About Our Slide-based Planetarium Shows

We take great pride in the professional quality of our planetarium programs. We've heard pleased planetarians say that our shows are the best they've ever presented in their theaters. The shows in our catalog are immensely popular; and they play in planetaria around the world, in portables as well as 24-meter domes. We've provided the information here so interested planetarians can be sure our shows are right for their planetarium facility.

What Our Shows Are
(And Aren't)

The days when a planetarium show consisted solely of a demonstration of the star projector have long since passed. While Loch Ness shows may utilize the star projector to create the night sky, they are not vehicles for planetarium projector demonstrations, or live constellation identifications. These types of shows are best left to the local planetarian to give; indeed, we recommend presenting the standard "what's up tonight" star talk in addition to our show, either before or after it.

We put our efforts into producing the kind of extensive audio/visual show a planetarian might not have the time, facility, inclination, or budget to create on their own. We view the planetarium as an audio-visual theater, and our show as the "current feature". Into each show production we put months of work -- and quite often, tens of thousands of dollars more than a typical planetarium can afford.

Loch Ness Productions programs are very comprehensive; we provide images for almost every scene in our shows. In fact, the shows can be run as standalone multi-image slide presentations without a planetarium, with some added visuals to recreate planetarium stars and effects.

Naturally, we ask the planetarian to provide a capable planetarium theater and the expertise for installing and programming their automation system. (Yes, we do expect our shows to run with automation controlling the slide projectors. While it's theoretically possible that a show could be presented passably by running all the slide projectors manually, we doubt few planetarians would want to perform such a ballet behind the console on a continuing basis.)

Unless the star projector is automated, planetarians spend most of their time turning stars up and down during our shows -- we're not always in space. Occasionally a planet or galaxy needs to be pointed out on cue. Standard "stock-in-trade" planetarium motions and effects, such as meteors or "grain-of-wheat" pinpoint sources on the dome may also be necessary. We expect those planetaria equipped with slewing mirrors, zoom projectors, rotators, etc., to use them -- we designed some visuals for that very purpose. Special effects projectors are not usually required; though some could possibly supplement the still slides we provide.

For most of our shows, we've specifically chosen not to include video. The visual and aural components of our shows are designed and paced for the dissolves and fades of multi-image slide shows.

Slide Projectors Needed!

Slide projectors are definitely required, the more the better.

But just as important as the number of projectors is how they're arrayed. Some slides will be projected up in the sky, of course, but others will be aimed on the horizon to create a panorama scene. And often slide projectors will need to project overlapping images, both in the sky and on the horizon.

L-C-R dissolve pairs (6 projectors)

For images up in the sky, we recommend the L-H-S Spec Level Three format -- three adjoining dissolve pairs aimed Left, Center, and Right. We often provide sets of images whose effectiveness will depend upon critical alignment of dissolvers, so matched lenses on the projectors is essential. In general, 104mm (4-inch) focal lengths work well.

If the edges of the screens are aligned parallel to the center screen, instead of the horizon, 3-across relatively-seamless panels can be displayed. We prefer this array, actually.

Horizon panoramas (6-12 projectors)

Many planetaria have panorama systems -- multiple projectors dedicated to displaying images on the horizon. Most of our shows make extensive use of these. At times we'll call for individual images; other scenes will use 2-, 3-, 6- or 12-slide panoramas. Having 2 or more projectors trained on the same horizon area is also necessary on occasion, to allow images to appear within a panorama.

In lieu of an accepted industry standard for projection format, we size our panorama slides at 100% with no overlap. Simply abutting the images on the horizon will create a continuous scene.

For panoramas using overlap and soft-edge masking, we expect our 100% sizing will be useful for the planetarian to stitch together a seamless panel for resizing and outputting to the necessary specifications.

For more about panoramas and all-skies, read this.

All-sky (6 projectors)

As the 6-projector pie-wedge all-sky system has become more commonplace, we've begun to include all-sky slide sets, or visuals that can be projected through all-sky lensed projectors.

For more about panoramas and all-skies, read this.

Additional projectors

Beyond these fixed projector systems, "spare" auxiliary and single-shot slide projectors with various length lenses will come in handy too -- for fitting constellation outlines precisely over their star positions, or for making a wide-angle Earth chord on the horizon, as just two examples.

For a full explanation of the work required for making slides from our digital images, read this page!

Loch Ness Productions is well known for its music, which is an integral part of our show soundtracks. Unlike generic background cues, each score is specifically composed to fit the show's narration, filling in when it stops, and getting out of the way when necessary. Creative use of thematic material provides constant musical reprises and cross-references throughout the show, and our synthesizer and sampling technology provide to the track a unique, stylistic dimension not often found in planetarium shows.

We make our show package soundtracks from digital stereo masters, and record them onto compact disc or DVD. Most customers copy the audio onto their show playback system (usually multitrack tape); add their own SMPTE time code track for controlling their automation; then store our disc safely away for protection.

For an additional cost, we can also record the soundtrack on these formats:

All our show packages include a soundtrack with narration in English. For customers who wish to present our shows narrated in other languages, we offer an additional narration-less soundtrack for the purpose. It contains all the music and sound effects, mixed at a relative level for narration, but without the voice track.

Here's the process that's involved in creating non-English soundtracks:

1. Translate the script.
2. Record the narrator(s) and edit together a narration master.
3. Copy our stereo narration-less soundtrack onto two channels of a multi-track recorder.
4. Copy the narration master onto another channel, starting and stopping as necessary, using the show package's English language version as a timing reference.
5. Mix the narration with the music-and-sound-effects-only tracks to a soundtrack master, "riding" the level of the music to fill the pauses in narration.
6. Copy that master to use for show presentations.

Our scripts are expertly crafted, and written to appeal to general audiences. We find "just the right words" to express the concepts -- no more, no less -- and tailor the words to fit our narrator's voice and style.

We use the popular parallel-column audio/visual format for laying out our script pages. Here's a sample. In addition to the narration text (printed in a typeface large enough to read in darkened conditions!), there are indications and times for music bridges, transitions and segues, with line numbers for handy reference. The visuals column not only contains image numbers and titles, but also planetarium pointer and star projector cues -- with plenty of blank space to add console directions. There's a column for elapsed time since the start of the show, with indications at every paragraph.

And there are pages and pages of production notes, where we "walk through" the show line by line, describing what we had in mind for the presentation.

People often ask what age or grade level our scripts are written for. We usually answer "the general public", which is sometimes equated to a 5th or 6th grade level. We figure if they can understand a television show, they'll do all right with one of our shows too.

With each show, we grant the purchasing institution the IN-HOUSE PERFORMANCE AND SYNCHRONIZATION RIGHTS necessary for to present the program to the public. We spell out the specifics in a Plain English Copyright and Usage Statement included with most packages. Other shows may require a Performance License Agreement to be signed, which may set further conditions on presentations. See individual show pages for details.

We do expect shows to be presented in their entirety, with the soundtrack unedited and all the show's visuals displayed. Our contributors and talent (and their agents) expect their work to be presented as we represented it, and our contracts with them grant permission for their work to be used in the context of our shows only.

We program our shows using Sky-Skan SPICE Automation^® in our studios. Planetarians can take advantage of all the programming work we put in by obtaining our Automation Data package, which contains the SPICE cue file, tray list, and a SMPTE-striped soundtrack tape. Even for non-SPICE users, the printout of the SMPTE timings and generic screen information should save hours of programming (if not typing) time. Read more here.