The Puttnam Scholars Competition 2022 Now Open! Closing Friday 10 June 12 noon

Future Screens NI, Northern Ireland Screen, and Screen Ireland have teamed up with Atticus Education to offer four Northern Ireland residents the opportunity to attend 6 two-hour online master classes with Lord David Puttnam (producer of Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire, Local Hero, The Killing Fields, The Mission).  

The master classes will be fully interactive and a full engagement by each participant is an essential feature of the programme.  Having attended the entire programme each individual will receive a scholarship from Atticus Education with the support of Accenture Ireland to the value of €1250. 

Applicant information is available here. Please download and complete in word.  Online applications are not supported.  Please email completed applications to: info-futurescreensni@ulster.ac.uk by 12 noon on Friday 10th of June 2022. 

Important Dates: 

The master classes will run between 1000 hrs. and 1200 hrs. on the following dates: 

  • Wednesday 22nd June 

  • Friday 24th June 

  • Monday 27th June 

  • Friday 1st July 

  • Monday 4th July 

  • Friday 8th July 

Selected participants MUST be available for ALL the masterclasses. 

Ulster Touring Opera develops an AR Don Giovanni

The Belfast-based, cross-border opera company Ulster Touring Opera recently completed a Future Screens NI funded R&D Project exploring how immersive technology can play a central role in developing the future audience for opera. Focusing on Augmented Reality technology in the field of opera, UTO worked with its partners in order to chart a new immersive experience, where any user can enjoy and explore world-class operatic performance in their own home.

The project drew on Act II of Mozart’s famous opera Don Giovanni, where the famous seducer is dragged to hell. Set in naturalistic settings, the libretti was selected for its surreal eruption into real space, ideal material to explore creative, technical and production advancement by staging it in the user’s own home using AR.

In partnership with Belfast based company Sentireal, Dublin based company Volograms, and UTO’s own application developer Robbie McKinney UTO has created this 5-minute-long augmented reality event, as well as the App to host this and other AR Opera experiences.

For more information on Ulster Touring Opera visit here.

StoryFutures Academy & Future Screens NI announce 8 leading immersive companies for VP Futures

Announcing 8 leading immersive companies have successfully secured a place on the groundbreaking Virtual Production partnership programme ‘VP Futures’ with StoryFutures Academy and Future Screens NI supported by Epic Games and Industrial Light & Magic.

This new and innovative partnership will deliver a package of targeted virtual production training, development and production support for the creative screen industries in the UK.

The 8 companies are:
Sunnyside
Engine House
Draw & Code
Liminal Stage Productions
RETìníZE
Aura Digital Studios
Soluis
Taunt

Read more here.

Notasuch Films explore the possibilities of VR in mocumentary, narrative filmmaking

Belfast-based production company Notasuch Films completed the final report of research developed through a Future Screens NI R&D project to explore VR & Immersive technology for storytelling endeavours. With a history of film and television experience Notasuch Films developed Total Immersion in a narrative mocumentary-style to explore logistics of narrative VR filming. The resulting VR film was featured at Future Screens NI’s booth at Beyond 2021 and will be submitted to film festivals with subsequent output in publicly accessible platforms.

Boom Clap Play explore the limits of Microsoft Azure sensor for animation production

Future Screens NI are pleased to announce that Belfast-based design firm Boom Clap Play, specialising in Animation, Visual & Audio Design and XR projects have recently finished an R&D project exploring the use of Microsoft Azure Kinect Depth Sensor. The project sought to test the limits of the new depth sensor technology including new hardware based AI body tracking technology, ease of adaptability into Unity game engine, and the possibility of extending gesture functionality using native and machine learning to create a new creative tool and workflow.