Sky-High Innovation: How Drone Shows are Revolutionizing Entertainment and Beyond

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to Pro AV today. We are in studio today, and I've got my next guest here, with me as well, which is a rarity these days. Most of the interviews are recorded. But I have a story that I wanted to tell really quickly. I I was, out with my wife, celebrating the fourth of July last year. Near our hometown, a couple couple cities away and, had the opportunity to see a drone show in person for the first time. And and as somebody in the AV and tech technology community. I I didn't know what to expect. Right? There's there's a lot of, a lot of gimmicks out there. There's a lot of things that are very novel and cool that you see once and and you feel like you've seen it, you know, plenty of times and, I was pleasantly surprised that at the time, I saw the largest drone show in the world and I was blown away. I said, look, I've gotta figure out who these people are who's doing it. How are they doing it? And then realized ironically enough that these folks literally are in our backyard, especially where I'm from here in Texas. So I said, look, we we gotta chat with these guys because we have so many different questions about the world of drone technology, the world of integrated technology with drones, and then you could talk about things like branding, events, and things like that. So, without further ado, I do want to introduce my next guest for the show today. That's Rick Boss, the president of Sky Elements Drones, the company, who you may or may not know, is responsible for about what fifty percent of the drone shows in North America. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah. We're flying about fifty percent of the shows in the US. We've got somebody else attracts us that we're closer to sixty percent like to say about half the shows in the US right now. Well, Rick, I gotta ask. You know, I mean, I I hinted at it a second ago and a lot of viewers that are listening to this you know, we're working with some of the best technology in the wall world, whether it's, you know, automation, LED wall, digital signage, all sorts of different lighting technologies, But I was really struck by how impactful the drone show was because a lot of the traditional things that you run up into with an installation or a touring show is that, you know, there's a level of fixedness to it, I guess. Right? It is largely gonna be what it's gonna be. But the drone show was so malleable and there was so much flexibility and this show specifically was integrated with a fireworks show, but you know, I wanna ask really before we dig in deep This world is evolving. It feels like pretty dramatically even month over month at this point. Where in the world are we in the life cycle of drone goes. Yeah. It's a great question. We're at the very beginning. I tell folks this is such an immature market the drones are still new. The technology is still novel. So literally the sky's the limit. We're gonna see many changes. Oh, that's gotta be your problems. That's gotta be your new model. It is. Yeah. It's right at the beginning. We're super excited about what's gonna be happening next. I mean, we've gotten the lab, the next generation, the generation after that, and the generation after So they're gonna see a lot of changes in this space for sure. Well, what's cool, you know, I mentioned that I saw it kind of in coordination with a fireworks show. Right? And there's a lot of familiarity. You look at the fourth of July shows things like that. And but I was really impressed by, especially after talking with you, the applications beyond even necessarily you know, the fourth of July, New Year's type shows. We're seeing corporations, theme parks, trade shows, all sorts of different folks fly a lot of these shows how is how is the market spreading and continuing to evolve? Yeah. It's very interesting. It's new to us. We come from a pyrotechnic background and our customers were pretty set, and we're very relatively local here in Texas, and the drone show space really opened up, all types of events. And so we've been really surprised to buy how many different events happen around the country, from anniversaries of companies to community events, having that wow moment in a particular event, also bringing, you know, some butts into the seats for major league baseball, things of that nature. So the use case is very diverse and creates a lot of fun opportunities. Just do something different. One of the things that really stuck out to me about the show. And and, you know, one of the largest initiatives really in in the technology industry right now is really the idea of accessibility, of sustainability, environmental friendliness. And that really is one of the primary benefits of of drone technology because look, as cool as it is to, you know, see the fireworks go bang thing. And then look, I love a great fireworks show. So do we about it? I love fireworks too. But there is, you know, you you talk about people with sensitivities to loud noises and dogs and PTSD survivors and things like that. Even that plus the idea that look you're not really, you know, putting pollutants out into the air too. There's a there's a another layer to the drone technology, you know, that that goes beyond just the the show side of things. Talk to me a little bit about that. Absolutely. It's one of the things that we didn't fully appreciate when we got into the space. We really got into it because it looked amazing. It looked cool. It was super fun. We're still having a ton of fun. And as we started moving through, it really noticed the big push that was happening around what can we do to make less of an impact on the community yet still have an amazing celebration and so the drones very much fit that application well. We go in and we leave and we leave nothing behind. There's no debris. There's no smoke. There's no particulates. None of that is happening with a drone show. So not only can we bring in a new different wow moment, but something that's far more sustainable way less impact for the community in any situation that you might have going on there. So we see a lot of communities where they have fire danger may be going on and drone show is a great way to celebrate and avoid that. We also have communities as development continues that that noise impact is huge in a lot of communities. And so a drone show could come in and not impact the rest of the neighbors that don't want to be a part of the celebration. Talk about noise ordinances and things like that. Obviously, at this point, we're flying drones mostly at night, which is when a lot of those ordinances but you know, even here in Dallas, you run into a lot of challenges even beyond that. Right? We've got two major airports here within ten miles of each other. Yeah. What are some of those restrict typically that come into place, is it is it you can't fly x number of miles within an airport, or what are some of those common challenges that folks may not from a lot of these shows. Yeah. A lot of challenges come in. I'll hit the noise one first is that we're silent. In fact, we have a lot of events where they have to announce the drone show or else folks don't see it happening. So, we help with noise ordinance. No problem at all. In fact, there's a particular resort that were working with that that's one of the issues that they have a big community around there and they had to stop doing fireworks because of the noise and now we're flying ten, fifteen drone shows a year for that particular resort and making zero impact for the neighbors. But then in general for flying drone shows, we're working with the FAA on for flying drone shows. And a lot of folks might think the FAA is there to shut us down or over regulate, and they're really not. There are part and they wanna have a safe airspace. So yeah, whenever we're working in an environment like here in Dallas, multiple airports, we're just coordinating with the FA to make sure it's safe environment and that other aircraft know when we're flying. So as we get closer to airports, there's more coordination with the FA when flying further away from airports. It's a simple notification that we're flying. So there is a lot of regulation that comes into play, but it's really relatively straightforward, I would say. It's complex. But once you get into it, it's, it's relatively straightforward to make things happen. Well, is there a lot of You know, are are there a lot of established regulations that you're already working with? Right? Or is it one of those things where you're having to make them up as you go? Right? I remember very dramatically or very specifically you know, when you we started flying drones in the air, even before you had to be certified as a pilot to capture content, the FAA was just playing catch up. Are there a lot of established regulations for this or is it something you're almost having to play it by ear? Yeah. You know, maybe I put it in the context. We call it drone years. So we've been doing this for almost four years and so for us, that's about twenty one years. So it feels like they're, they're, actually well in place, but they're not. At the very beginning, my business partner Preston Ward. He's also a practicing attorney. And we were working with the FA just to help build the rules around these drone shows and what it means to by a swarm of drones. It's a novel application. We were the third or fourth company that actually applied for flying shows. We're the highest volume drone company, so we work a lot with the FA. So we're constantly working with them, talking with regulations. I don't think there's a week goes by that Preston's not engaged with the FAA identifying things that haven't been built yet. Just dealing with one in California this week where there's things that have been in place for twenty years that no longer make sense in two thousand twenty four. The FAA is not quite sure how to do it. So Preston's actually helping them craft the language, to make it, work for drone shows and drones in general. So I guess I'd round that to say that it is new. There are things coming into place, and we're helping develop some of the language for drone shows in particular. Look, you you brought up California, which is it's kind of its own subset of regulations a lot of times. But, you know, it's hard to think California and not think, you know, the Dodgers, the angels, Disneyland. Yep. And when in when when you and and I had the chance to meet back at Iapa for the first time, that's immediately where my mind went. Right? Is, you know, a lot of folks will think municipalities and and absolutely there's a market for that shows. But there's a lot of opportunity in the world of sports and theme parks. And one of the questions that comes up that we we have to deal with all time community is intellectual property. You know, it's probably not a conversation that a lot of people know that they have to have. Right? Because even if you're working with let's say the Dodgers in this case, there has to be some level of licensing. Right? You can't in the same way I couldn't just project an image of, the Dallas cowboys are I feel like Jerry Jones would send a sniper, and me. I couldn't I can't just put that up on a building down here in Dallas. What are some of those things like intellectual property rights that people probably haven't necessarily thought about even before they come to you guys. Yeah. Since like we're talking about, it's a brand new space in the drone, show space, and that is a hot topic right now is how do we treat IPs? We're we've worked with so many brands and gone through so many processes with MLB teams and bringing brands to life that we've become very familiar and sensitive to it, but it's still the wild western drone shows. And so, there's other companies that maybe, are just flying things that they shouldn't be, but we have customers that certainly come to us and say, Hey, we want to do this or that and we're like, well, we don't have the rights to those things. They have to acquire them. We just had interesting when somebody's having a wedding and they're like, will we live in Hollywood and we wanna fly the Hollywood sign as in part of a drone show well, a lot of people don't know that the the IP rights around the Hollywood sign are well established and it's very expensive to get the IP rights to fly, the Hollywood sign if it peers anywhere. So, yeah, there's there's a a regular ongoing conversation to make sure anything that flying that somebody's intellectual property is covered and figuring out how to work around it. And and what's what's fun though is working with a lot of the brands understand how they want to protect their IP. You know, we've worked with Marvel, with Disney, with Nickelodeon, and all of them have a little bit different flavor on exactly how their IP is to be represented, and we work hard to make sure it's done right. Well, look, I can already hear the gears turning into a lot of marketers minds right now saying, okay. This is really interesting. I hadn't thought about this as a a public activation tool or an experiential form of entertainment. Yeah. You know, a lot of times when marketers are lenders or whoever come to you for the first time. What are some of the things that they're surprised by? Because it's easy to say, I mean, intellectual property may be one of those things, you know, they they will say, Hey, I wanna do a drone show and I wanna do it, you know, x y z date, figure it out. What are some of the things that that they may not even consider ahead of on. Yeah. One of the biggest things that we run into with drone shows that folks aren't thinking about is where we can fly a drone show as far as space. A lot of times you're looking on your small screen that's, you know, six inches across and the drone show doesn't look very big on your phone. But in real life, as you've experienced drone shows are massive, and they take up a ton of space. It's very common for our drone shows to be four hundred, four hundred and fifty feet across four hundred feet tall, which is phenomenal for marketers. It makes a huge impact, visibility for significant distances but I also need a space that I can fly from. You know, when they say, Hey, I would love to do this from downtown wherever that might be. That's typically really hard to do, because we can't have anybody underneath of the drones for safety. So we need a relatively large space where we can protect the folks that are underneath drones. That's probably one of the biggest things that we run into as a marketer. It's like, I really want to target this space. I want it to read to this space and finding somewhere that we have the right amount space to fly it for is one of the biggest challenges or one of the biggest misconceptions. They feel like it's a drone show. We can just fly it. I'd say the second one too would be that they feel like it can transfer So most of our drone shows fly directly above where the drones are on the ground. We can move it around up to about a thousand feet, but sometimes we get folks k. Can you take off from here and then fly to mile over that way, perform the show and then fly back? Unfortunately, we don't have magic batteries yet, so we can't do that. I wanna talk about safety. You brought it up as that first point there. And and I think, you know, even going back to the fireworks side of things that that for a lot of folks is the number one concern. For just about every pyro is the number one concern. Right? Mhmm. For sure. You know, there there is an element of don't think risk is the right word, but awareness that that that you guys bring into the world of drones. Right? What are some of those those common challenges? Is it, you know, you mentioned not being able to have people fly underneath, but you know, is our our weather patterns a threat? What are some of those common threats and really ways that you guys are able to proactively be safe? Yeah. Definitely safety is the number one concern and coming from a pyrotechnic background, that is our top concern. We want everybody to enjoy things safely and drone shows are the same way. And the number one is just making sure that we have a space where there's nobody underneath of the drone, such something happen. We say these things tiny robots. And, occasionally, they decide they wanna land now and not at the end of the show. And sometimes they land in a spot that they weren't designed to land in. And so we make sure we have that safety margin and not have anybody underneath of there. And then we do have weather constraints. The biggest one is about visibility. So sometimes we get fogged in. I don't know. Probably a handful of times. Maybe it's not been quite that many in like San Francisco. We've been fogged out. Neagra Falls, we flew an amazing show for Disney. First one was great. One hour later, fog bank can't see anything. And so we can't fly in the most other aircraft have to be able to see our aircraft, and we have to be able to see other aircraft just in case there's an issue. So those are two number one visibility one or two big safety things or making sure nobody's underneath of it and make sure we have good visibility. We can't fly in high winds, but, we fly pretty high winds. We are particular drones are very robust. We fly in twenty five to thirty mile an hour winds, without much problem. You know, we we talk about security and safety and and naturally in the world that we live in, right now, the world, the post digital transformation world, if you will. Naturally folks are gonna ask about cyber security. And, things like that. I I don't even know that really we fully formed what the world of cybersecurity and drones and closed networks fully even looks like. But what are some of the conversations that you're having right now about cybersecurity specifically in that world. Sure. Yeah. We definitely have conversations around that because a swarm network, a swarm of drones is controlled by network and has vulnerabilities to it around security. So it's a constant evolving thing to make sure we've got the most robust security for the drones, the most robust drone platform so that even if we do have a security breach, it doesn't cause any type of safety issues but right now it is the top of the line, security that you can see out there as far as, the encryption that happens on our channels in the detection methodology that we have both on the drone and on the ground. If they're any type of safety concern. And so far to date, even around the world, there's been a few instances of it, and the nice thing is in this industry is that folks share it, added to the algorithm of what an attack might look like, but knock on wood, not too many folks have tried to attack, these swarm drones. It's entertainment. The drones have no real payload other than a light bulb. So at the end of the day, it's a pretty, it's a a pretty low target for anybody to wanna go after, and we certainly have no data on it that is worth anything at all. So, we've had very little folks going but we make sure that it is because you just never want anything to happen. Agreed. And and, you know, one thing that that I think naturally kinda jump out to me is is not even just in the world of drone shows, but in the world of, I guess, UAVs in general is that you see drones in a lot of these technologies being adapted into different places. Right here, even in Texas, we have Walmart does some drone drone deliveries. And we've got a lot. You know, you know, we Uber at one point was trying to build an unmanned heliport here. And and so many of these things are constantly evolving, and there's really, you know, I guess I I you kind of touched on it earlier, but there's a nonstop evolution of just the world of UAVs in general. How did drone show specifically I guess even we'll just say drone specifically. How does that fit into the larger conversation? And what are some of the ways that you're continuing to see these applications evolve. Right? Cause there might be a day where we're talking about massive four, five ton drone shows where you've got, you know, sky taxis and you know, they're carrying stuff. I mean, there's just so many opportunities. How how are you guys contributing to that conversation at large? Yeah. It's well, it's ongoing conversation around what's happening with traffic. So that's one of one of the just regular conversation we have with the FAA is what's happening with traffic as far as delivery Right? Eventually, yeah, there's gonna be Uber helicopter taxis flying around. So doing that and working through that process is I think it'd be pretty straightforward. The technology is pretty advanced right now as we start to get into remote ID. We start to get into ways that all the it can identify each other and work around it. Well, it makes me think of it when you mention it, just think about what's happening in that space altogether. And drone shows are actually benefiting more from that space than ever, right, with battery technology. So Uber wants to you and a helicopter from, you know, your office to the airport. In order for them to do that, they need a maze batteries. And so there are billions of dollars from Tesla to Uber helicopters to make batteries better. And that makes our drone shows better. We can fly them longer and longer every day. They go longer and longer. Like, we've we've done tests shows here where we've been able to fly on one battery thirty minute drone show. So you can do some amazing things with it. And the other one is the GPS accuracy that we get. And for those that know it's gnSS, but we like to say everybody uses GPS, but that has become so sophisticated catered because those delivery drones need to know exactly where they are. That autonomous car needs to know exactly where it is when it's dry you because one day Uber wants autonomous car to come pick you up. And the only way it can do it safely is it knows where it is within a Santa later. So all that technology feeds into what's happening in our drone light show space making shows that much better and that much safer. So it's a nice it's a nice by product of what they're doing. I'm glad you have to deal with it and not, the event planners because imagine imagine somebody who has already a a million things on their plate trying to coordinate with the FAA and, GPS coordinates and all that. And, you know, speaking of of kind of the marketer in the event planner side, you know, folks might be watching this saying, how do I get started in this? Do do I send an email? How do I even consider getting something quota? Where do I start? How how typically do you see people start when they really wanna have these conversations? Yeah. Our conversations typically start with that with a phone call and now to our Sky elements webpage and we'll give him a callback and start coordinating with them. And what our goal and what we're able to do is we're very turned So we could come out to event. We're self contained. I don't need power requirements. I don't need much other than just the space to fly. And let me know when you want it to fly and how to coordinate the music. And then we do the heavy lift around design. We've got the largest design team in the US I think I just hired, another person that makes me the largest in the world now. So I need to check with the other guy that's in Europe. It's got a big team. My my I might be bigger than he is right now. And, so we do all the heavy lifting around design, logistics. Our team will help them from ideation on what the concept, what's the wow moment they're looking for for their event all the way to getting set up approved by the FAA, taking care of any local permits, and just making cool wow moment for him. Man, that that I'm gonna go just get a drone show for, you know, for fun. What's your birthday? I don't know. Well, it's an April in April. Well, there we go. I don't know. I don't know. My my wife might yell at me if we've got drones flying around in the backyard. So we'll see. You know, last question here and I like to always end with this, you know, if you had a crystal ball and you said, look, in the next five ten years or whatever it is, forty five to, seventy drone years, You know, where is the technology going next? Is it is it scale? Is it larger shows? Is it longer shows? Is it tighter knit pixel type shows? What really what's the future for Then you're hitting right on them. I mean, you're nailing it. You're like, prognosticating exactly where I think it's gonna go. Is, yeah, we'll be able to see right now we've got distances between the, you know, we call it Pixel pitch, right? And we've got a pretty big pitch right now. You're gonna see that tighten up. We've already tightened it up over the past three from three meters down to where one point eight meter on a lot of the shows and I think you'll see that getting even closer. So you have higher resolution. Definitely higher drone counts. I mean, our very first major league baseball, show that we flew was two hundred drones, and it was amazing. I loved it. I still remember it to this day. It was a great moment. The crowd was going bananas. And this year for the Dodgers were flying ten drone shows for the Dodgers, and they'll have four one thousand drone shows as a part of that mix and then six five hundred drone shows. So definitely larger, definitely high resolution that we'll see in the drone shows. Definitely longer shows. I think we're gonna for some marketers and advertisers when we can fly shows continuously. Last year, we did our first hour long show proving out that we could do something and have a nice something in the sky for a long period of time, advertising, doing some kind of wow moment for folks, and that's gonna be happening more, and then different payloads. Right now, we're flying a light bulb with colors, but in the future, you're gonna see different payloads, different ways to wow. The audience, so looking forward to some of those things. So I and the other thing I would say too is that I don't even know in five years, I could tell you three years all that's gonna happen in five years. I just can't wait to see what we're gonna be doing in the drone space. It's gonna be super cool. Yeah. Well, look, we gotta start flying LED walls. And if you're LED manufacturer you know, call Rick tomorrow because this is, you know, it's it's a really interesting concept, right, because you're you're right. You talk a lot about pixel pitch and actually using the drone as display, but there you talk about payloads and and you have the opportunity to have a lot of different physical elements. Absolutely. Whether it, you know, one thing that even jumps out like imagine being able to fly the earth or a sphere or something like that and have their own circle around it. Right? There's a lot of physicality that could be incorporated as that payload goes up as well. So I'd say the other pieces, you just mentioned that, they think about what's happening with drone shows, is is that you're gonna see more integration Right? So you were there with a fireworks show and the drones, two mediums coming together to make a really cool moment. For those folks that are in Dallas area, what we do with FC Dallas. The folks out there are phenomenal and have put together a great multimedia presentation. We've got drones. We got, Mike Star Wars the best example, right? And then for the FC Dallas, we've got Darth Vader out on the field doing a light Saver battle with Luke, and he's got video boards going. People have got LED bracelets. They're lighting up to the same colors as the drones and fireworks going off. And bringing all of those elements together, including drones as part of the multimedia, we're gonna see more and more of that integration too just to make that much cooler of a wow moment for Well, look, I'm gonna put the call into the next Taylor Swift tour is gonna have drones in it, and I'm sure it's gonna be you guys. So There we go. That'll be, hey, you get the Swifty market. You'll start you'll start doing whatever you want, whatever you want. Absolutely. I'll tell you what, Rick, we we've gotta have you on regularly because this is such an interesting space because, it really is ironically enough how our industry is continuing evolving, right, or or continue to evolve. We have we're having conversations about things like pixelpicks and pixel pitch and payload and power consumption. And those are all conversations that as an AV industry, we're having nonstop. Right? Next next one is you're gonna have to figure out how to start integrating IT all these because that is, I don't know. Well, that's a topic for another day, but but Rick, thank you so much for coming on today. We appreciate you coming studio. Yeah. Thanks for having me here, Brad. Appreciate it. Look forward to the next one. Well, thank you for tuning in as well. Be sure to like and subscribe. Check us out next time on the next episode of Pro AV today.