Doing research on giant screen that address funders’ questions takes time and money. As it is not always possible to find the two, we must look to research that complements the industry in order to draw conclusions about the impact of the films. In 2015, Price, Lee, Kasal and Aguilera published the article “Comparing Short-and Long-Term Learning Effects between Stereoscopic and Two-Dimensional Film at a Planetarium.”  The authors kindly allowed the article to be available to GSCA members, and Mary Nucci of Rutgers University summarizes the findings here.

In 2015, the GSCA Lifelong Learning Committee and the Research Task Force joined together to consider the question of the value of ancillary materials and developed two matched surveys. The Research Task Force survey was designed to understand how giant screen producers/distributors decide what ancillary materials to produce and their goals for the use of these materials; the Lifelong Learning Committee survey focused on the theater members to gauge their use and perceptions of the materials produced to accompany films. Mary Nucci, GSCA Research Task Force Chair and member of the Lifelong Learning Committee, summarizes the results of the producer/distributor survey.