psyched because it will be the first time anyone will see the short outside of folks from Morehead. I won’t give away the premise, suffice to say that if you’re not yet afraid of insects, you might be after it’s over. Pete wrote a short blog post about it when we were in the development phase to give you a little sense of the plot.

Fulldome UK 2011 is being held at the Thinktank Science Museum in Birmingham and has some interesting dome content lined up and some great looking sessions such as shooting with a RED for the dome by a pro steadicam operator, “Storytelling in the Dome” by NSC Creative and “Adventures in Fulldome cinemetography” by Phil Mayer from GaiaNova.  Who wants to buy me a plane ticket?

We’re outta here. See you next year!

We just heard the news that Earth, Moon & Sun earned a 4.0 rating (out of 5) at the 4th Jena Fulldome Festival, an international showcase in Germany. EMS also received an honorable mention for best use of humor. Not too shabby for our first fulldome show!

Next stop on the festival circuit is the Fulldome Film Festival that follows ASTC in Honolulu in October.  We’re planning on entering Earth, Moon & Sun and our newest show, Magic Tree House: Space Mission.  I think I’m going to mail myself out there with the hard drive.

For a bunch of reasons, we weren’t able to make it to Domefest 2009 this year. Missing it, as you might guess, really sucked. After being so inspired by all the great content we saw in Chicago in 2008, we were really looking forward to the 2009 gathering. We saw all of the finalists on the Domefest vimeo channel, but it’s just not the same on a flat screen.

So instead, we’re bringing Domefest to us. Morehead is taking place in UNC’s CHAT Festival (CHAT is “Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology”) this year. As part of that we’re going to be showing the Domefest 2009 winners on Morehead’s dome on Wednesday February 17 at 7:00. If you’re local and want to check it out, let us know.