The Experiential: Design Takes Flight

Experiential is often where we find the new technologies and the new ideas. This is in part, due to brand desires to set themselves apart in connecting their consumers to new impressions that connect them to the brand. It's also the sector of entertainment where budgets allow for aggressive use of new tech. The thing that always strikes me as odd is the inverse relationship in experiential between “Failure is not an option” and “Let's do something nobody has ever seen before.” So often, when I am charretting new ideas with agency, client, and production folks, the conversation turns to what is happening at the bleeding edge, and how we might use it to create a profoundly memorable experience.

Recently, my creative partners Butch Allen, Pablo Molina, and I created a show aboard Princess Cruises’ brand new Majestic Princess. The remit from Princess for this show was that it needed to be as technologically advanced as possible, and that in its tempo and design density, needed to appeal to Chinese audiences; the ship would have its home port there.  

We had been creatively riffing a concept that we could implement a number in a show that uses autonomous drone choreography for some time. There’s been some notable occasions where drones have been used in production in the last year or so. Paramour, the Cirque show on Broadway, has a stunning number utilizing drones. And of course, Lady Gaga's Super Bowl performance deployed the Intel drone swarm to great effect.  

In this case, the circumstances were a little different. In cruise entertainment, there are a host of conditions that are unique to the form. The venue is entirely made of steel… The crews have numerous responsibilities onboard, making the presence of a singularly specialized technician impossible. And ultimately, the theater moves. A lot.  

With these unknowns logged, we contacted Verity Studios in Switzerland to see if they would be willing to see if the impossible might become possible. The Swiss are nothing if not circumspect. But they are also a brave lot, existing geographically in the center of a traditionally fraught bunch of neighbors. After letting us know all that could go wrong, they decided to join us in seeing “what if”…

The end result was a new product for Verity, the synthetic swarm. Because we were going to ultimately leave the show in the hands of folks who weren’t drone engineers, it would be critical that the system be durable and accessible. The synthetic swarm system is calculated to give the end user technical processes and an “interface” for choreography that will be intuitive to production professionals. Verity dove into the engineering of a system with this in mind. How I love to be an alpha tester…

We were blessed in the endeavor to have Tracy Andronek as Princess’s Head of Automation.  She came from a background of installing, maintaining, and programming moving elements onstage, which was a great context. Tracy dove into learning the Verity show system, and sorting out best practices for using and maintaining the drones. Tracy’s success was proof positive that an “A” class production department head could assimilate and successfully deploy a drone system in the context of the show.

We learned some lessons along the way. Performance drones need to be lightweight. Every bit of weight is a battery driven consideration. To minimize the physical form, battery size had to be paired down. We wanted the drones to be nimble points of light. What that meant is that the flight time on a charge was constricted to about 3 to 5 minutes. In tech that meant we would get one shot at evaluating staging with the drones, and then they would need to recharge for about an hour. Note taken: In future productions, tech with a spare “swarm” in reserve!

The system uses positional feedback that relies on communication between the drones, sensors placed in space, and a central control system. Wireless communication can be fraught with unknowns under the best of circumstances. What we did know, is that our theater existed within a multilayer steel box. For the nerds among us, let’s just say, uh, faraday cage! Mmmmm. 

Additionally, the venue existed within the larger construct of a vessel that had many layers of its own communications requirements, including ship to shore and ship to ship positional data broadcasting, that ended up on our frequencies. Discovering that was a problem demanded some intense detective work on Pablo’s part. It speaks to the constant need to assess local conditions and circumstances in all of our gigs, and how our technological approaches might be affected by factors beyond our normal production sphere.

The end result was an astonishing number onstage. A combination of content, automation, flying points of light, and a heart wrenching performance of Katy Perry’s “Rise.”  We’re forging forward with more drone ideas now. These and other lessons pointing toward new evolutions we hope to bring to the creative and technological process.

If you are interested in incorporating drones, there are going to be some great panels and demos at LDI this year. Make sure to check it out!

Bob Bonniol is a director and production designer known for his implementation of extensive media and interactive features in his productions. Currently he is the creative director for the massive renovation of The Core at General Motors' World Headquarters in Detroit. The installation features the largest permanent interactively driven LED screen array on earth. In 2016, he was production designer for the Star Wars Celebration segment of ABC’s Disneyland 60th Anniversary Special, working closely with Lucasfilm, Disney Music Group, and director Amy Tinkham.   

Other clients have included Marvel Studios, The Walt Disney Company, Live Nation, AEG, Feld Entertainment, Chrysler Corporation, Activision/Blizzard, America's Got Talent, X-FactorAmerican Idol, Blue Man Group, Microsoft, Nokia as well as countless recording artists, Broadway producers, opera companies, theme parks, cruise lines, dance companies, and architects.