Vortex at B3 Biennale.

Posted by on Oct 30, 2013 in Fulldome, Vortex | No Comments

Video by Ralph Heinsohn

B3 is a film festival… Primarily for flat-screen films. It is a flat-screen film festival that has a fulldome section within the program. There aren’t many standard film festivals that do.

Vortex has been selected to be shown in the fulldome shorts section of the program. Awesome!

To see the short fulldome film selection:
http://www.b3biennale.com/program/EN/B3_Dome_Shorts2_DomeNarratives.pdf

There is loads of other stuff on at the festival so if you want to delve deeper and perhaps aee how the fulldome work is presented alongside the flat-screen work, check out these links:
http://www.b3biennale.com/en/schedule#event_overlay_222
http://www.b3biennale.com/

Some Other Thoughts

Most fulldome festivals are based in planetariums that are open to visitors throughout the year and in many occasions during the festival as well. Fulldome film festivals seem to have the feeling that they aren’t supposed to be there and that they’re born out of the passion of the people that work in the planetarium. But if anyone misbehaves they won’t be allowed to do it again the following year. At least, that’s the feeling I get when attending. They actually feel very similar to some of the more independent flat-screen film festivals that I have been to. … … I’m not really sure where I going with this. I recall Fulldome UK 2012 and helping with the organisation of that. Being held at the National Space Centre, it had to fit around the usual schedule for the public. This meant that the dome and the space around it was shared with a standard family audience who did their own thing without any interaction with the fulldome community. The general public also outnumbered the fulldome festival delegates. The effect of this is probably what I’m talking about. The fulldome festival feels like it’s parasitically hanging on to another event without ever really feeling like it’s own thing. When you go to Animated encounters in Bristol, you really feel like the whole world you are in is Animated Encounters festival world. Everything and everyone there is there for the festival. The festival even branches out into the city and becomes part of a bigger peripheral experience. I think this is what is missing from the general fulldome film festival experience. A feeling of complete immersion.

So B3 is exciting to me as it is a film festival that has a huge turn out of film goers and creatives that makes it feel like a proper thing. And it has a fulldome section as part of the program. This is going to happen more and more I expect. I’ve been contacted by other festivals that are considering including a fulldome selection in the program so it is happening. I’m not sure how many flat-screen festivals already have a fulldome section but there probably is a few. B3 is a big festival though, so it may encourage others to do the same. We’ll see.

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