Al-Qadsiah FC fans were waiting passionately for this iconic day. And here it came. On 6th of May 2024 their favorite football team finally advanced to the Saudi Pro League.
The club directors didn’t want a party. Instead, they threw no less than a 3-day Qadsiah festival in Khobar to mark the new era of excellence for the club.
Their first request to us was to make the entire event a spectacle. The second one was to introduce the new club logo. Namely, to showcase it in the most impressive way, inspiring the club team, fans and sports reporters with the renewal.
With its insane marketing effect, the drone light show became the choice.
If They Collide, Game Is Over
We’ve hardly seen more lighting equipment on a single project.
To name a few, it included fireworks, lights, lasers, light beams, 3D mapping. Plus, every drone animation and pyro explosion had to be synced with the music to give goosebumps of excitement to the audience at precise moments.
At Lumasky, we love such challenges. To place a giant drone-built ball in the sky so that it will be visible among the fireworks explosions, not collide with them or roll away accidentally from the pyro fountain epicenter. What task can be more driving?
Even a split-second miscalculation could disrupt the entire show. Working closely with laser and pyro technicians, we managed to provide electric, yet safe performance.
Here’s what we did:
- We came up with the idea to equip the entire fleet of 2,000 drones with high-intensity LEDs. They emitted light 14 times brighter than the previous LEDs. Thus, all our drone images did not blend in with the insanely luminous environment, but looked distinctly in the sky and maintained their role of the headliner of the whole performance.
- We spent 2 days on tests making sure the new drones fly error-free. No drone should fall, no drone should look less brighter than any other from a drone swarm. Thanks to the tests, the drones performed perfectly on the very showday.
- We noticed signal interference while tuning the drone station. To amplify the signal reception, we put a repeater on the tower roof. Thanks to that, we reached the maximum signal accuracy. As a result, the drones stuck to their routes, while the viewers enjoyed the nicely designed images.
- We outlined the drone flight zones and the pyro burst zones to ensure 0 collisions between them. Nothing should distract the audience’s attention and steal away the beauty of the show.
- We fine-tuned the down-to-seconds timings with the music team. The giant ball, the new logo and other formations showed up to the crescendo of the music, causing emotional resonance in the audience exactly at these dramatic points. As it was intended.
How We Made It Perfectly Seen By 10 Cameras And 34,000 Eyes
The lead character of this fairy-tale was the Water Tower.
The drone light show was to be centered right above it, matching the mapping, lasers and other effects. The visual must not look distorted from any perspective. 10+ cameras recording the show from different angles complicated this task. And so did 17,000 Al-Qadsiah fans. Stretched along 1.5 km of the waterfront, they risked watching the drone formations distorted or separated from the overall visual storytelling.
Our top pilot took a number of steps to prevent that.
Having arrived at the launch site, we realized that the previously defined positioning of drones wasn’t aligned with the tower axis. So we assigned different coordinates to the drones in the program. This was done several times until we calibrated their positioning to the accuracy to 3 cm only. After that, every drone formation seemed to fly right out of the tower no matter where you stood. And being rotated, it made a perfect image for all those watching.
Such finely orchestrated drone visuals kept the audience in awe throughout the entire 10-minute performance. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more breathtaking, the new club logo showed up in the night sky, causing a firestorm of emotions on the ground.
An hour later we tracked a bunch of posts and shares of these captivating visuals in social media.
If this isn’t the best way to present a new thing, we don’t know what is.
‘You Made History With This Show’
Meticulous orchestration of this performance was nothing short of a technological marvel. We are grateful for an opportunity to work with so many skilled teams on the spot under the direction of the famous show designer Olivier Ferrucci.
They say, the Lumasky drone light show made history that day.
If you want to make history with your event too, contact us for a drone performance that blows minds.
