=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 491 ===
Title: LDO 491 - with Celestial Drone Shows
Recorded: 2025-01-23
Hosts: Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews
Guest(s): Anthony Burry, John "JP" Partridge
Total audience: 1,199
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOXMokGWO9w); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2018031145-letsdroneout-ldo-491-with-celestial-drone-shows.mp3)
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Check Out Celestial Online:
https://celestial.show/
https://www.instagram.com/celestial_drones
https://www.facebook.com/CelestialDrones

[0.0] Jack: Hello, and you're listening to Let's Drone Out, a special thank you to our lovely patrons
[6.28] Jack: that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things
[11.36] Jack: we say.
[13.0] Jack: Massive thank you to…
[14.4] Jack: Carlos Campos!
[16.2] Jack: Art Faulkner!
[17.84] Jack: Sam Dahmer.
[19.68] Frank: On with the show.
[20.68] Stephen: Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out.
[55.19] Stephen: It's Thursday 8pm on the 23rd of January.
[59.31] Stephen: And this is episode 491 of Let's Drone Out, joined by Celestial Drone Shows this week.
[68.43] Stephen: We'd like to welcome Ant and JP from Celestial to the show.
[73.03] Stephen: Welcome guys.
[74.03] Stephen: Hello.
[75.03] Stephen: Hey.
[76.03] Stephen: And you're also joined by the regulars, Jack.
[79.95] Stephen: Hello.
[82.15] Stephen: Our Lord and Master Frank, who may or may not be attached to the internet.
[86.39] Stephen: Hello.
[88.39] Stephen: Curry Kitten.
[90.39] Stephen: Sorry?
[91.39] Stephen: Er, everyone's favourite.
[93.39] Stephen: There you have it, Curry Kitten.
[96.39] Stephen: Hello!
[98.39] Stephen: We could have gone on all night if we hadn't said that.
[101.39] Stephen: And myself, Stephen.
[102.39] Stephen: Welcome everyone.
[103.39] Stephen: I hope you enjoy the show.
[105.39] Stephen: I'm going to hand over now to Jack and Frank who have got some first-hand experience with
[109.39] Stephen: these displays and let them quiz the guys.
[111.39] Stephen: So, over to you.
[114.39] Frank: Yeah, because, er, well, basically I've had in my Google Alerts for ages about any drone
[119.39] Frank: shows anywhere near me that I can go to because I've been fascinated by sort of seeing YouTube
[124.39] Frank: videos about them and I wanted to see them in person.
[127.39] Frank: And so, there was the, er, the Alley Palley, Alexander Palley's fireworks display back
[133.39] Frank: in, obviously, November.
[135.39] Frank: And, er, er, there was sort of the, er, that popped up as being, ah, there's going to be
[141.39] Frank: a drone show attached to that.
[142.39] Frank: Great!
[143.39] Frank: So, I did the five-hour round trip for that and the drone show alone was entirely worth
[149.39] Frank: the visit.
[150.39] Frank: It was, er, a great show.
[152.39] Frank: Erm, you know, it completely blew my mind as to what could be done, er, with this kind
[158.39] Frank: of new medium, new creative medium.
[161.39] Frank: Erm, so, I was, I was really excited about it and then saw that you were doing another
[166.39] Frank: show about 20 minutes walk away from Jack's house.
[170.39] Frank: So, I'm like, well, come on Jack, we're going to go and, and see, I want to show you, like,
[175.95] Frank: what this is about.
[176.95] Frank: Erm, so, we went to the, the, the Christmas Carol one, er, down in Brighton and, and so
[183.83] Frank: we sort of, you know, I've, I've seen almost, er, two different shows that it's like so
[189.83] Frank: different.
[190.83] Frank: So, the one at Alexandra Palace was, er, the Cosmic Wisdom, er, this routine that you do,
[196.15] Frank: erm, which is sort of, er, I would describe as quite abstract, erm, but still has a kind
[202.07] Frank: of narrative to it, whereas Christmas Carol is, is kind of, er, is very much a narrative
[207.19] Frank: and it's, it's almost doing a sort of Jack and Norrie displaying, er, things while the,
[212.55] Frank: er, er, you know, while the story is being told.
[215.75] Frank: So, it's kind of two different takes on it and I just, I was very impressed by kind of
[220.43] Frank: how you're taking this as a, a creative medium and sort of moving past the technological
[225.59] Frank: side and making it into an artful, er, so that was kind of my take on it, but Jack,
[233.31] Frank: with his arts degree, I imagine had some other thoughts on it.
[236.67] Jack: No, it, it was, er, yeah, it was really good.
[240.51] Jack: I mean, yeah, my art degree was hard at work there, enjoying that, that show.
[246.67] Jack: Erm, I, I, I, I did, I did miss some fireworks, I'm sure the, the local hove people would
[253.35] Jack: have loved that, but it was, er, erm, yeah, it, it was impressive how much you did.
[263.11] Jack: I, you know, erm, er, in like that amount of space, I was like, wow, and there was like
[271.75] Jack: so many of them.
[272.95] Jack: I did also manage to blag my way over and speak to, speak to Lee and I just, I would
[280.87] Jack: have loved to have gone over, looked at a drone, kind of, I mean, the charging scale
[287.39] Jack: of like, your batteries is impressive.
[291.95] Jack: It's just 50 cal, like, ammo tins just whizzing past me and being feevishly plugged in.
[301.11] Jack: And, er, I was just like, wow, like, you know, and, er, all, all quality brand.
[307.43] Jack: So I kind of, I had a little peek behind the curtain and I, I kind of want more, hence
[313.07] Jack: why I'm hoping that I can, I can get up to the line of asking you some, er, technical
[319.19] Jack: questions if that's all right at some point, but, but, er, yeah.
[325.99] Frank: So between you two, how, how have you two got involved with celestial and drone shows?
[331.43] Frank: So, so JP, if you maybe want to introduce yourself first.
[336.31] John "JP" Partridge: Sure. Yeah. Thank you guys for having us both on. It's really, really interesting and great
[340.87] John "JP" Partridge: to be sort of telling, telling everyone about what we do. My background is I've spent my
[346.71] John "JP" Partridge: entire career for sort of 15, nearly 20 years in the live events industry, in sort of live
[353.75] John "JP" Partridge: events, live concert touring predominantly. So I've toured the world with some pretty
[359.59] John "JP" Partridge: well-known bands as a lighting designer, lighting director, production designer. So
[367.83] John "JP" Partridge: I did that for the majority of my career. Then lockdown hit and that all stopped like
[373.19] John "JP" Partridge: a tap. Immediately there was no concerts anywhere in the world. So by chance I rented a unit
[381.03] John "JP" Partridge: which is on this kind of industrial complex where we're based. Celestial moved in next
[386.39] John "JP" Partridge: door. The moment I saw they were flying drones, you know, it's like a moth to a lamp.
[392.55] John "JP" Partridge: You know, after doing 15 years of lights hanging in roofs of arenas and stadiums, suddenly we're
[397.75] John "JP" Partridge: doing lights that are flying in the sky. So, but yeah, really early on I got involved and,
[403.99] John "JP" Partridge: and stuck around until now. So yeah. And I've been involved in the production side of things
[411.19] John "JP" Partridge: since that, since that time and flying, you know, being part of flying most of the shows
[418.39] Anthony Burry: around the world. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, my background's also in lighting. I
[425.59] Anthony Burry: specialised in those like fashion wristbands you see at the Coldplay. Oh yeah. The IRL ones.
[432.55] Anthony Burry: Help to produce those. And you know, I've been working in live shows for about 15 years as well.
[440.07] Anthony Burry: So doing lots of that, lots of touring. And then I've been a celestial for five years now,
[445.51] Anthony Burry: ever since the first day when it was just a couple of guys dicking around in a shed,
[451.99] Anthony Burry: which was too hard to believe doing now, but we have a slightly nicer shed.
[457.19] Anthony Burry: Yeah. And a lot more coats. Yeah. And then, yeah, I've been at every single show we've ever done.
[462.95] Frank: So do you have a sense of what kicked off the drone show kind of scene? Like was it
[475.75] Frank: suddenly that drones had enough power to lift the LEDs? Was it that the LEDs all of a sudden
[482.39] Frank: were powerful enough to do the job? Or do you have a sense of that? Or is it just enough people
[489.11] Anthony Burry: came together at the right time? I mean, it was probably the declassification of the RTK system,
[495.35] Anthony Burry: because that's military tech. And after that, you start to see a lot more interesting things
[500.23] Anthony Burry: happening with drones. And I think it was Intel that did the first proper drone show as a sort
[506.47] Anthony Burry: of a branding gag. And they have like a whole department at Intel dedicated to it. Yeah,
[511.11] John "JP" Partridge: it was the first bit I saw one of the first Intel shows by charge. I was on tour in America and we
[516.15] John "JP" Partridge: did a show at Coachella Music Festival. Behind the stage literally where the tour versus park
[522.55] John "JP" Partridge: Intel, you know, you saw these cases of Intel, which is what are Intel doing here and what are
[527.67] John "JP" Partridge: they doing out in the middle of the desert? And then out of them got really rudimentary,
[532.63] John "JP" Partridge: like pirate, you know, they were like polystyrene drones, essentially. And they threw I think a
[539.75] John "JP" Partridge: swarm of 100 drones, just chucking down on the ground, the center mark and did this first sort
[545.75] John "JP" Partridge: of show. And that was really early days, probably 2014, something like that. 14, 15, that sort of
[555.19] John "JP" Partridge: time. And they, yeah, and then I think, yeah, they must have invested a ton of money and then
[561.35] John "JP" Partridge: really developed the technology and yeah, yeah, definitely the innovation is interesting about
[568.23] Stephen: the RTK. Yeah. Yeah, is it purely RTK? Because I kind of get the feeling that there's some issues
[575.19] Stephen: with networking these as well. And it's taken a while to kind of get radio protocols so that
[580.39] Stephen: you can control that many at once and they can talk to each other as well.
[584.15] Anthony Burry: It's not too bad, actually. I mean, there's been, you know, obviously a lot of advances in Wi-Fi
[589.35] Anthony Burry: over the years, like, especially like 5G or whatnot. But I mean, well, events like a few years ago,
[596.23] Anthony Burry: you couldn't get any Wi-Fi reception anywhere. But yeah, they seem to have changed that a lot
[602.55] John "JP" Partridge: recently, probably about to last like 10 years. So yeah, massively improved. It used to be the
[609.03] John "JP" Partridge: thing of like the moment the band would come on stage, everyone's phone would lose like signal,
[613.67] John "JP" Partridge: you know, Wi-Fi would just drop out because everyone's unlocked their phones to like video it.
[617.51] John "JP" Partridge: So live events kind of thing going back like, you know, 10 years, you would find, you know,
[623.27] John "JP" Partridge: anything that will run off Wi-Fi just would just sort of drop out or get, you know, latency.
[628.23] Stephen: So did you have to look elsewhere instead of relying on Wi-Fi then? Do you come up with your
[632.79] Stephen: own solutions? Or are there other kinds of competing standards that fare a bit better
[636.63] John "JP" Partridge: in those sort of crowded events? Well, yeah, I think it was the advancement of Wi-Fi, you know,
[642.47] John "JP" Partridge: 5.6 and Wi-Fi 6 coming out. And, you know, it's that advancement that's enabled you to,
[649.19] John "JP" Partridge: I mean, my understanding would be that, yeah, yeah, I think the fact that you've got so many objects,
[656.31] John "JP" Partridge: you know, the thing with drone swarms is you're laying out 800 objects a meter apart in a really
[661.19] John "JP" Partridge: close area. And then they're taking off with planning out over a really large area, you know,
[666.15] John "JP" Partridge: 150 meters. So it's like the two completely changing environments all the time. Yeah,
[672.31] Anthony Burry: I mean, Wi-Fi traffic tends to hang down quite low. So the moment you get above like a crowd,
[677.51] Anthony Burry: for example, you see a significant increase in signal strength. Because you have a bit of a
[683.83] Stephen: nail biting range when you're like, just get up there. Yeah, I mean, that's always in the back of
[690.71] Anthony Burry: your mind. But yeah, like, yeah, don't really have that many network problems. Like, it's actually
[698.55] Stephen: quite a relief, really. That's good to hear. It's something that kind of plagues the amateur side
[704.07] Stephen: of it as well. You always like fighting radio links, I guess, because we more want to fly like
[708.71] Stephen: round the back of buildings and through all sorts of dense obstacles rather than just put them up
[713.03] Frank: in the sky. Even in the fields, when we've got more than three people, we can end up struggling.
[720.87] Frank: But we're putting, you know, full video over that. So that's kind of the difference, I imagine.
[727.11] Stephen: Yeah, we use 5.8 for video on our side. We don't use that for communication. We're
[731.99] Curry: spending less information than one video screen. Yeah. I heard the words RTK several times and
[741.27] Anthony Burry: Frank and Stephen nodded. What's RTK? It stands for real-time kinematic. So basically, you have a,
[750.07] Anthony Burry: do you want me to get really technical?
[753.75] Jack: You're on a Jones show full of nerds, please.
[756.23] Anthony Burry: You've got a GPS receiver, you plunk it down in the field, and then you get it to survey its
[771.19] Anthony Burry: location over a period of time. So over this period of time, it's getting loads and loads
[776.15] Anthony Burry: of GPS signals that are telling you where it is. So you take all of those points, you average it out,
[783.59] Anthony Burry: and you know with a reasonable degree of certainty where that GPS antenna is in the world.
[793.03] Anthony Burry: Because there's all sorts of things that affect GPS, for example, the space weather.
[796.47] Anthony Burry: So you can have solar wind, which can slightly below satellites, of course, and then that can
[803.11] Anthony Burry: sometimes affect your GPS. So if you look at a drone's GPS in mission planning, for example,
[810.79] Anthony Burry: you'll notice it's been dotting around. And that is down to things like space weather or your GPS
[816.95] Anthony Burry: not being slightly accurate. What the RTK does is that after it's done its survey, it knows that
[824.47] Anthony Burry: every single GPS location it receives after the survey, it knows what the margin of error is.
[830.15] Anthony Burry: So if it knows the margin of error, it can transmit that to all of the other GPS antennas
[837.03] Curry: in the same location. Does that make sense? Yeah, so in your drone swarm, basically everybody is
[845.75] Curry: comfortable with all their GPS locations in comparison to everybody else, which I suppose
[850.63] Stephen: is very important when you're flying them all up and not crashing into it. So you've got this static
[856.47] Stephen: ground GPS that's used to calibrate everything else, and you use the offset from that to
[863.03] Stephen: stop they're being drift in the airborne GPS. So you can actually get down to centimeter accuracy
[868.79] Anthony Burry: with that. It's really, really quite amazing what you can do with that. It's the same kind of
[875.91] Anthony Burry: technology that's used in the farm machinery now. So you've got the KAWS network, which is literally
[881.35] Anthony Burry: just an RTK station just based on the farm. And today the farm machinery goes into it.
[887.51] Stephen: I'd seen it used in some very large filming drones so that they could do like a camera in
[893.11] Stephen: the sky type moves and they could send the camera over a 3D pass and it could then like rewind
[898.55] Stephen: exactly the same track and do it again with the camera pointing exactly the same place in the same
[903.35] Stephen: location. You can do kind of special effects tricks then by moving people in an app shot and
[909.75] Frank: having it replay the same camera move and things like that. Yeah, I think Painis360 I think has
[916.31] Frank: done some stuff with 3DXR on RTK GPS as well, particularly for them. I imagine it's for
[923.99] Frank: surveying and agricultural stuff. But I mean, if anyone's interested and wants to do a deep dive
[930.55] Frank: on that, I would go on Painis' channel and search for that. Alright, so that's been the big enabler
[940.86] Stephen: then pretty much just to get everything working so that you can hold a fantastic RT pattern in
[946.94] Stephen: the sky. But there must be a ton of software to be able to actually draw with drones rather than
[953.42] Stephen: just fly around with a joystick, right? So what's going on there? Yeah, because we've all been sort
[959.34] Curry: of talking about this and we've been sort of developing our own theories. It's kind of like,
[964.46] Curry: at some scale, can you just say I want this drone to go there and that drone to go there,
[968.94] Curry: but they don't need to know about each other. It's fine with the software sort out or
[973.26] Curry: when you get bigger, do they need to know where each other is and do they work it out themselves?
[976.94] Curry: We've all been fascinated by the idea of how the software works and we really want to know, basically.
[984.62] Anthony Burry: So the drones don't actually know what they have no knowledge of each other.
[989.58] Anthony Burry: And everything is synchronised to GPS APOC time. So you just tell them when to start the mission.
[997.98] Anthony Burry: Each drone is given a different segment of the animation and the animation is checked
[1006.86] Anthony Burry: in advance to see if drones are going too fast or if you've got any parts that are getting too close
[1011.26] Anthony Burry: to each other. And, you know, thanks to the accuracy of RTK, you know that with a reasonable
[1017.34] Anthony Burry: degree of certainty, like that your drones are going to be safe to fly. So I'm not going to
[1024.54] Frank: explain that. No, that makes sense. So you did your design on your platform and then you're
[1032.46] Frank: saying this is, I mean, a lot of people listening will know from 3D printers about G-code and tool
[1038.7] Frank: paths and things. So I imagine it's the same sort of thing where you've got your design, the part
[1043.98] Frank: that you want, and then you make your paths out of that and then you're assigning each one of those
[1050.38] Frank: paths to a drone. And that's all that drone knows is it needs to do this path at this exact time.
[1057.1] Frank: And that's all it knows. And it doesn't have to worry about coordinating with anyone else.
[1062.86] Frank: It just needs to know it's offset from the RTK and where its next weight point is, I guess.
[1069.26] John "JP" Partridge: Exactly. And then you press play on all of those records all at once and that's the magic of it.
[1074.38] Stephen: How do you deal with situations like batteries emptying? And if it's emptying
[1079.82] Stephen: faster than expected, do you have to have them responding with telemetry and be like,
[1083.42] Stephen: oh, swap that one? Or do you just always fly them with loads of battery margin and just swap
[1088.3] Anthony Burry: and the batteries are only half full or something? Yeah, I mean, we've done loads and loads of
[1093.5] Anthony Burry: testing over the years. So we know how much juice we need in a battery before we take off
[1100.54] Anthony Burry: for a certain length of show. And flying a drone display is a lot like flying a spreadsheet.
[1110.38] Anthony Burry: Looking at a spreadsheet with loads of light batteries coming out.
[1113.5] Stephen: Every drone's a little line on a spreadsheet or a little column and you're just peering at them
[1117.26] Stephen: constantly looking for anything that's unusual. It's like, oh, you know, in 10 minutes, that's
[1122.06] Anthony Burry: going to run down by X number of a cent. Then you can make some pretty reasonably
[1128.38] John "JP" Partridge: accurate calculations based off of that. That's the only live data as well, isn't there a chance?
[1136.3] Anthony Burry: Well, we get quite a few different bits of my data. So things like satellite count,
[1140.94] Anthony Burry: position, battery, whether or not there's any sort of errors, GPS quality, that kind of thing.
[1147.18] John "JP" Partridge: I think it's good to think. It's like the actual paths are uploaded up onto the drones and they're
[1151.66] John "JP" Partridge: just running that as a pre-recorded animation that we get all of that telemetry data live.
[1157.26] John "JP" Partridge: We're not flying the drones live as well, are we?
[1162.38] Stephen: Yeah, in as much as you're not really moving the head on a 3D printer live, you're just...
[1167.1] Stephen: Yeah, exactly that.
[1170.38] Jack: Are you getting that over Wi-Fi network or are you using SIC receivers?
[1177.02] Anthony Burry: We can know as a Wi-Fi.
[1178.94] Curry: Oh, okay, cool.
[1180.78] Curry: Is this like commercially available software for doing this or is this something you've developed in-house?
[1186.78] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, I mean, it's a mixture. We've used a lot of different... There's commercially made
[1194.15] John "JP" Partridge: light software and then there's a combination of off-the-shelf animation software that we've
[1201.43] John "JP" Partridge: tweaked to exactly our requirements and our design parameters. There's lots of photons and
[1209.03] John "JP" Partridge: plug-ins and we use multiple bits of software to do that. The flight software is
[1215.59] John "JP" Partridge: emotionally available but it's very specialized to just drone swarms.
[1224.07] Frank: What about the hardware as well? Are you getting fairly off-the-shelf drones and LEDs and putting
[1231.03] Frank: them together or how much of that have you had to develop in-house?
[1238.02] John "JP" Partridge: We use a relatively off-the-shelf drone that is, again, specifically designed for
[1246.18] John "JP" Partridge: drone light shows. It's assembled elsewhere and then we import them and then we do a bit of
[1253.86] John "JP" Partridge: modifying, a bit of tweaking, a bit of R&D work ourselves but it's, again, a bespoke design for
[1261.94] John "JP" Partridge: R&D drone swarms specifically. It's the actual frame. The airframe is very similar to an FPV
[1269.7] John "JP" Partridge: style drone. Quite lightweight, quite nimble. Just as a comparison, because if we're talking
[1277.06] Curry: about flying an FPV drone around because it's loaded down with cameras and GoPros and stuff
[1283.3] Curry: and we're being stupidly high on the throttle, we might get four minutes out of something.
[1288.58] Curry: So what sort of battery capacity do you carry and how long would you expect it to be able to
[1294.42] Anthony Burry: fly in your shows? I think it's, what, 5200 mAh of the current countries we've got?
[1305.43] John "JP" Partridge: Yes, big battery. We're about 1.2 kilograms on takeoff. One of the R&D pieces we do is looking
[1316.79] John "JP" Partridge: at battery technology and making sure we've got the most latest kind of mix of, you know,
[1322.79] John "JP" Partridge: make of other batteries. We get at the minute, we can do sort of a 13-minute show.
[1329.43] Anthony Burry: Yeah, I mean, but then you've got takeoff and landing on top of that, which will add an extra
[1333.11] Anthony Burry: couple of minutes. So you're looking at about 15 minutes of flight time. But then you've got the
[1337.51] Anthony Burry: R&D as well, which can run down your batteries quite a bit. And we saw at the Brighton show,
[1343.35] Frank: the Christmas Carol show, you split the fleet into different groups and then did it in sort
[1349.91] Frank: of three different sections. So although each flight might have been 15 minutes, we saw a
[1355.91] Anthony Burry: 45-minute hour-long show. Yeah, exactly. That was actually the longest drone show in the world.
[1363.03] Anthony Burry: I've actually beat the world record by like 15 minutes. Yeah, well done. Well done.
[1369.11] John "JP" Partridge: Good job. Yeah, that's another sort of secret recipe that we've been sort of finding for a while
[1373.75] John "JP" Partridge: is the, you know, the seamless handover of drone swarms, you know, to keep that show going.
[1379.35] Anthony Burry: Yeah, it's a pain in the ass too. Just like we were error checking and stuff on that and like
[1384.55] Anthony Burry: just being absolutely certain that nothing's getting too close to each other. So you've got
[1388.23] Stephen: to keep all the lights off on the ground to not distract from the display. So like pelting around
[1391.91] Anthony Burry: in the dark as well. You'd be surprised by where you can see them because they have like little
[1397.35] Anthony Burry: light and that flash. But yeah, you can see them. I was very surprised though at the Alexandra
[1409.51] Frank: Pound show because I knew from where I was sitting, I could see on the map, I could see
[1413.67] Frank: where they were going to take off, see where they were going to fly. I knew what the timing was and
[1418.95] Frank: I sat there looking at the ground waiting to see something take off and all of a sudden the show
[1424.63] Frank: started. How did they get that? I completely missed it. I didn't hear it. I think it was
[1429.43] John "JP" Partridge: very impressive. Yeah, I mean that's the one kind of beauty of it is, you know, if we want to sort
[1435.51] John "JP" Partridge: of appear by magic in the sky, you know, we can be corrupted so that we do that and like say,
[1441.27] John "JP" Partridge: surprise the audience. We do a lot of the big music festivals and that's a really big thing
[1450.07] John "JP" Partridge: that we play into is that sort of surprising the audience, you know, appearing in complete darkness,
[1455.51] John "JP" Partridge: you know, 600 drones appearing out of nowhere, you know, a giant skull or a giant face or
[1461.27] John "JP" Partridge: at the start, you know, it's quite something, especially a music festival at 10 30 at night
[1465.91] John "JP" Partridge: on the Saturday. That space invader. Yeah, the space invader. Yeah, multiple space invaders
[1471.43] John "JP" Partridge: turning up in the sky. You know, it's just sweet. You can share. Yeah.
[1477.03] Curry: Absolutely. So when when a show is going on, how much of your time is split between looking
[1485.43] Curry: up at the sky to make sure everything's good and looking at your telemetry, which, as you say,
[1489.75] Curry: it must be like a spreadsheet of stuff going through. It's kind of like reading the matrix
[1494.55] Anthony Burry: going on live to see if there's any issues. So we always fly with two pilots. So every single
[1501.11] Anthony Burry: thing that gets inputted into the drones has two sets of eyes on it. So if one person is looking
[1506.31] Anthony Burry: at the screen, the other person is looking up the sky or we always have an ADS-B monitor. We also
[1510.55] Anthony Burry: have a special analyzer that's constantly running throughout the show. So all of that stuff's being
[1515.59] Anthony Burry: checked like, you know, one more than one person. We've also got spotters out as well. So there'll
[1524.15] Anthony Burry: be like a group of people out in the field, like reporting back everything that they can see.
[1531.46] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, and they're all on sort of secure comms, you know, back to the pilots, you know,
[1536.9] John "JP" Partridge: they could be up to, you know, a thousand meters away, but on a special comms network
[1541.3] John "JP" Partridge: that doesn't interfere with anything that we're doing and can't be intercepted. You know,
[1545.62] John "JP" Partridge: those spotters are sending information into the pilots about what's actually happening.
[1550.9] John "JP" Partridge: Because sometimes, especially in the festival environments, you know, where Houston is placed,
[1554.74] John "JP" Partridge: we've got the last of the swarm, but you're not seeing it from distance, you know.
[1560.02] John "JP" Partridge: It's, yeah.
[1563.54] Stephen: So we had a question from the chat there wondering, to keep that kind of mass in the air and not burn
[1570.26] Stephen: through the battery, what sort of prop size are you running? Seven, eight, 10 inch, 12 inch?
[1575.46] Stephen: Your front? I don't know.
[1587.62] Stephen: I thought that would be ascribed onto your brain because you're buying all these things by the
[1591.3] Stephen: thousand. I imagine when you make the choice, you better be pretty careful because you're going to
[1595.46] John "JP" Partridge: be buying hundreds of them, aren't you? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. Some of the parts we buy,
[1600.1] John "JP" Partridge: you know, in the tens of thousands, you know, screws and washes and things, you know, it's huge.
[1605.3] John "JP" Partridge: The same with batteries, you know, you buy thousands of Li-Pose, you're not buying,
[1609.46] John "JP" Partridge: you're importing pallets from China, you're not buying a couple of, you know, two or three.
[1616.66] Frank: I imagine they didn't quite go through propellers the same way that some of the
[1620.42] Frank: rest of us might do, just because they're probably not flying into concrete quite as much as we do.
[1625.7] Anthony Burry: True. Yeah, I mean, they go through like scheduled maintenance regularly and, you know,
[1634.34] Anthony Burry: yeah, and during that they'll get a full prop change. And yeah, generally before a show,
[1639.94] Anthony Burry: as everything's been packed up, everything will be checked over as well. Do you like
[1642.9] Stephen: hand build these or do you outsource all the building to another company?
[1648.76] Anthony Burry: Well, we do all the maintenance in-house. Okay. Yeah, we don't build anything from scratch.
[1654.04] Jack: Oh, you don't build from scratch. Okay. Yeah. How did Celestial get started in drone light shows?
[1661.16] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, I like to say so. It was about five years ago, our founders essentially watched the,
[1667.64] John "JP" Partridge: I think it was the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Yeah, I think it was the Russian one. Yeah. And
[1674.68] John "JP" Partridge: yeah, Intel, I think we're doing a show there and that was the first sort of real big
[1680.52] John "JP" Partridge: main use of the technology. It was that case of, you know, we should bring that into the UK.
[1687.64] John "JP" Partridge: So immediately it was how do we do that? How do we work with the CAA to, you know,
[1693.72] John "JP" Partridge: draft paperwork on this? You know, it's completely new. So you don't have anything to reference
[1699.48] John "JP" Partridge: really. So yeah, it was, you know, but then very quickly, it was how do you take that technology
[1706.6] John "JP" Partridge: and use it slightly differently? You know, very, the early use of it is, you know, like in that
[1711.48] John "JP" Partridge: stadium, you know, the drone show is five, 600 meters away from the audience. Yes, it looks great
[1717.56] John "JP" Partridge: on camera, but you know, what is the actual impacts for the audience? And then we've sort of spun up
[1723.0] John "JP" Partridge: the other way now where like you say, when you came to some of our articulated shows where the
[1727.24] John "JP" Partridge: audience are buying center, you know, you're watching it in a stadium environment, 180 degrees
[1734.52] John "JP" Partridge: around drones take off in the middle of the cricket pitch as it were in Brighton, take off,
[1739.72] John "JP" Partridge: do a display in front of you, you know, it's like going to the theater and the drones are the actors
[1744.68] John "JP" Partridge: rather than, you know, many people. So it's definitely a new spin on that. And that's sort
[1749.48] Frank: of our journey in the last five years. Yeah. And how much of it now, I mean, we've touched on it
[1755.72] Frank: a bit, but how much of it now is a case of you designing sort of the experience and the show,
[1763.24] Frank: how much of the technical limitations, so like, you know, the radio range and making sure all the
[1770.2] Frank: noise floor is all good and the distance from your RTK between each drone and all of that,
[1776.12] Frank: how much are you coming up against the technical limitations and how much is just sort of your
[1781.32] John "JP" Partridge: creative vision at the moment? I think there's a bit about, I mean, the types of shows that I've
[1788.52] John "JP" Partridge: just talked about, you know, in stadiums, you know, we come across some challenges of how do you get
[1794.12] John "JP" Partridge: a lot of objects close to an audience in a cricket pitch, you know, you know, the centre of a cricket
[1801.08] John "JP" Partridge: pitch is like hallowed turf, you know, in some of these places, you know, and, you know, how do you
[1808.12] John "JP" Partridge: make that physically fit with the required safety distances all the way around, you know, some of
[1814.84] John "JP" Partridge: these, you know, stadiums in the UK are, you know, by their nature where they've been built in amongst
[1821.4] John "JP" Partridge: houses, you know, you're taking off, you know, 100 metres away from someone's house, you know,
[1825.56] John "JP" Partridge: how do you squeeze that around and how do you close that infrastructure? You've got some pretty crazy
[1830.04] Anthony Burry: looking fly boys, just to make the most of the space to make sure that you always keep your
[1835.32] John "JP" Partridge: safety distance. Yeah, yeah, when we send over some of our kind of KML specs and where the animators
[1841.16] John "JP" Partridge: have to animate within, you know, some of those volumes are pretty crazy. There would just be
[1848.2] Anthony Burry: like a small sliver of ancient ancient bit, like a dinosaur's head in, or like a wing of a dragon's
[1855.16] John "JP" Partridge: eye. So it's sort of squeezing, it's not quite round peg square hole thing, but it's close to it,
[1861.8] John "JP" Partridge: you know, it's really, yeah. Someone's left you a space in a jigsaw puzzle and you have to
[1869.48] John "JP" Partridge: cut your own shape to fit in that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But yeah, it's just sort of maximizing
[1876.68] John "JP" Partridge: the technology in the space that, you know, available and, you know, flying in these really
[1881.32] John "JP" Partridge: urban environments, which we sort of made a name for, you know, I think Eurovision was another good
[1886.68] John "JP" Partridge: one where we flew in like city centre of Liverpool, essentially right in the middle of Liverpool,
[1892.76] John "JP" Partridge: almost closing roads off, you know, behind the main kind of council building, you know,
[1898.6] John "JP" Partridge: you know, lifting up behind the building, pushing forward over the building, so the audience below
[1903.56] John "JP" Partridge: can see, you know, and it's all set cameras and TV. Do you try and play more of the line of sight
[1912.2] Anthony Burry: stuff as well? Yeah, like how the animations can make sense at that distance as well. Do you try
[1919.56] Stephen: and play with natural features and like appear over them or around them or combine them into
[1925.16] John "JP" Partridge: the pictures? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We try and use kind of the environment wherever we are,
[1931.56] John "JP" Partridge: you know, if you're near water, you know, you drop down lower, so you get reflections on water,
[1937.32] John "JP" Partridge: for example, you know, if you're near a building, you can maybe mimic part of the building.
[1943.24] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, you know, it's definitely kind of making some environment. Cool.
[1948.76] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to
[1953.08] Frank: make sense when it played audio only, censored to please the iTunes people, hosted on the internet,
[1958.36] Frank: forwarded through to your podcast provider, downloaded, playing on your device and is now
[1962.68] Frank: playing in your ears. All thanks to our Patreons. Consider joining them and you'll also get other
[1968.12] Frank: online benefits. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out. And you make use
[1975.08] Frank: of sort of the traditional, I say traditional, the other live events technology around, right?
[1981.0] Frank: Like you make a lot of use of the music and the ground lighting as well. Just a lot of that going
[1987.4] John "JP" Partridge: on in both shows, really. Yeah, that's that's that's key to it. You know, especially those
[1993.64] John "JP" Partridge: ticketed type shows that we put on and design ourselves, you know, we are the talent, as it
[1998.28] John "JP" Partridge: were, you know, so we we leverage all kinds of different AV, you know, we've got a full,
[2002.68] John "JP" Partridge: you know, bespoke soundtrack. You know, that show you came to was voiced by Matt Lucas,
[2007.4] John "JP" Partridge: the comedian. This we have him in, we design the script, I mean, I'm in record with us,
[2014.04] John "JP" Partridge: record the narration to the drones. And then yes, using both of our kind of lighting experience,
[2020.44] John "JP" Partridge: design a big show lighting package to compliment it to sort of get rid of the, you know, if you're
[2026.92] John "JP" Partridge: producing an event, you don't want any sort of black space between, you know, the audience,
[2031.64] John "JP" Partridge: you know, the audience, big black space, and then the drones in the sky, we try and bridge that gap
[2036.92] John "JP" Partridge: with kind of other lighting elements as well. It's about, you know, we can touch on it later,
[2042.52] John "JP" Partridge: you know, but, you know, how making that kind of multifaceted kind of AV kind of experience.
[2051.88] Stephen: I guess that sort of goes towards Magic Pencil's question there. What is the
[2055.56] Anthony Burry: have you thought about smoke or lasers? Yeah, the main thing that's payload size,
[2061.64] Anthony Burry: you know, to get like a decent looking laser, you've got to have a pretty substantial power
[2066.52] Anthony Burry: source on it. You'd be better off firing a laser at a drone from the ground. But yeah,
[2073.0] Anthony Burry: I think there's some technology out there at the moment, you haven't seen in person. So I don't
[2076.92] Stephen: know how effective it is. I have seen some people attempt to launch smoke in other countries with
[2084.12] Stephen: other drones, and definitely not in the UK, because that wouldn't be approved of smoke grenades on
[2092.76] Frank: drones. We've definitely done that. The thing is, you're limited to like 30 seconds or something
[2099.64] Frank: that you get out of that, which is fine for us. But yeah, if you're talking about a 15 minute
[2104.92] Frank: on show, I can imagine that's also the size of space and everything, I can imagine it wouldn't
[2111.48] Stephen: have quite the same effect as when we're five blokes in a field. I think the best occasion was
[2116.52] Stephen: when someone got very excited about having a smoke grenade on their drone, and dug a propeller
[2122.44] Stephen: and then sent it backwards into the hedge, which then just billowed out smoke, and it was all gone
[2126.84] Stephen: by the time they managed to pull it out the hedge. The prop's not just middle of the smoke away.
[2133.4] Stephen: No, no, so as long as you go slow, you just can't have too much airspeed or it gets blown away.
[2138.44] Stephen: But yeah, if you keep the speed down, it's all right.
[2140.52] Anthony Burry: It's cool how 500 loads go down.
[2146.76] Frank: Jack's got some good footage from the mini airshow event from six years ago now,
[2153.48] Frank: where he's strapped on a load of Roman candles or mini cake candle things on his, there you go.
[2161.4] Stephen: Yeah, we used to have them, when have we got donations during the live stream?
[2166.6] Stephen: They would be let off during the live stream to thank them.
[2169.08] Frank: That made some nice little pretty sparklers out the back. That was quite good.
[2173.08] Jack: Yeah, the CIA's worst nightmare.
[2179.72] Stephen: Yeah, you're banned. Luckily, Frank has read all the legislation and can keep on top of it.
[2185.4] Curry: Frank is the man. Just talking about the safety aspect of drones, we've all had instances of
[2193.0] Curry: various things failing. If you get some sort of issue with one of your display drones, for example,
[2199.24] Curry: the GPS is lost, all the battery dips more than you think, is there some sort of protocol to say,
[2204.68] Curry: this is looking dodgy, let's land that one and take it up on offer or something along those lines?
[2210.28] Anthony Burry: Yeah, I mean, the protocol for that is just bandit. I mean, you'll get a little warning
[2214.84] Anthony Burry: that will show up on the screen. And it will tell you which drone it is. We've also got
[2220.76] Anthony Burry: geofencing in place as well. So you have a soft geofence and a hard geofence. So if a drone
[2225.72] Anthony Burry: approaches a soft geofence, it will fight like hell to get back into the swarm.
[2232.36] Anthony Burry: If it breaches that, it will try to turn it down. If, for whatever reason, it somehow breaches the
[2238.04] Anthony Burry: hard fence, then it will piss on. And because we've got the safety buffer in place, it's been
[2242.36] Anthony Burry: calculated that that drone at its maximum height and its maximum speed can't be reached out.
[2247.56] Anthony Burry: That drone safety buffer. Great. It's all about doing the maths beforehand, right?
[2251.88] Anthony Burry: Yeah, there's a lot of meticulous planning that goes into putting off one of these.
[2257.16] Curry: And do you get the opportunity? Because I know you obviously design this on a computer and you
[2261.8] Curry: kind of watch it and make sure the paths are good. Before you actually take it to like,
[2266.12] Curry: do the show, is there some way you can go and actually fly these live to make sure it all
[2271.32] Curry: looks how you expect it to? Or is it just like this is good on the computer, we can do it?
[2276.28] Anthony Burry: Yeah, so we've got a testing facility that we fly at a lot. We're actually there at the moment.
[2283.24] John "JP" Partridge: Uniquely, we have our own test facility. We can fly any day of the year, any time.
[2290.76] John "JP" Partridge: That's handy.
[2291.32] Anthony Burry: We've flown here, actually, on Boxing Day.
[2295.32] Anthony Burry: King's knows on Boxing Day.
[2298.12] Anthony Burry: So I spent a lot of time.
[2300.68] Anthony Burry: Yeah, we're just flying in monos around, which is quite funny.
[2305.0] Frank: So if you're designing a show, how many people are involved on your side on designing a bit from,
[2313.4] Frank: like you say, working out your KML of what the area is you're allowed to fly in and what your
[2319.4] Frank: barriers have to be and then what it should actually look like and the animation and everything
[2323.32] Frank: else. But how big is your team and how long would it take to go from scratch to having a show ready
[2329.24] Frank: to go?
[2331.4] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, we're about 25 people in total. So eight to 10 animators full-time animating. Then about the
[2341.56] John "JP" Partridge: same in the kind of Ops and Production team, who is putting together the link in the animation
[2348.04] John "JP" Partridge: and bring it into the Ops and then test flying it, doing all the paperwork and admin and working
[2355.24] John "JP" Partridge: with all of the event production itself, tying all the elements together. And then, yeah, all
[2362.12] John "JP" Partridge: our animators are working full-time on our particularly shows as well, not just our
[2368.12] John "JP" Partridge: commissioned work. Yeah, so we're a reasonable size, you know, about 25 people.
[2373.48] Frank: Yes, quite a few people to keep running, yeah.
[2378.36] John "JP" Partridge: About a thousand threads as well.
[2380.76] John "JP" Partridge: Wow.
[2383.24] Curry: I was just trying to think of the logistics of sort of getting that many drones, just laying them
[2388.52] Curry: out, switching them all on, having them make sure they've got the instructions about what to do.
[2394.84] Curry: Is that where a lot of staff are involved in just literally the logistics of just setting it out?
[2400.52] Curry: And then I just think like, collect them in again, recharging the batteries.
[2404.6] Curry: This is like real large-scale stuff you're talking about.
[2407.4] Anthony Burry: Yeah, there's a lot of humping and dumping about. I mean, I mean, how many people do we normally
[2415.08] John "JP" Partridge: deploy with now? Yeah, we're about 10 people on some of our shows, you know, it's, you know,
[2422.2] John "JP" Partridge: those typically shows, like you say, where we've got to do a battery recharge, you know,
[2426.04] John "JP" Partridge: like you saw, Jack, you know, we're charging, you know, six, seven, eight hundred batteries,
[2433.48] John "JP" Partridge: you know, very quickly, the physical physicality of unplugging all those batteries,
[2439.24] John "JP" Partridge: load them into our motors, moving them, charging them, you know, that doing that process, you know,
[2444.2] John "JP" Partridge: we don't, we don't have 800 chargers sat there, you know, we have big racks that can do it in sort
[2449.64] John "JP" Partridge: of batches, I think 48, you know, different racks of appliances, cycling through the racks,
[2455.16] John "JP" Partridge: testing them, you know, just checking that they're flight ready, taking them back out to the grid.
[2460.36] Anthony Burry: Yeah, I mean, every battery was checked and logged before it goes out, and then it's all
[2464.84] Anthony Burry: labelled about which ones are charged, which ones are uncharged. And
[2468.52] Anthony Burry: yeah, there's those boxes and stuff flying around.
[2471.4] Stephen: Do you use like hardcode scanners or like tags or something?
[2474.76] Anthony Burry: Yeah, there's a lot of codes and everything.
[2477.48] Stephen: So very big spreadsheets.
[2482.04] Stephen: So you just run around the scanner, like beep, that's ready, beep, that's ready.
[2485.88] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, essentially, yeah, it's all and it's logging it and account, you know,
[2489.72] John "JP" Partridge: making it all accountable. So we know, you know, which trains are in which, which flights,
[2494.76] John "JP" Partridge: what batteries they use, when was the battery last checked, when was the drone last maintained,
[2499.4] John "JP" Partridge: you know, we've got logs of everything. Right, right.
[2503.0] Jack: Internal resistance checking them as well.
[2506.52] Anthony Burry: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we generally lock a couple of people in a
[2510.12] Anthony Burry: shed and then force them to charge batteries all the time.
[2512.76] Jack: You're probably one of the few people that have ever exceeded the mating cycle of an XT60.
[2524.36] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, we're probably close to it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
[2527.08] Stephen: Yeah, how do you cope with I mean, you're doing an operation like that's quite
[2533.48] Stephen: you've got to be careful because you're dealing with the high voltages, high power connectors,
[2538.28] Stephen: you know, you put things in the wrong way around, you can get some nasty scorches. And
[2544.12] Stephen: how do you charge that many batteries and like keep your mind on the task at hand
[2549.96] Stephen: without like accidentally, you know, jamming the balance plug in the wrong way around or something?
[2556.2] Anthony Burry: I think well, I thought it's down to experience. I mean, the guys who do the charging have charged
[2560.84] Anthony Burry: 10s of 1000s of times out. And like, they just have their own system for doing it.
[2565.72] Stephen: Yeah, I was wondering if you have your own like rigs that you make or anything,
[2569.24] Stephen: just to make it, you know, harder to put things in the wrong way around or just to
[2573.64] Anthony Burry: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the battery charging stuff is custom made. So, yeah, I mean,
[2578.92] Anthony Burry: the balance boards, you're going to put the balance cable in round one way.
[2584.6] Anthony Burry: You're going to be very first started, there was one guy who put one in round the wrong way.
[2589.4] Anthony Burry: He had like a cheap Chinese balance board. And it burst into flames instantly.
[2595.4] Anthony Burry: We have to like throw it out of the tent and then go out of the top.
[2600.52] Frank: I think this is an experience that everyone watching will recognize.
[2607.32] Anthony Burry: So we've gone considerably better since then.
[2609.8] John "JP" Partridge: I think that's one of the almost benefits of doing it at such scale that we do, you know,
[2614.28] John "JP" Partridge: you learn so quickly, you can revise so quickly. And so we've gone through, I think last year,
[2619.32] John "JP" Partridge: we went well over 10,000 cycles of charging, you know, across the whole fleet, you know, it's,
[2625.72] John "JP" Partridge: you know, yeah, you learn so quick. Yeah, there's probably no
[2630.2] Stephen: If you have errors, they become endemic pretty quickly and you get rid of it.
[2633.16] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, yeah. It's just a regimented process and following the process and tweaking it and
[2640.2] Stephen: improving it. Yes, it's a constant problem. You hear with people who get into the hobby,
[2647.08] Stephen: kind of building their own drones, just save battery uses, probably the number one topic,
[2652.44] Stephen: I think. In fact, we have our own little banner that we put up here, which is don't be on fire.
[2661.88] Jack: Rule zero, you know about like the new rule zero, do not be on fire.
[2669.0] Stephen: Well, yeah, rule zero, do not be on fire.
[2671.96] Anthony Burry: Yeah,
[2674.28] Anthony Burry: emergency responses for like, when a drone, what if a drone, well,
[2678.2] Anthony Burry: you've got an emergency response, fine, but drone catches on fire in the air.
[2681.88] Anthony Burry: Yeah, we've never had to use it.
[2689.0] Stephen: Well, luckily, it sounds like you've got a really great system for just checking everything in,
[2693.56] Stephen: checking everything out. And you know, every single one of those batteries has had a visual
[2697.16] Stephen: inspection. It's been tested for performance and safety and everything before it goes into the air.
[2702.92] Stephen: You're not just like, oh my god, I've got to film that quick slap another battery on and fly as
[2706.6] Anthony Burry: quickly as possible. Just what normally gets the last of us in trouble people as well before it
[2710.92] Anthony Burry: even gets into a drone. So, you know, what somebody's charging it, somebody's packing it,
[2715.32] Anthony Burry: somebody's putting it in the drone, somebody's plugging it in. So you get a lot of eyes on
[2719.72] Jack: every object. I've noticed that we've only got 15 minutes left. This is what we got
[2727.08] Jack: like to call the quick fire Frank round, because he's the only person who can read and speak at
[2733.48] Frank: the same time. Quick enough. So Frank, I wonder why you're being so quiet. So yeah,
[2745.08] Frank: Jack has pre prepared some questions, which is very unusual. You should feel very honest.
[2749.72] Frank: So Jack wanted to know. So when you're designing the drone light show, which you're both very
[2756.04] Frank: well-placed to do, how much does the music or the sound play into your design? Do you,
[2764.84] Frank: I imagine what Jack wants to know is, do you design the animations first? Do you design the
[2771.16] Jack: sound first? How does that all work together? Or do you go, that'll be easy. Let's do that.
[2777.24] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, it's all considered definitely. I mean, a drone show without music is a slightly different
[2792.92] John "JP" Partridge: experience. With music is completely, you know, you get some shows that people have a real
[2799.72] John "JP" Partridge: like emotional reaction to the drones, you know, there's something kind of magic and a lot of
[2805.48] John "JP" Partridge: mystery about it than taking off and, you know, the scale of it is huge and we amplify that with
[2810.44] John "JP" Partridge: music, you know, and yeah, so it's all considered from the start, you know, we might know the piece
[2817.08] John "JP" Partridge: of music that we're going to animate to, or we know kind of what style it will be, or we're blessed
[2823.56] John "JP" Partridge: and we have it right at the start. So the animators are literally on timeline following the music as
[2828.44] John "JP" Partridge: they go. Definitely on the ticketed shows, it's like a script, you know, when we know the music,
[2835.16] John "JP" Partridge: we know the sound effects, we know exactly kind of where it's going to be. Yeah, it's not like
[2841.48] John "JP" Partridge: we get on site on some of the other shows and we just pick a track up a playlist and press play.
[2848.76] John "JP" Partridge: They're all considered. Yeah, our timings have not been pretty good as well. Yeah,
[2853.32] John "JP" Partridge: we keep getting a lot of requests to do a show to classical music.
[2857.08] John "JP" Partridge: I don't know. We keep getting a lot of requests. I could see that working.
[2861.48] Frank: I wonder if that's following on from the air show proms that's quite often done, where they've got
[2869.64] Frank: classical music and they have, you know, it's a bit by doing a routine. Maybe it's that kind of
[2874.92] John "JP" Partridge: thought of like, oh, I've been to a show like that. Yeah, we should probably listen and try.
[2881.48] Frank: A live orchestra. Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a Polish air show I worked at last year
[2892.92] Frank: and we'll probably be working at this year where they had a full military orchestra playing while
[2899.4] Frank: there's an air show going on and they synchronised their air show with the orchestra. So it can be
[2907.32] Frank: very impressive. But Jack wants to know what other creatives are involved in the planning
[2914.68] Frank: phase, designing your light show. You say you've got the animators there who are presumably your
[2920.76] Frank: sort of lighting design equivalent of cat monkeys. What are the roles involved? Yeah.
[2930.76] John "JP" Partridge: It's sort of really, really similar to sort of designing a short film or, you know, producing a
[2936.2] John "JP" Partridge: theatrical play, you know, you've got a script writer, you've got a creative director, script
[2940.6] John "JP" Partridge: writer, you know, creative kind of artists, you know, whether it's, you know, illustrator,
[2949.4] John "JP" Partridge: and then you have a, you know, some storyboarding out the idea. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So the whole
[2954.52] John "JP" Partridge: process is, you know, from we meet with a client, we speak to the client, what is the reason why
[2959.8] John "JP" Partridge: you're doing the show? What do you want to get across? We'll then take those ideas, put a sort
[2964.92] John "JP" Partridge: of a storyboard together that will get illustrated, get that approved. And from there, we will pass
[2972.36] John "JP" Partridge: up to the animators who will then animate all of those scenes. And then at the same time, we've
[2977.8] John "JP" Partridge: got, you know, a lighting designer involved, we've got a sound designer involved, you know,
[2982.2] John "JP" Partridge: we've put in the music together. And yeah, then creative directors overseeing all of it.
[2988.2] Frank: Yeah, this is the animators of them putting that into the drone. And then Jenna, I guess,
[2996.2] Frank: is the design then sort of being designed? Is it all happening at once, I guess, like you're
[3001.8] Frank: getting the sort of the creative input from one side, the legal and technical geographical stuff
[3008.44] Frank: from the other side, and you're all just sort of iterating at the same time? Or?
[3013.88] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, I think ideally, we are, yes, we all work. Sometimes the timeline changes, you know,
[3021.56] John "JP" Partridge: you might get the music right the last minute, for some reason, or you might, you might make some
[3026.84] John "JP" Partridge: changes, or, you know, we might open up another block of seats. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we might not
[3036.68] John "JP" Partridge: know the full flight volume yet. So we've got to design a show, we've got to crack on with that,
[3041.48] John "JP" Partridge: we don't fully know where we're taking off from yet, by any reason. And the actual event isn't
[3047.0] John "JP" Partridge: fully designed. So yeah, ideally, everything's happening all at once. But it's never quite always
[3053.0] Frank: And I guess you can't just scale it down. Because you've, you've got a certain separation that you
[3057.48] Frank: need to keep between all your drones. So there's a minimum size it can be.
[3062.92] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, exactly. That's one of the big misconceptions is you can just sort of grab the
[3067.24] John "JP" Partridge: corners and extend it however big you want it. And it doesn't quite work like that.
[3074.52] Frank: Now,
[3077.0] Frank: Jeff wanted to know what inspired celestial to use drone light shows as a medium for storytelling?
[3083.88] Frank: He's a good question, Jack. Well done.
[3086.44] Jack: Don't ask this like, jerk, it will be done.
[3089.4] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, I think it was just seeing that, yeah, seeing the reaction that audiences have to it,
[3097.64] John "JP" Partridge: you know, you can get a really emotional impact. You know, there's no there is nothing like it
[3101.48] John "JP" Partridge: going back to that space invader, example, a music festival, there is nothing like that,
[3106.68] Anthony Burry: you know, anywhere, there's no way it can literally anything you can imagine. I mean,
[3112.68] Anthony Burry: while I was working in wristbands, like everything was just 2d images or anything
[3119.48] Anthony Burry: like that. But you know, this got like a third dimension, you can just sculpt whatever you want.
[3125.88] John "JP" Partridge: That's really cool space. Yeah, doing that something something unique.
[3132.02] Frank: And it's a more more historical question, I guess. What has been the most challenging
[3139.54] Frank: show you've produced?
[3142.58] John "JP" Partridge: In Australia, probably, probably Australia. Yeah, one of our one of our first shows,
[3150.34] John "JP" Partridge: so in amongst lockdown, one of the first big commissions was on the other side of the world
[3156.26] Anthony Burry: in Australia. We were flying a drone display over a river that's about 200 meters off the
[3163.7] Anthony Burry: shore. And we had to get network out there. So we have to sink this fiber optic cable
[3168.66] Anthony Burry: under the river. Wow. A load of access points on a boat.
[3175.14] John "JP" Partridge: So we had to go out to the boat and like, yeah, so sort of the Wi Fi. Yeah.
[3180.98] John "JP" Partridge: And then just one thing, yeah, like in lockdown, we're not able, we weren't able to fly over there
[3186.18] John "JP" Partridge: readily. When we actually didn't get over there, we were one of the first with visas,
[3192.1] John "JP" Partridge: you know, and it's working on the other side of the world. That was pretty challenging. Yeah.
[3197.06] Anthony Burry: I think it'd only been up and running for like six months at the time.
[3200.74] Curry: How hard is it to transport like a thousand lipos on a plane somewhere?
[3206.74] Anthony Burry: Oh, that was a nightmare. Like I'm thinking to like come over in like small boxes and then
[3213.3] Anthony Burry: like to do loads of cargo trips with batteries in it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. The
[3222.1] John "JP" Partridge: logistics of any of the shows we do abroad are, you know, really challenging.
[3226.74] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, sounds like the transport has requirements and anything. And also they just not used to
[3233.22] John "JP" Partridge: nobody moves that type of battery and that quantity and those amount of drones.
[3240.1] John "JP" Partridge: You know, they used to see in somebody turn up with an inspire at an airport. They're not used
[3244.42] John "JP" Partridge: to seeing someone turn up with, you know, pallets of batteries and pellets of drones.
[3250.98] Jack: You're very familiar with bump stops on vehicles.
[3256.26] Jack: Definitely. Oh my God. Jack wants to know because he can't be trusted to talk directly at you.
[3263.78] Frank: Yes. But hopefully sort of those challenges are rewarding when you sort of get some audience
[3272.58] Anthony Burry: response from it. Yeah. Yeah. I never seen it. I'm stuck in my box all the time. I don't even
[3279.46] John "JP" Partridge: see the drone show. It will flow much to 400 of them. Yeah. The most experienced pilot has
[3285.38] John "JP" Partridge: never actually seen a drone show. It's like a little shed or a tent or something.
[3296.34] Frank: Do you get a different sort of thrill or reward out of it then? What keeps you sort of pushing
[3302.58] Anthony Burry: for it? No, just, just seeing cool stuff, you know, like, um, I'm sure there's way more ways
[3310.18] Anthony Burry: like the animated like, like I said, the show could be anything you want it to be. So you could
[3315.86] Anthony Burry: see like a 200 meter well appear in the sky and fuck you know, stuff like that. That's cool. It's
[3324.1] John "JP" Partridge: I think as well, some of the shows we do are so technically challenging in terms of production,
[3331.46] John "JP" Partridge: you know, it's so rewarding when you finally pull it off. You know, we like glass debris this year,
[3337.22] John "JP" Partridge: we flew it, you know, the biggest music festival in the world, arguably, and you know, from a tiny
[3341.54] John "JP" Partridge: sliver of land that they made available for us in a really dense festival. It's the size of a mini
[3347.94] Anthony Burry: city, you know, but it all works together. And then you've got a perfect show and everything's
[3351.94] Anthony Burry: on time to get a second. Yeah, yeah, that's that's pretty good. What would you say your
[3358.58] Stephen: influences are in terms of like dance music visuals? I mean, I'm thinking back to the kind
[3363.78] Stephen: of animations that chemical brothers and others used to do used to have very strong, bold,
[3368.42] Stephen: visually distinct animations. Is there anything like that, that influences the style of your
[3374.18] Stephen: visuals and animations?
[3385.26] Stephen: invaders? Is there anything you call back one and think? Yeah, yeah, that's going to transpose well
[3389.82] Anthony Burry: to being in the sky? Yeah, I mean, in the early days, so it's definitely like a lot of Aboriginal
[3394.7] Anthony Burry: art, which is a dot based. Yes, yeah. What else? What Jack and I were saying when we were watching
[3406.3] Frank: your Christmas car one is it felt feels very much like it's a completely different style of
[3412.54] Frank: visual display. It's not a screen. It's not like pixels. It's not vectors. It's just a completely
[3419.34] Frank: different way that you're having to think about it. And we were saying it's like you're having to
[3425.9] Stephen: invent a new art form almost like a point cloud more than anything. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[3433.1] Jack: Move the density of pixels. You don't worry about having a square screen. If you're making a
[3439.02] Jack: Christmas tree, you can, you know, you can move the pixel density down to the bottom. So that must
[3444.86] John "JP" Partridge: be quite weird as well. Yeah, it's definitely taken a few workout, like what the art style is,
[3452.38] John "JP" Partridge: and like, to play around with it. And we're still coming up with new techniques and new, you know,
[3457.74] John "JP" Partridge: pushing it, you know, all the time about what you can do. And where do you see it going? Are there
[3463.98] Frank: any sort of big new trends or tech or opportunities that you can see out in the distance on the
[3470.46] Frank: horizon or anything coming up? Any any concepts that you're currently working on that you can
[3475.42] John "JP" Partridge: share with us? Yeah, I've got something to share. But I mean, I think as a broad, you know, brush
[3484.78] John "JP" Partridge: of what we think, it's going to be like all of these multifaceted kind of AV elements all coming
[3491.34] John "JP" Partridge: together. So you'll see, you know, lights and lasers integrate with drones or, you know, interacting
[3496.46] John "JP" Partridge: with drones, you know, payloads on drones, doing different things, you know, will become, you know,
[3502.7] John "JP" Partridge: will become part of it, and then synchronizing all of that together. So it's not just a drone show
[3509.34] John "JP" Partridge: anymore. I think we're starting to just ask that it's more like a full mixture of all elements,
[3517.26] John "JP" Partridge: you know, it's it's your audio synced with lights synced with special effects synced with drones,
[3524.62] Frank: you know, and enhanced by drones. And from the from the Chris McCarroll one, I imagine you're
[3530.78] Frank: going to be expanding that out to other stories like it feels very much like it's a sort of
[3537.1] Frank: an evolution, but quite a big one from from the sort of the the other the other styles of shows
[3542.62] Frank: that you've done in that there is an actual there is a literal narrative there. Yeah, so that
[3548.46] John "JP" Partridge: yeah, it is almost like a stage show almost. Yeah, exactly. Yes. I mean, a bit of a plug in
[3553.74] John "JP" Partridge: a wizard of ours is our next show, which is on at the moment, you're obviously more welcome to come
[3559.42] John "JP" Partridge: visit and see that one. You know, it is again an evolution of that. It's, yeah, the same formula,
[3566.3] John "JP" Partridge: but sort of enhanced and, you know, traveling around the country, different big stadiums,
[3572.7] John "JP" Partridge: you know, all around the country. And then, yeah, just, yeah, continuing our big sort of commercial
[3578.78] John "JP" Partridge: work, you know, with large, large scale, and impactful shows for brands, essentially. But
[3586.3] John "JP" Partridge: yeah, I mean, what do you see about innovation in tech?
[3591.58] Anthony Burry: No, I can't think of anything you haven't already said.
[3594.38] John "JP" Partridge: I mean, there's lots in the software as well, that's improving all the time.
[3599.42] John "JP" Partridge: You know, efficiencies in how long we can fly, you know, how quickly we can take off and land
[3606.3] John "JP" Partridge: and optimizing the transitions of everything, you know, all of that is improving a lot behind the
[3612.78] John "JP" Partridge: scenes. You know, it's only a couple of years ago that you know, eight and eight minute show
[3619.02] John "JP" Partridge: is incredible, you know, on the battery life. And now we're all we double that essentially,
[3624.3] John "JP" Partridge: you know, and then in a couple of years, if we double again, and, you know, hydrogen, my friend,
[3630.3] Anthony Burry: we've done it for you.
[3636.54] Stephen: And a bit more friendly to a transport as well. But so one last question to round things off.
[3642.22] Stephen: If any of our audience are curious about your shows and want to find out how they can see one
[3647.42] Stephen: of your shows, what's the best way to follow you and find out?
[3651.18] John "JP" Partridge: Sure, I mean, our website, celestial.show. And then on all all media channels, yeah,
[3658.46] John "JP" Partridge: celestial drones, you know, you'll find there's a, yeah, drop any there's an email if you want
[3664.86] John "JP" Partridge: to get involved. Yeah, JP at celestial.show, or a B, Anthony, and yeah, we're more than happy
[3673.58] Frank: to get in touch. It is a last cheeky question. How do you pronounce the platform that your
[3682.46] Frank: ticketed shows are sold through? Yup. Yup. Okay. I was an argument amongst us.
[3692.06] Frank: It's Y-U-U-P.com. It's not Y-W-P. It is Y-W-P. Yes, no. But yes, there we go.
[3715.02] Frank: This is true. And we've been talking about it. So it's worked.
[3719.18] Frank: So there's the Wizard of Oz, you said. Are there any other shows that you like to be at,
[3727.1] Frank: either ticketed ones or commissions that people might want to keep on their radar?
[3733.1] Anthony Burry: Anything we can talk about? You might not be able to talk about it.
[3736.06] John "JP" Partridge: Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. Yeah. But yeah, keep in touch with our social media.
[3741.5] John "JP" Partridge: We'll be around all the kind of big events and small local events and all our ticketed shows
[3748.46] John "JP" Partridge: across the country. So there's a lot, you know, we fly so much, though, if anyone wants to come
[3753.74] John "JP" Partridge: check us out, more than happy to get in touch. Come along, have a look. Brilliant. Fantastic.
[3761.34] Anthony Burry: Thank you so much. Yeah, please don't try flying your own drone at one of our shows.
[3771.66] Stephen: Okay. Well, thank you very much. Do you want to read us out, Jack?
[3775.74] Jack: Yeah, sure. We have been let drone out and you've been listening to us for the last hour.
[3783.02] Jack: And we have been supported by our lovely patrons who keep the lights on, keep everything running.
[3789.74] Jack: We could do a few more. So if you listen to this and enjoyed it, we would really appreciate it
[3794.62] Jack: because Dreamyard has gone up in price like everything else. Besides all that,
[3804.86] Jack: please become Patreon because Frank will hurt me. Yes, you've been joined by the usual suspects.
[3819.5] Jack: Thanks. Everyone's favourite co-kitten. Goodbye. The man with the moustache, Stephen.
[3827.9] Jack: Thank you. And good night. Our special guests are Tanoy, Ann and JP from Celeste. Thank you
[3833.98] Jack: very much. It's an audio podcast, lads. Say goodbye, please. Sorry, goodbye.
[3842.07] Jack: Well, this on iTunes. And we just got the message. And of course, our Lord of Master,
[3848.07] Jack: Andrew slash Frank. Bye. And somehow Frank doesn't want to hurt me. I've been brought to my fly.
[3856.71] Jack: Thank you. Good night. Thank you, everyone. Good night. Bye. Telemetry lost.