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Sky Elements Drones
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Sky Elements Drones
This holiday season, Sky Elements Drones will light up Historic Downtown Grapevine with its seasonally-inspired Merry & Bright Shows. Earning a Guinness World Record for largest drone performance, Sky Elements pushes the boundaries of entertainment with breathtaking aerial displays nationwide. Returning to the Christmas Capital of Texas on Dec. 16 and 19, company president Rick Boss sits down to discuss how his drones help keep the holidays magical.
DRONE SHOWS ARE A… fantastic way to engage the audience more deeply — to tell the story more effectively. There are multiple drone shows that we've produced where the emotional reaction is so strong audience members are left crying. When you touch somebody, when you can tell their story in the sky, it's very personal, engaging and impactful.
OUR TYPICAL PROJECT TAKES… six to eight weeks to bring to life. We have a storyboard process we go through to make sure all the elements that will be a part of their show, from music to voiceover, are impacting correctly. Once the storyboard is complete, our animators get to work. In a typical 300-drone show, it might take 60 to 120 hours to animate each one of those dots. At the end of that process, there's a video rendering of exactly what the show looks like. Since it's flown by computer, we know exactly what they'll do in the sky. Then it's the physical part, and it’s actually less work. We typically show up about five hours before the show and set up all the drones to ensure everything is working properly.
ALL OF THE SHOW IS… animated in 3D animation software. Each one of those [LED] dots is animated individually. Then the specific path that they follow is downloaded into the drone, and one pilot controls it all. We can have 2,000 drones on the ground. All of it is pre-programmed, and the pilot’s job is to make sure that all the drones are healthy, everything is safe, coordinate their clocks and then send them into the sky.
WE CAN DO… anything with the drones. [You] can be really creative in the story that you tell and how you tell it. You're only limited by your imagination.
THE GRAPEVINE SHOW IS… one of my favorites. We fly 160-200 drones, and the reason it's so impactful is it's packed with everybody in the community. You hear all the kids hooting and hollering, guessing what the next shape will be. ‘It's Rudolph, Santa, a snowflake,’ and it's just so much fun. Grapevine is such a fantastic place to bring your family. The drone show has been the newest element added to that event, and it makes for a fantastic cap to the end of the night.
MOST FOLKS HAVE… never seen a drone show in person. We get comments all the time like, 'I've seen them on YouTube, but I had no idea they were this big' because the drone show is massive in scale. And that's part of what really wows you. It's awe-inspiring when you see something 600 feet across and 400 feet tall flying in the sky.
THE DEMAND… has been ramping up so fast over the last three years. We just saw more and more drone shows. It's going to be as ubiquitous as fireworks and laser shows. We see the market continuing to grow, and it'll continue to change. You'll see larger shows, more complex imagery and more artistic imagery. I think it's going to be a really fun space for a long time.