BBC Click put together the first ever TV episode recorded entirely in 360 degrees for VR headsets, although it can also be viewed on the desktop or with a mobile phone. They have a bunch of good content, like a helicopter ride to a glacier, a glimpse of computer game SUPERHOT, and a visit to the world’s largest physics experiment (CERN, of course). But I particularly liked the bit where they told us how they made the show, with some ideas about how the rest of us could get into creating our own 360 videos.
Put together by John SmithVFX, this Sherlock/Doctor Who mashup from 2013 is quite nicely done. Looking at the Wholock VFX Breakdown, which is the second video here, it becomes obvious this was primarily a masterful job of masking, compositing, and chroma/light balancing to create the finished product.
There isn’t any genre films on the big screen this weekend as near as I can determine; but that’s OK, because we will have the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Friday instead. This will be the first episode where Alex’s Professor River Song shares the screen with Peter’s incarnation of the Doctor. When you add in that Steven Moffat wrote the script himself, and the director this time has also been directing Sherlock episodes, it is bound to be something special indeed.
Written by J.K. Rowling, because everyone needs to revisit the world of Harry Potter, comes Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. In theaters November 2016.
This is the Doctor Who Comic Con 2015 Panel with Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, and Steven Moffat, with an intro from Chris Hardwick. Like the last Comic Con panel I posted, this one is also from Flicks And The City. They have a ton more coverage, drop by their web site and watch them all.
BBC Radio 4 is airing the first ever dramatization of Ursula Le Guin’s award winning and groundbreaking The Left Hand of Darkness beginning today at 15:00 UT. That’s right around 11AM EST, or 8AM Pacific, and besides airing in real time it will be available in their Listen Again mode for the next week or three. The one hour program is the first part of two, so make sure to catch them both so you can enjoy the whole story. It won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards as 1969’s best novel (one voted on by fans, one voted on by authors), and I can’t wait to hear it as a radio play. Another of her works is being aired beginning on the 27th of this month on BBC Radio 4Extra; Earthsea will be airing at 18:00 UT, and is a series of 6 episodes, 30 minutes long each. I’m not even going to try to tell you how many awards it won.