COMING SOON: Orbital
Cosm Studios launches their lineup by taking you into outer space
This month Cosm Studios launches their initial slate of original works designed for Cosm’s unique venues with a lineup of four audiovisual experiences. The first to launch, having a premiere this week, is Guy Reid and Planetary Collective’s Orbital:
Voyage beyond the planet and experience our home through the eyes of Astronauts. Orbital is an epic animated journey from the Big Bang to the flourishing of Life on Earth, to Low Earth Orbit. A new film by Guy Reid and Planetary Collective, Orbital transports you through an abstract landscape of light, inspired by bioluminescent earthly beings and atmospheric aurorae. Guided by the astronauts of Constellation Coalition, men and women who have looked back and experienced the awe of our place in the universe, you will feel your own “Overview Effect” as you meditate on our planet in Shared Reality.
The run of Orbital starts on July 28th at Cosm’s flagship venue in Hollywood Park, Inglewood, CA a stone's throw from the already legendary SoFi Stadium.
We checked in with Guy Reid, Founder of Planetary Collective about the launch of Orbital.
This is No Proscenium’s COMING SOON, a look at ongoing immersive experiences & events. To learn more about how your event could be considered for the feature check out How To Get Covered By NoPro.
NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Guy Reid: At Planetary Collective, we’ve been working on documentaries and various other media designed to interrupt people’s worldviews and point them to different perspectives that can help them gain an appreciation of our place in the Universe. For the last 14 years, we’ve been working with various international astronauts, listening to, recording their stories, and helping them communicate their experiences.
With Orbital, I had the opportunity to not only give people the facts, the visuals, and the excitement through a moving medium but also to ‘feel’ it in an immersive one. It takes viewers on a journey from the Big Bang, through the evolution of the cosmos and life, to us, humanity — and finally, the planet. It’s all told through a dreamlike narration inspired and voiced by the astronauts we’ve worked with at ‘Constellation Foundation’, a non-profit dedicated to helping spread the astronaut message from space.
Visually, we start with abstract particle-based animation, which then gives way to hyper-realistic animation of our planet, elevated to evoke astronauts’ memories of seeing it from their vantage point in space. It’s an immensely detailed film, all produced and rendered in 12K+ resolution, which may be the first of its kind.
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The ultimate goal of the experience is to give audiences an experiential understanding of us being ‘Planetary’, being embedded in our biosphere, being OF the planet — as opposed to simply ON the planet. It’s about awe and wonder and connecting back to our home, which we all share.
NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?
GR: Our film Overview was the inspiration — a short film we made about the Overview Effect in 2011, as well as Planetary, a feature-length film we made in 2015. We wanted to bring concepts from both into an immersive space.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
GR: The abstract animation and the astronaut voiceover will keep audiences enraptured. Towards the end, they’ll be able to spend a significant amount of time in low Earth orbit in front of one of the highest-resolution displays in the world. It’ll be like looking through a window, maybe akin to being in Space. We asked the astronauts about all the sights and the phenomena they remember being awed by, and we condensed those experiences they would have had over months into an 8-minute sequence.
NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
GR: Technically, this was a massive undertaking. Our production partner, KUVA, spent months grappling with our render pipeline, and while we were able to move through creative decisions quickly and efficiently, the technical side was a great mountain to climb. Cosm challenged us to produce this film in record time because they were so excited to get it out there and have audiences experience it — and we rose to that challenge.
The other aspect is movement and cutting — you can’t think of the CX Display and the dome as a traditional big or giant screen. You have to imagine, design, and edit your film in a way that feels seamless and doesn’t allow for much (or any) cutting or montage. You have to find a fine line between giving people a sense of excitement in their immersion or giving them too much and risking having created something much more intense.
NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?
GR: They should check out Cosmology, in general. It’s the study of our Universe. Two recommendations are ‘Universe Story’ by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker and ‘The Overview Effect’ by Frank White. They can watch our film Overview on Vimeo to give a bit of background on the concepts.
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