Visual Spectrum develops and provides a Lighting & Visuals Masterclass for events professionals.

Responding to Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative call for projects responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, Visual Spectrum developed and provided online training aimed at creative professionals in events production. Acknowledging the need for upskilling among professionals in the creative and entertainment industries with periods of downtime accompanying lockdown, the Lighting & Visual Masterclass provide much desired training.

Offering instruction to novice and experienced technical crew in fields such as TV and theatre, the course facilitated the switch to live events in preparation for the subsequent re-opening of venues. The course covered technical challenges of producing a large-scale visual experience through associated software including Cinema 4d, OctaneRender, and Adobe Creative Suite. The skills taught in the course allow creatives to build 3D models of spaces, to light them appropriately and to plan effectively for a large-scale visual production. The project created a student support community which has regular engagement from the students connecting with 70+ students worldwide from Seoul, Korea to Texas, USA. 

For more information on the course visit: https://www.visualspectrum.studio/learn

Visual Spectrum Studio is run by owner and director Oisín O’Brien. Oisín has been the lead designer on lighting & visual for AVA Festival and has worked on projects for internationally recognised companies like Jaguar Cars, Electric Picnic, Web Summit, Sony Mobile, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, and SXSW.

TEAM

Oisín O’Brien - Director​

Nuala Convery - Assistant Director 

This project was funded through the Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative Award.

Brain and Nerd R&D an adaptive music system for greater game immersion experience.

Brain and Nerd have teamed up with Ziggidybang to develop adaptive music systems for the Unity game engine, the ubiquitous video game developing software. The R&D project addresses limits to static or level/zone-based music disrupting otherwise immersive open-world games, a game mechanic where the player can explore and approach objectives freely. The adaptive music system will keep track of where the player is in the game world relative to nearby emotional stimuli and continuously calculate indices for Threat, Adventure, and Wonder. To this end, Brain and Nerd are developing a sandbox game Hortalius to test the music system. The adaptive music system will improve immersion in games built in the Unity game engine by continuously adapting its soundscape to the player’s predicted emotional response to onscreen gameplay, forming a real-time, player-responsive music system not seen before in indie games, thus enhancing, rather than impeding the immersive experience with the soundtrack.

Brain and Nerd is a growing independent games development studio that has worked on its own IPs in Northern Ireland for over eight years. It specialises in procedural generation, engine and tool development, and customer-led development. 

For more information on Brain and Nerd visit: https://brainandnerd.com

Industry Partner: Richard Campbell, Bmus (Hons), Creative Director, Ziggidybang. 

Co-Investigator: Prof Michael Alcorn, Dean of Internationalisation, School of Arts, English and Languages, Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast.

This project is funded by a Future Screens NI Research & Development award.

Makematic address the leap to online teaching and associated skill gap with online development course TOM.

Makematic have developed an online professional development course, TOM, and an accompanying Whitepaper to support educators worldwide with the challenges of online teaching. The project aimed to support the millions of educators worldwide that have had to make the leap to online teaching overnight - and the edtech industry supporting them - through a well-researched set of best practices for online teaching and the development of associated products and content. For the R&D project, Makematic researched and produced a Whitepaper and accompanying explainer animations.

For more information on TOM click here.

Makematic is one of the UK’s largest producers of educational video and animation. The Derry-based company delivers hundreds of shorts films each year for clients including Adobe, Microsoft, Unity, the BBC, Crayola, Scholastic, Oxford Univ Press and Macmillan. 

For more information on Makematic visit: https://makematic.com

TEAM

Tara Walsh, (MEd), Director of Engagement, Makematic, Project Lead/Researcher.

Brian Shaw, Director of Production, Makematic, Producer.

Co-Investigators: 

Dr James Nelson, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast.

Dr Jennifer Roberts, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation, Queen’s University Belfast.

This project was funded by a Future Screens NI Rewriting the Narrative award.

Nice One Productions develop Pixel Perfect, a TV competition show to create original games in just 48 hours.

Nice One Productions have recently completed Research & Development on a project seeking feasibility of a TV competition show for teams of independent video game developers to develop original content. Similar in structure to such popular programmes as The Great British Bake Off or Project Runway, the project, Pixel Perfect, would seek to showcase indie games, niche video games developed by small independent developers, highlighting homegrown talent and the impact of game production on the national and international economy. Following their conceptual research, the team has put together a Format Bible to guide production companies from international territories to purchase the rights to make their own local version and a sizzle reel highlighting the impact of game development on the economy, creative industries’ input and public interest in the project.

Nice One Productions is a television production company based in Belfast. They create, collaborate, and produce formats and scripted comedy from a base in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

TEAM

Chris Jones: Founder, Nice One Productions.

Alex McMillan: Development Researcher and Writer, Nice One Productions.

Co-Investigator: Frank Delaney, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast.

This project has been funded by a Future Screens NI Research & Development award.

Small Town Big Dreams presents an audio documentary exploring personal stories on the impact of Covid on the NI creative industry sector.

Small Town Big Dreams have completed a 4-part audio documentary exploring personal stories of how the Covid-19 crisis has impacted on the work, communities, networks and health of creative entrepreneurs, freelancers and workers within the creative industry sector in Northern Ireland. Titled “The World Turned Upside Down” the documentary sought the personal stories of how the Covid-19 crisis has impacted on the work, communities, networks and health of creative entrepreneurs, freelancers and workers within the creative industry sector. The production team consisted of project management from Blick Shared Studios, with the podcast produced, written, recorded and edited by Graeme Watson and Karishma Kusurkar.

Blick Shared Studios is a social enterprise that has been supporting creative entrepreneurs in Northern Ireland since 2007. They offer the provision of affordable flexible workspaces, meeting rooms, gallery and events spaces alongside providing business advice and support, networking and promotional opportunities. Blick Shared Studios currently provide space for nearly 60 creative businesses in Belfast offering affordable virtual business services to over 90 creative businesses. 

For more information on Blick Shared Studios visit: https://www.blickstudios.org

TEAM

Christine James, CEO Blick Shared Studios​, Project Management. 

Graeme Watson, Creative Director, ​The Infinite Jest​ & Karishma Kusurkar, Director & Designer ​Karishma’s World​, Interviews and Narration. 

Co-investigator: Dr Brian Dixon, Course Director, MFA Design, Belfast School of Art, Ulster University

The project was funded by Future Screens NI and Northern Ireland Screen as part of the Rewriting the Narrative fund.