The world gasped when a giant illuminated corgi, a teapot, a jumping horse, and other Queen symbols appeared in the skies above Buckingham Palace at the end of the Platinum Jubilee concert last Saturday night.
What a lovely sight. What a brilliantly British idea. Everyone agreed that they’d never seen anything like it.
This isn’t entirely accurate. Three members of the public — as well as some perplexed sheep — had previously seen the corgi and his pals.
The organisers staged a full dress rehearsal at a ‘off-grid’ location two weeks before Saturday’s display, which involved 400 drones taking off from the palace gardens and lighting up the sky with a meticulously choreographed ‘dance.’
It may have sounded like James Bond, but it was actually more James Herriot.
‘It was on a farm in Yorkshire that the farmer kindly let us use,’ says Mungo Denison, director of Leeds-based drone company Skymagic, which organized the event. ‘We couldn’t test at the palace because of the secrecy, but we did a full rehearsal, sending all 400 drones up, so the farmer, his wife, and the shepherd had front-row seats for viewing.’
The sheep had to be handled with extreme caution. ‘They’ve gotten into the command center in the past and tried to nibble on things!’
The show-stopping images were visible across London on Platinum Party night. Two kilometers away, a large ‘Thank You, Ma’am’ display and a giant ’70’ could be seen. ‘The sky is our biggest canvas,’ Mungo says.
Many people concluded that the display at Buckingham Palace was the work of computer-generated magic or clever light projection. Then they had ideas of ‘400 pilots sitting in the palace gardens flying them’ when they learned about the drones.
That is not the case. Only a small staff is required for such performances, which are increasingly taking the place of fireworks. At the palace, there were seven core members of the Skymagic team: four in the garden, launching the drones, and three at the front of the castle, ensuring that everything went off without a hitch.
Mungo and Stuart Fairhurst, Mungo’s technical director, were in the garden. They’ve put on similar shows all around the world, most notably in the Middle East for presidents and royals. ‘In Abu Dhabi, I once led a display with 100 snipers pointing at me,’ Mungo claims, just in case he was a terrorist.
It was incredible to be escorted into the Queen’s garden. ‘Our command center was in the tea tent used by the Queen for garden events,’ Stuart explains. ‘The grass had been groomed for us by the royal gardeners.’
On the days leading up to the event, they were able to do a few mini-tests in the field, sending up 20 drones at a time to ‘try out different spots.’ But seeing 400 drones put out in a big grid was a first for everyone (for safety reasons, display drones have to be two metres apart).
‘We generally use chalk to mark out the locations the drones need to sit on, but we didn’t want to ruin the Palace lawn, so we used the little plastic tripods found in takeaway pizza boxes to keep the lid from striking the topping,’ Stuart adds. We purchased 400 and pressed them into the palace grass one by one.’
The deal was a huge win for a small company, which employs only 20 people full-time. Skymagic was founded in 2015, at a time when drone displays were just getting started. Their initial display featured 40 drones, but the sky is truly the limit now. Just over 3,000 drones are deployed in a display, which is a global record.
The crew won’t say how much the Jubilee display costs, but a basic display of 200 drones costs $120,000 (£96,000).
Drone displays are popular because they are less harmful to the environment than pyrotechnic displays and can be customized to a degree that fireworks cannot, such as with unique brand logos.
Drone displays have wowed audiences at huge events like the Tokyo Olympics and the Super Bowl. The Jubilee party organizers invited Skymagic to come up with concepts to portray the tale of the Queen’s 70-year reign more than six months ago. The photos were to be festive, regal, but not stuffy, according to the brief. They should be representative of the Queen’s service, lifetime of duty, and interests.
Their designers were given paper, pencils, and crayons to work with. ‘The corgi, the teapot, and the horse were some of the first concepts, and the BBC immediately approved them,’ Mungo adds.