FULLDOME OnDemand

What rentals (and whose) were hot in 2018!

Posted on January 11, 2019 by Mark C. Petersen

We’re into year four of streaming movies with FULLDOME OnDemand, and with 2018 in the rearview mirror, here’s a year-end performance review.

Our countdown of the Top 10 popular show titles actually resembles 2017 quite a bit, with seven titles repeating this time around:

10. show poster Dinosaurs at Dusk Mirage3D

9. show poster SpacePark360: Infinity Dome3D and Loch Ness Productions

8. show poster Into The Deep Ogrefish Filmproduktions

7. show poster The Cowboy Astronomer Loch Ness Productions

6. show poster Moles Albedo FullDome

5. show poster Aurora Storm University of Alaska Fairbanks

4. show poster Moons: Worlds Of Mystery Museum of Science, Boston

3. show poster HUBBLE Vision 2 Loch Ness Productions

2. show poster Larry Cat In Space Loch Ness Productions

And the most-popular show for the third year running, with an asterisk…*

1. show poster One World, One Sky Adler Planetarium

*Still #1, even though we had to put the show on hiatus in June, while waiting for the lawyers from Adler and Sesame Workshop to work out a new distribution agreement. We hope to get our most popular show back soon.

Of course, some producers offer multiple show titles — and in the aggregate, their shows rack up some impressive counts:

5. Museum of Science, Boston – 53 rentals

5. Mirage3D – 53 rentals

4. Houston Museum of Natural Science – 63 rentals

3. Adler Planetarium – 84 rentals

3. California Academy of Sciences – 84 rentals

2. Albedo FullDome – 90 rentals

1. Loch Ness Productions – 185 rentals

Last year, 136 unique customers logged in to rent shows; about two-thirds of those were in the U.S. We rented nearly 900 shows overall, more than two per day on average. 91% of the titles went to U.S. customers, 9% were international. Loch Ness Productions-created shows made up 21% of the total.

FULLDOME OnDemand added 16 fulldome movies in 2018, half of those in languages other than English.

We love hearing from you about what you’re renting, and why. Please take a few moments to let us know how the service is working for you, and anything else you’d care to share with us about FULLDOME OnDemand.

Thank you for making 2018 our best year yet!

Posted in Fulldome OnDemand | 1 Comment

A Festival Celebration

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Mark C. Petersen

When we started FULLDOME OnDemand, one of the things we envisioned was for planetarians to be able to run their own fulldome film festivals. We have the newest shows — like EXPLORE, Dimensions, and Planet Nine — in addition to all the perennial favorites and timeless classics, like our popular children’s show Larry Cat In Space.

At the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, director Zach Thompson has done just that recently. He writes:

Hi, Mark and Carolyn!

Just wanted to share that we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Mueller Planetarium (the first in Nebraska) today with a Classic Fulldome Festival. We used Loch Ness Productions and FULLDOME OnDemand to give visitors a look into ours and the planetarium world’s past. Everyone loved the experience and we all shared some great memories of Mueller and the shows! Can’t begin to estimate how many kids were saying ‘Meew–ooooon’ after Larry Cat!”

“Mueller Planetarium saw 174 people today to view your shows! I talked with several people after each show, all who loved the experience. We shared some memories of Mueller and the early days of immersive storytelling. I had some people who saw some of your shows in their original form, either at Mueller or elsewhere. It was such a fun event and I thank you for the work in making these wonderful pieces. There were no issues with FULLDOME OnDemand, either. I look forward to doing another similarly-themed festival in the future!”

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It’s great to see Mueller making good use of the “festival” capability. And we’re glad to have been part of the celebration! Congrats to Zach and the Mueller!

Posted in Fulldome OnDemand, Fulldome shows, General | Leave a comment

What rentals (and whose) were hot in 2017!

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Mark C. Petersen

We’re now into our third year of streaming movies with FULLDOME OnDemand. We continue to gain customers and add new shows to the repertoire of streaming content. With 2017 in the rearview mirror, it’s time for a year-end performance review and a look forward to 2018.

Here’s our countdown of the Top 10 popular show titles rented last year, and their producers:

10. show poster The Cowboy Astronomer Loch Ness Productions

9. show poster Moons: Worlds Of Mystery Museum of Science, Boston

8. show poster Dawn of the Space Age Mirage3D

7. show poster Journey to a Billion Suns ESA

6. show poster Molecularium Molecularium Project

5. show poster Into The Deep Ogrefish Filmproduktions

4. show poster Larry Cat In Space Loch Ness Productions

3. show poster HUBBLE Vision 2 Loch Ness Productions

2. show poster SpacePark360: Infinity Dome3D and Loch Ness Productions

And the most-popular show for the second year running…

1. show poster One World, One Sky Adler Planetarium

Of course, some producers offer multiple show titles — and in the aggregate, their shows rack up some impressive counts:

8. European Space Agency – 29 rentals

7. California Academy of Sciences – 34 rentals

6. Dome3D – 35 rentals

5. Museum of Science, Boston – 36 rentals

4. Albedo FullDome – 48 rentals

3. Mirage3D – 54 rentals

2. Adler Planetarium – 68 rentals

1. Loch Ness Productions – 105 rentals

Last year, 99 unique customers logged in to rent shows; just over half of those were in the U.S. We rented some 600 shows overall, nearly two per day on average. While 79% of the titles went to U.S. customers, 21% were international. Loch Ness Productions-created shows made up 18% of the total.

FULLDOME OnDemand added 30 new fulldome movies this past year, and more are planned for the year ahead!

When we began this service, we had the hope it would provide affordable content for theaters whose budgets couldn’t quite stretch far enough to purchase long-term licenses. What we’ve found is that idea is a winner. However, we’ve also heard from people who want to use the service to preview shows before they buy licenses. So, we’ve incorporated that idea on Loch Ness Productions shows with a TRY Before You BUY offer. Bring in some test audiences — your friends, supporters, administrators. Then, should you decide to purchase the long-term license from us, we’ll credit the rental fees you paid for the show!

We love hearing from you about what you’re renting, and why. In particular, we’re gratified by the response to some of the more artistic and experimental titles in our listings. So, please take a few moments to let us know how the service is working for you, the effect it has on your ability to offer content, and anything else you’d care to share with us about FULLDOME OnDemand.

Thank you for making 2017 a successful year!

Posted in Fulldome, Fulldome OnDemand, Fulldome shows, General, Other LNP projects | Tagged 2017, rentals, year-end review | Leave a comment

Top 10 Rentals on FULLDOME OnDemand

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Mark C. Petersen

FULLDOME OnDemand has been in business for just over a year, renting streaming shows to fulldome theaters worldwide. The response from users has been quite satisfying, and the base continues to grow as more dome operators discover and try out the service. We are greeted daily with rental notifications, and each month our producer partners whose shows are being rented get paid for their work.

Now that we’ve got a year’s worth of streaming rentals under our belts, we can spot some trends. One that leaps right out is “most popular shows”. While people have responded well to almost every show we have available, some titles consistently gain a lot of attention. As the market grows, we’re seeing some movies rented over and over again. Here are the top 10 most-rented titles (and their producers) this past year:

1. One World, One Sky (Adler Planetarium)

2. The Little Star That Could (AVI)

3. Dinosaurs at Dusk (Mirage3D)

4. Seasonal STARGAZING (Loch Ness Productions)

5. Moons: Worlds Of Mystery (Museum of Science, Boston)

6. Molecularium (Molecularium Project)

7. Origins of Life (Mirage3D)

8. Chronicle of Journey to Earth (Albedo Fulldome)

9. Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (Fiske Planetarium)

10. Larry Cat in Space (Loch Ness Productions)

Congrats to the producers of these fine programs!

To those people using the service, we are very grateful for your support! We love hearing from you about what you’re renting, and why. In particular, we’re quite gratified by the response to some of the more “artistic” and experimental titles in our listings.

And be sure to check out the other popular shows we have online for short-term streaming. We’ve added many good ones this past year, and are planning more releases in the coming months!

Posted in Fulldome OnDemand, Fulldome shows | Leave a comment

Exploring Uses for Fulldome Streaming

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

We Get Feedback…

FULLDOME OnDemand continues to gain new users, and with that growth comes useful feedback from the folks out in the field who are making our service part of their outreach and education efforts. The other day, I had a great conversation with an educator about a show she had just rented. She told me about all the classes she’d be showing it to, and mentioned that it was a godsend to her budget. Her facility had suffered budget cuts and that was affecting her ability to buy long-term licenses to go along with their astronomy lessons.

This is a story we hear over and over again: domes are expected to teach and do outreach, but with less money. It is one of the big reasons why we came up with the FULLDOME OnDemand streaming service in the first place: to provide budget-squeezed fulldome theaters with a way to get the same shows the “big domes” do.

FULLDOME OnDemand as a Preview Service

Our client went on to say that she was also going to rent shows in order to “preview” content for which she could purchase long-term licenses. This is something that we hoped people would do when we came up with the service. She was specifically going to be previewing a number of shows that would fit into their specific educational framework. “It really helps me and my colleagues a lot,” she said. “We put together a list of shows we want to rent to see which ones will work. Then, we’ll figure out how we can raise some money to buy licenses for the ones we decide on.”

It reminded me of a conversation I had at IMERSA in March with one of the “big dome” operators. He asked me how the streaming service was working. I mentioned we had surveyed our users, some of whom reported using the service to preview shows. He got a thoughtful look on his face. “We have an inflatable dome at the museum,” he said. And, just like that, I could see the light bulb go off in his mind. The next words out of his mouth were “We could use it to preview shows using the service — and even get some audience feedback before we buy long-term licenses.”

At $30 for a three-day rental of one show from our library, it’s a pretty reasonable way to do some audience testing for new titles, and I’m pleased people are doing that. FULLDOME OnDemand isn’t JUST for the little guys; now, some larger facilities are finding it useful, too. When I suggested that he might want to do a mini film festival in his inflatable, our friend just grinned and said, “Yep, I was just thinking that!”

I hope he does it. And, I hope he lets me know how it went.

What’s YOUR story about using FULLDOME OnDemand? We’d love to hear about it!

Also, check out the news about our latest offerings. We’ve added Russian versions of Hubble Vision 2 and Natural Selection, plus a set of beautiful fulldome shows from Rocco Helmchen and his team. They’re called Switzerland Sojourns, tempus.ruhr, and Liquid/Light/Flow.