In June 2011, Antares FullDome Productions in corporation with Mediúscula, released the fulldome show Moles – What is out there?

Antares decided to produce the show after discovering that many planetarians were asking for content for young visitors to their installations. We all know there is a great demand for educational yet fun and entertaining fulldome shows from the market: Antares asked around and realized that the interest seemed to be wide spread both geographically and amongst all types of planetarium educators; both portable and fixed.

Many portable dome educators mentioned the need of shorter shows, so Antares decided to split "Moles" in two halves (17 & 18 minutes) that could be shown separately - with independent stories, beginnings and ends - or just put together as a full length show.

The story of Plato was inspired by the Greek philosopher Plato's "Myth of the Cave". In the originally book by Mediúscula, Plato was so eager to get out of the cave in which he lived that he eventually went blind from starring into the sun in broad daylight. Antares realized how beautifully this story could be told in an immersive 360° dome format, as the cave would completely surround the spectators and the outside scenes would contrast to them in a spectacular way, showing the heaven with its stars and the Moon.

Antares felt the actual story could benefit from smaller changes in order to make an happier ending and inspire youth to explore the skies even more, so together with Mediúscula and Clara Vinardell, a child pedagogue specialized in storytelling with educational contents, they adapt the story to make it suitable for children while keeping it highly entertaining. Characters and setting were developed with clear and tender consistency; illustrations - originally sketched by Mariano Epelbaum from Argentina - are suggestive, warm and expressive.

The show has seven main animated characters in it and all of them sing. It turned out to be challenging to find the cast of voice actors that could cope with the task. Finally, it all came together and the show is now available in many languages by distributors worldwide.

In fact the staff's best memories from the production are all the songs! Everybody sang them in the office for months as they very easily stick in your head. Soon the staff even had the mp3 tunes on their mobile phones as ring tones.

Several other script advisors were involved in the project - such as Jordi Aloy (CosmoCaixa), Antonio Bernal (Fabra Observartory), Pep Masias, Sergio López Borgoñoz and Alexander Zaragoza (Antares FullDome Productions). Carolyn and Mark Petersen from Loch Ness Productions were also involved with the production and helped out not only with script advisory but also with science advisory, screen adaptation and voiceover. There were in a total over 30 persons involved in the making of "Moles".

Alexander Zaragoza, product manager at Antares, says: "The help from Mark and Carolyn at Loch Ness was invaluable during the whole production and it’s always great to be working closely with such experienced and recognized professionals".

The major back set for the project was that it turned out to be very time costly. The production took much longer than expected - almost a couple of years - and the release date was postponed on several occasions. It was a long period of learning in process development for the company.

The long production period gave Antares a long period to promote ¨Moles¨ and create expectation and excitement in good time before the actual release date. Antares is very happy with the end result and the show has sold internationally, both in small and big planetariums.