Concert drone present organiser describes ‘nerve-wracking but exciting’ night
T
he mastermind behind the “largest ever multi-location UK drone show” stated pulling off the Coronation Concert spectacle was a “nerve-wracking but exciting” expertise.
Patrick O’Mahony, founder and director of Skymagic, stated 1,000 drones took half within the gentle exhibits over Windsor Castle, Cardiff Bay and the Eden Project in Cornwall on Sunday.
The lights of the drones fashioned shapes celebrating the King’s love of the pure world, together with a blue whale which appeared within the sky above Windsor through the live performance.
Artists together with Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Take That carried out as a part of a star-studded line-up.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport hailed the “spectacular scenes”, saying it was the “largest ever multi-location UK drone show”.
When US singer Perry, 38, walked out singing the opening lyrics to her hit Roar, a drone projection of a lion’s head appeared within the sky above her.
And when British-Moroccan singer Zak Abel sang the Simple Minds hit Don’t You Forget About Me, a drone scene of a Prince Charles clematis flower appeared within the sky over Windsor, adopted by a large multi-coloured butterfly.
Speaking on Monday, Mr O’Mahony instructed BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It was the biggest single performance across multi sites we’ve ever done, so to try and co-ordinate it all from one central location in Windsor and trigger three shows all at the same time, all with obviously not rehearsing, giving the game away in advance, it was a quite nerve-wracking but exciting evening really.”
He stated that they had rehearsed at a “secret location up in Yorkshire” in order to not spoil the shock.
On what number of drones have been concerned, he stated: “It was 1,000 across all three sites, so the biggest show we’ve done like that.”
He stated three operators have been wanted to run the complete fleet, one per web site.
Mr O’Mahony added: “Each individual drone has its own little mission loaded onto it and we have then one operator and a back-up operator who triggers that show sequence and sends the drones up.
“And then in effect we, at the right, very precise time, press the ‘go’ button and each little drone then flies its own individual mission.
“No one drone knows where the other drones are in the fleet so they’re not talking, they’re all individual in terms of that movement, they fly the entire routine and luckily come back home at the end of it.
“When we have the final file, our pilot then uploads that to all the drones but each individual drone has its own separate file attached to it.”
On whether or not something went fallacious, he added: “No, we had a perfect run.
“The weather was great, which was always a big relief for us, and then each individual site all their fleets went up, came down and we were bang on time across locations which was really wonderful to see.
“We can fly in light rain, if it was very, very heavy rain then that would stop us, the same with very high winds. But normally we can fly in most conditions.”
The live performance was watched by a mean viewers of 10.1 million, in keeping with in a single day figures from the BBC.
The occasion was hosted by actor Hugh Bonneville and featured a cameo from The Muppet characters Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, in addition to a recorded video message to Charles from Top Gun star Tom Cruise.