News from Canada’s Planetariums

By Pierre Chastenay[1], Alan Dyer[2], Erik Koelemeyer[3], Scott Young[4]

[1] Montréal Planetarium (contact: chastenay@astro.umontreal.ca)
2 Calgary Science Centre (contact: alan.dyer@calgaryscience.ca)
3 H.R. MacMillan Space Centre (contact: ekoeleme@hrmacmillanspacecentre.com)
4 Manitoba Planetarium (contact: scyoung@manitobamuseum.ca)

In 2004 a group of four planetariums in Canada came together to co-produce a major astronomy show that played across the nation. In our first national show, The Quest For Origins, we focused on leading-edge Canadian research about the origin of stars, galaxies and the universe, taking CASCA’s Long Range Plan as the basis for much of the content.

In 2006, four Canadian planetariums worked together to jointly produce a major show about life on other worlds. The show answered the question so often asked of all astronomers, “Do you believe in life in outer space?”

After the success of the first show, we came together to create a second joint venture, this time a show about the perennially popular topic of alien life. The production process began in June 2005, with a face-to-face meeting in Montréal among the partner facilities: the Montréal Planétarium, the Planetarium at the Museum of Man in Winnipeg, the TELUS World of Science in Calgary, and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver. The final show, Is Anybody Out There?, opened at all four theatres less than a year later, simultaneously on May 20, 2006, on time and on budget.

Art All-Sky Collage	Photo All-Sky Arctic	Computer Generated All-Sky Europa
Dome-filling images anchored most of the scenes in the show. Some were image collages for use with video and other effects. Others were real-life scenes shot on location , such as the perpetual springs on Axel Heiberg Island in the high Arctic, an analog for what might be found on Mars. Computer-generated landscapes provided the backdrop for scenes such as under the ice on Europa and other alien worlds.

Leveraging Money

We created our consortium first and foremost because it offered a way to get more money to produce shows. For our latest project, the production budget was $310,000, up considerably from our first consortium show. While small by most standards for a documentary production, that figure is still ten to twenty times the normal budget of a show produced by any our partner facilities on their own. So by pooling the resources of four theatres we increased our production budget by a factor of ten.

Of the $310,000, about half was covered by grants, while the remainder was brought forward as in-kind contributions from the four partners (essentially, salaries of the many people involved in this project) and a few external consultants (mostly scientists and educational consultants). Outside funding came from federal government agencies: the Museum Assistance Program of Heritage Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, and the National Science and Engineering Research Council.

While we were still required to contribute a lot of our own staff labour, the grant funds made it possible for us to extend the show’s production values beyond what any of us could afford on our own. For example, we were able to conduct extensive location shooting, including on-camera interviews with experts ranging from SETI researchers to scientists working on extremophile life in Arctic Canada.

The other reality for us in Canada is that one institution alone probably would not have been able to secure federal grants. Leveraging those funds was possible only because we were applying for them as a group, for a program that would play both in English and French across Canada. We’ve found that when planetariums speak as a group they are loud enough for governments and other funding agencies to hear.

Distributed Production

The writing of grant proposals was undertaken by the Montréal Planétarium in 2004. After funding was approved early in 2005, we divided the production tasks along the lines of each facility’s area of expertise. Writing the script and directing the show production was done by Alan Dyer from Calgary. Principle photography and preparation of panorama scenes was assigned to the Manitoba Planetarium and their expert photographer Hans Thater. Financial management and the many tasks related to the French version of the show were the specialty of Pierre Lacombe and Pierre Chastenay of the Montréal Planétarium, while in Vancouver Erik Koelemeyer concentrated on the 3D animation work. Staff at each facility (the credit roll lasts several minutes!) took on additional work preparing materials shared by all facilities: location video shoots, graphic artwork, computer-generated alien landscapes, marketing materials, the final edited video, as well as performing all the local installation tasks.

The show’s hosts were shot against black in TV studios. The English host, Dave Kelly, was shot in Calgary, while the French host, Patrick Masbourian, was shot later in Montréal. Each followed the same storyboarding so they would both fit into identical scenes. The hosts were composited with friendly ETs for this “dancing with aliens” scene and other sequences that had the hosts interact with computer-generated characters. All the composites and effects had to be done twice, for the English and French versions.

To qualify for national funding, our shows have to be produced in both French and English, which for a multimedia production poses some unique challenges. For Is Anybody Out There? we decided to go with a host who appears on camera, usually amid some alien setting. We wanted a host with a hip, MTV-style of delivery, to create a casual “blue-jeans-and-T-shirt” feel to the show that did not take itself too seriously, yet did not skimp on the science. For the on-screen talent we sought out personalities from pop culture, from youth-oriented TV programs, not scientists.

But we feared the headaches that shooting two different hosts, in two different languages, at two different locations would entail when we tried to sync them up in soundtracks that for technical reasons should ideally have identical timing. Well, it worked. The success was largely due to Montréal’s hard work producing a tightly edited and reworded French translation of the script. As a result, the French host’s on- and off-camera narration synced up remarkably well to the previously recorded English host.

Scientists and Songs

 In Quest for Origins we put four astronomers on video in scripted cameo appearances, each introducing a segment of the show. With Is Anybody Out There? we raised the bar a few notches, and shot nearly two dozen astrobiology experts on video, sometimes in a studio but often by going to them and shooting them against a portable green screen in their offices or labs.

The interviews were conducted by Alan Dyer and Vancouver’s video crew at such locations as the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, the University of Washington in Seattle (for Peter Ward and the Rare Earth hypothesis), the University of Victoria, the Herzberg Institute, and in Vancouver with researchers from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. French interviews where arranged by the Montréal Planétarium and conducted in Montréal with scientists from the Canadian Space Agency, the Université de Montréal and McGill University.

The hours of videotape were edited down to several quick-cut interview montages that punctuate the show, with each expert adding just a choice “sound bite” phrase or comment, sometimes just a word. We wanted to include real people in the show, to have them present the diversity of opinions, pro and con, about the prospects for alien life. Yet we wanted to avoid dull “talking heads.” We think the final mix did that, adding energy and pace to the show, as well as putting a face on the science, balancing fact and fiction, evidence and opinion.

Soundtrack production was contracted to Canadian composer Donovan Reimer. In addition to original compositions for the show, Donovan tracked down the rights to “alien theme” pop music from the past few decades. The soundtrack made use of clips from such classics as Sheb Wooley’s The Purple People Eater, The B-52’s Planet Claire, Tommy James’ I Think We’re Alone Now, and the Moody Blues’ I Know You’re Out There Somewhere. This was the first time we employed a soundtrack made largely of “needle-drop” music, as this was the first time we had the budget to pay for it. The result was a soundtrack that has become an attraction on its own, generating lots of positive comments from the audience. People liked hearing music they knew.

The potentially technical and jargon-laden subject of extremophile life was dealt with by creating cartoons of lovable extreme-loving cellular creatures, like this acidophile who also happens to speak French.

What Did We Learn?

If we were to do it all again for a show as complex as Is Anybody Out There?, we would want to employ additional staff or contracted expertise to handle more of the production research and co-ordination. Even so, we feel by pooling the in-house resources we already have we can carry off a show production of excellent quality for much less than the cost of hiring an outside production company to do it all. Unlike institutional IMAX theatres, who have no production expertise on staff, and have to pay high prices for independent film companies to produce suitable shows, planetariums are populated with skilled and talented production staff.

In our case, a consortium worked because each of our four facilities had, over the years, independently developed expertise in a key area of show production. This was done without any form of coordination, almost by chance. But the result was an almost perfect blend of skills among the four facilities. Working well together will become increasingly important as more planetariums look for high-quality productions for the emerging medium of immersive video that fills an entire dome with a high-resolution video image capable of all forms of science visualization.

A production consortium is a practical and affordable method for the creation of content for all planetariums, but especially new digital theatres, with their need for many animators and new media artists. In the end we like the dynamics and trust we’ve established among our planetarium facilities after two productions. We hope the experience will allow us to extend our consortium to larger projects as all our theatres look toward major upgrades from the 1980’s technologies many of us still work with to 21^st century planetariums fitted with immersive video projection.

All images courtesy Canadian Planetarium Consortium © 2006.

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