Fulldome titles expand the Earth Science genre
Earth science titles enrich the fulldome content library
Earth is ready for her closeup. With the availability of ever more detailed material and information captured through satellites, coupled with the ability to exhibit said material ever more effectively in the digital dome environment, the fulldome content library continues to evolve and diversify. Astronomy and space science titles have been joined by shows about earth science, heliophysics, weather patterns and more.
The art of data visualization has empowered new genres of education and entertainment for the dome, and Earth science is one of the expanding categories. “I would venture to say that Earth science is probably the second biggest genre in the fulldome medium right now,” says Mike Bruno of Spitz Creative Media, which has been involved in originating several successful Earth Science fulldome productions, including the Zula Patrol series, Dynamic Earth and Supervolcanoes. Other shows include Wildest Weather in the Solar System (National Geographic Cinema Ventures), Earthquake: Evidence of a Restless Planet (California Academy of Sciences), Planet Earth 3D - Expedition Green (Planetarium Hamburg) and Kenji Williams's live traveling production Bella Gaia. Evans & Sutherland contributions include its numerous giant screen film conversions, such as Forces of Nature, Tornado Alley and Wild Ocean.
Dario Tiveron, managing director of the Full Dome Data Base (fddb.org) comments, “There’s clearly a trend of pushing the limits beyond astronomy and venturing toward other subjects, and Earth Science is a hot topic.
"A lot of attention is being paid to climate and environmental stories, with recently released shows such as Energy for Life (Planetario de Pamplona), The Earth and Me (The Animonautes & Eugenides Foundation), The H2O Cycle (Sliced Tomato Productions) and others in production such as Climate Change—What Future Are We Facing (Albedo Fulldome). Domes seem to be the perfect place to teach students how to respect the amazing planet we all live on.”
Earth Science shows can add variety to programming and educational options, extending a planetarium’s scope. For institutions primarily focused on environmental and earth science, the digital dome becomes an Earth Science theater: examples include Our Dynamic Earth (Edinburgh, Scotland); the Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary Hooker (Hartford, Connecticut, USA); and the Earth & Space Science Laboratory adjoining Lincoln Elementary (Frederick, Maryland, USA), host venue of the 2013 MAPS (Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society) conference.
NASA's treasure trove of imagery
In Greenbelt, Maryland USA, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center executive producer Wade Sisler is a science visualization specialist who helps his group collaborate with media producers and institutions and tap into NASA’s rich image resources and the expertise of its scientists. His work is tied to the organization’s education and public outreach (EPO) activities and ranging beyond core astronomy into such areas as astrophysics, space weather, climate change, severe storms, and the ozone layer. “All that science is part of our storytelling charter,” he says. “We’re trying to make invisible things visible: processes humans have not been able to perceive before; patterns of nature.”
A photographer and journalist by training, Sisler has been with NASA since 1983. He helped form some of NASA’s filming agreements with IMAX and became acquainted with the work of relevant science journalists and fulldome pioneers such as Carter Emmart and Thomas Lucas. “We have been part of the fulldome community for a while now,” he says, pointing out that NASA was a sponsor of Cosmic Collisions. He’s been with Goddard since the late 1990s, “just when we were entering the next phase of data visualization, which has come into its own in the past decade.”
In addition to a wealth of images and data, Goddard has human production resources. Sisler says, “Our big partners, the Science Visualization Studio here, are staffed by geniuses able to take in multiple types of data and combine them in ways that result in absolutely compelling images. We have a coral reef of vibrant science storytellers, filmmakers and writers,” says Sisler, whose job includes supporting NASA’s web team, video TV team, visualization team and animation team. “Scientists here think of an idea, design instruments to record data, design spacecraft and test and launch it,” says Sisler. “Communicators we work with here complete that circle, and try to share that with the widest possible audience.”
“Every time we turn over a rock here at NASA Goddard, there are five stories waiting to be told.” says Sisler. “We have rain radar now. We have 3D scans of tropical storms and rain events. It would be a fantastic show to see lightning from space as it happens, and observe the patterns. 98% of lightning is over land; only 2% is over the oceans. Planetariums are a great venue for this kind of material because of the immersive environment, the enormous sense of scale, and the way the information is presented.”
Goddard welcomes inquiries and visits from producers. “We take them to our screening room ‘hyperwall’ and watch their jaws drop when they see the enormous resolution and images there,” says Sisler. “Then we bring in scientists, animators, and visualizers and kick around ideas. If the stars are in alignment, then we move toward trying to make it happen financially.” He adds, “The most rewarding relationships happen at the early stages of a project. We contributed about one third of the content in Dynamic Earth. By buildingon the shoulders of our earlier visualization work, we helped keep down expenses. It was a good working collaboration.”
Just as NASA has expanded from rocket science to Earth science, planetariums are not just for astronomy anymore. “Our scientists point out that the instruments we use to study the atmosphere of other planets are essential in studying our own as well,” remarks Sisler. “We’re learning how everything fits together as a system: land, ocean, atmosphere, all working together in very complex interrelationships, using NASA’s computing power and observational power as a natural extension of what we do as we explore the solar system.”
California Academy of Sciences brings planetariums down to Earth
“As I like to express it, we want to put the ‘planet’ back in ‘planetarium,’” says Ryan Wyatt, Director of Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization at the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco). With a focus on biology, climate, and geology that supports the Academy’s research domains, Morrison Planetarium’s fulldome productions have tapped into research centers around the Bay Area as well as the region’s sizable visual effects community. “Not only are we revealing Earth in a new way, we’re creating more photorealistic environments that put people in familiar places—standing on the California coast as opposed to the surface of Titan.”
Collaborators on Life: A Cosmic Story included the NASA Astrobiology Institute (Moffet Field, California) and the SETI Institute (Mountain View, California), but to find the data to illustrate events in Earthquake: Evidence of a Restless Planet, Wyatt notes, “we had to reach much farther afield.” To visualize San Francisco’s infamous 1906 temblor, the Academy turned to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for supercomputer simulations and volumetric datasets of Earth’s interior. “The amazing researchers at Lawrence Livermore were true collaborators: when they weren’t visiting us, we were on the phone constantly throughout the production process, making sure we got the science right.” The United States Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of California, Berkeley, also provided data used in the production.
“We took the added step of integrating these data into real-world environments,” explains Wyatt, “so the 1906 supercomputer simulation data is revealed after we experience the earthquake from street-level, in an historically-accurate recreation of what downtown San Francisco looked like at the time. Connecting our audiences with the sense of being rooted in the real world gives added meaning to the science story.”
Wyatt believes that the combination of these tools—the realistic depiction of the natural world plus the integration of science visualization—is one of the unique, distinguishing features of content produced by the Academy. “I think that’s part of the reason Earthquake was the first fulldome feature to be nominated for a Visual Effects Society Outstanding Achievement award.”
He goes on to point out that Morrison Planetarium presenters also utilize real-time Earth data with each showing of Earthquake. “Pre-rendered is only part of the story,” he says. “We also make use of WorldWide Telescope or Uniview to reveal the locations of earthquakes that have taken place in the last 30 days. Our presenters provide context for those events, which underscores the idea that earthquakes are happening all the time, all around the world.” Once a month, the Academy also highlights work of its researchers alongside current events in Earth systems during its adults-only NightLife event, in a program called Earth Update. “Instead of a tour of the Universe, it’s more like a tour of the planet,” says Wyatt. “And it gives people the perspective to think differently about our rapidly-changing world.”
This move toward embracing Earth science in fulldome is part of a general trend for theaters to diversify the types of content presented to their audiences. We have seen a growing appetite for films converted from giant screen film on a variety of topics - from Earth science, to natural history and more - as well as an increasing interest in pure entertainment content. While this broadens the appeal of a fulldome theater to a much wider market with more varied interests, it also has the potential to create confusion among the core planetarium audience that may be expecting purely astronomical programming. There will be marketing and branding challenges. It will be interesting to see how the trend may transform the fulldome industry over the next decade and beyond.
