These Are The Drones You're Looking For

May 23, 2022 2:48 PM

Disney+ set up a spectacular drone show in the skies over Lisbon to hype the launch of the new Obi Wan Kenobi series. One of the producers, Fabrice N'Kom from Dronisos, explains.
posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

commercial in the sky ... with glasses
posted by wmo at 5:16 PM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.
posted by credulous at 5:56 PM on May 23, 2022 [25 favorites]

The Tie Fighter made of blue dots reminds me of the 1983 Star Wars arcade game with wire-frame vector graphics.

Which makes me wonder if 40 years from now we'll have swarms of tiny drones making three-dimensional "holograms" with the fidelity of today's video games. Yikes.
posted by straight at 6:13 PM on May 23, 2022 [13 favorites]

Is there software that coordinates this now? Conceptually this doesn't seem too difficult, but 500 drones is a lot. I estimated low at $300/drone, that's $150k. Probably another $50k easily for replacement and additional capex, so $250k plus the animation? Is there a plugin for Blender or an animation tool where they somehow do a 1:1 mapping? 8 weeks, 5 people billing at $250/hr? That's what $400k? So $550k to just put on this light show is pretty expensive.

Edit: Looks like I was pretty right on the numbers! Intel sells it at $300k and a 5-8 week lead time so I was pretty close on that. They also require travel and the associated costs of fencing off the area, etc. This is a show well north of $1million.
posted by geoff. at 2:31 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Getting a 404 on that instagram link, is it this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUAFoV_ZY1o
posted by DreamerFi at 2:57 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yes, that's the same show, maybe the Zapruder version. Thanks!
(The second link in the post with the interview also has a lot of footage).
posted by chavenet at 3:31 AM on May 24, 2022

I feel drone shows are the 2020s equivalent of Magic Eye photos in the 1990s.
posted by rongorongo at 4:38 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.

I mean sure, and the flip side of fireworks will always be gunpowder, but using technology to make beautiful things should still be celebrated as the best possible use case. I love that this is possible, and outside of an advertising context can’t wait to see what artists might do with it.
posted by Mchelly at 4:49 AM on May 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Beautiful things should still be celebrated, even if they are designed to indoctrinate children into lifetime consumption, enriching a corporate behemoth who routinely perverts democratic rule and abuses their workers at every turn.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:13 AM on May 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I feel drone shows are the 2020s equivalent of Magic Eye photos in the 1990s.

Right, except you can just look at a drone show and see what it is, whereas Magic Eye always felt like some kind of emperor's new clothes scam, where I could never tell if the people who claimed to be able to see the images were having a laugh at the expense of people like me who could never decipher them, no matter how long I stared cross-eyed at the poster at the mall kiosk.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:38 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I love that this is possible, and outside of an advertising context can’t wait to see what artists might do with it.
(I made an FPP about "Fare Well" - a Scottish drone show/film/poem released in the depths of the 2020 lockdown. Would recommend - and it can be seen here (part 1, part2, part 3). In this case, what seems to have made this work for me is the interweaving to the drone footage, the landscape the poetry and the music into one edited piece. )
posted by rongorongo at 7:17 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

no matter how long I stared cross-eyed at the poster at the mall kiosk

Oh yeah look… it's a sailboat.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:37 AM on May 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Places where sky writing or towing advertising banners with a plane would probably allow 2/4/6/12x7x365 drone "shows". Really it's just a matter of time before Coke or somebody has drone advertising every evening off some beach hot spot. Those mobile billboard trucks cost upwards of 4k a day and they only cover a small subset of potential viewers compared to a drone show.
posted by Mitheral at 10:34 AM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Now do My Dinner with Andre!
posted by the sobsister at 11:02 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

using technology to make beautiful things should still be celebrated as the best possible use case.

I find your abundance of faith refreshing. [force chokes self]
posted by credulous at 11:37 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm waiting for the Muskian Starlink show with hideous meme energy to be a sign of the accuracy of some kind of anti-millenarianist prophecy.
posted by Pembquist at 11:38 AM on May 24, 2022 [3 favorites]