When Something Happens is a shortfilm for VR & Fulldome that uses poetry, immersive arts and a beautiful soundtrack to take you on a journey through the history of the Universe.
Inspired by David Christians’ Big History project, we sought to explore spatial storytelling in a unique form by blending poetry, science and immersive technology. Starting from a cosmic void, you’re taken on a journey through the big bang, the formation of stars, to the birth of DNA and the modern human revolution.
To prototype, produce and launch the film we partnered up with Digital Catapult, Northern Ireland Screen and Northern Ireland Science Festival.
Boston Williams
We’ve been working with the Unity game engine for quite some time, and this project was a perfect opportunity for us to explore real-time animation by leveraging it’s impressive toolset and functionality. It allowed us to explore interactive features, deliver spatial audio, and most importantly, 6 degrees of freedom for the headset experience allowing the viewer to truly move their head around in the world.
We commissioned Boston ‘The Orator’ Williams to write and narrate this challenging piece. His rhythm, use of imagery and the atmospheric quality of his work was something we fell in love with instantly, and a perfect complement for our vision.
We were also excited to work with the incredible ballet and theater composer Olga Wojciechowska. Her electronic and neo-classical works carry an incredible amount of weight and emotion whilst having a restrained depth that we thought would perfectly marry with our film.
With an extended team of artists, designers and developers we worked our way through a range of unique challenges that come with immersive storytelling and real time animation.
We were delighted to launch the film in February 2019 at the Armagh Planetarium as part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival. Watching it on the large dome format was the perfect way to celebrate the project and team for coming through on such an ambitious project. The reception at the event was superb, and soon after we were elated to find out we won ‘Best Use of Immersive Tech’ at the DANI awards and the Royal Television Awards.
