Month: March 2022

Since my last blog post not much has changed. Slowly, everyday I work a little farther into my laser show to perfect it. I am working slow so it will be as perfect as I can get it. However I am very limited with Beyond as there isn’t enough animations to use. It takes me a while to find a animation that even remotely correlates with the music while producing a story. I have been making progress though and the show is becoming much better than my previous show.

This show will be better because I am starting to fully understand Beyond and the way it works. Mr. Jacob Phillips has been a great help to show me the way the animations are positioned and the way to make them move how I would like. This different positioning and layout is making this show better than my last one, However I believe in my previous laser show it was a better story time line. But when utilizing Beyond, since it is so limited it’s Hit or Miss when designing a show with music if they have enough animations to finish the show while telling a story.

One huge road block I have ran into is making the Laser Show tell a story. I know what I want for the show and animations to correlate with the lyrics to the music to preform a story, however I cannot find every animation to match with the music as I would want. One way I have found to ram through this roadblock is to just write out the lyrics it is saying and only write the important lyrics that kind of visualize a scene into your head.

For my third quarter project, I have decided to go back into the Lasers program. To make my lasershow I am planning on utilizing Beyond 4.0. We have been given three weeks so far to work on our each project. During the first week, I chose to brainstorm what song I would like to do while staying within the restrictions and the song containing a story.

I chose to go into a more hip hoppy, rap – type song. For my project I am using the song “The Bigger Picture” by the upcoming artist Lil Baby. I chose this song because of the story it tells and how I could bring some more light to the Equality issue that stands among us today in the USA. To get me started on what kind of story it could tell or some ideas, I used the website Timeline.ly. The song is about Equality and what African Americans have to go through throughout their life.

Even though we are currently 3 weeks in, I didn’t try to go into Beyond until the end of the second week. One thing that’s a problem with Beyond is that it needs to be hooked up to the actual Planetarium itself and connect to all of the Planetarium’s unique and different lasers. The past week or two has been very busy and the snow days have been getting in the way of work being done. I am very happy to say that I will be getting started on the show itself very soon. Even though I have not been able to get into Beyond’s program, I have not let this deter me from getting stuff done to prepare myself for the show I am making. I have watched a few different animated picture shows that correspond with the song itself. This has led me to many different ideas and how to incorporate a story into this song. My plan is to show the different perspectives and voices that are in this song. My next steps are to get into Beyond hopefully and get started on this unique Laser Show!