Drone light show pioneers Celestial have reached dizzying heights since forming in 2020. Their productions use hundreds of illuminated drones to create extraordinary animations that light up the night sky and provide a brand-new form of family entertainment. Celestial have now partnered with Bristol-based experience provider Yuup to produce Evolution, an epic light show that recreates monumental moments in history - from the origins of life on Earth, through to the modern-day moon landings. What’s On caught up with Celestial’s founder and chief executive officer, John Hopkins, to find out more...

Can you tell us about Celestial, and how it all started?
Celestial began about four years ago. My background is as a film director, and I spotted a drone display that Intel had done at the Korean Winter Olympics in 2018 - I saw a snowboarder in 3D in the sky over the mountains. It blew my mind, and it made me realise that perhaps the sky was the next big screen, through which we could use these drones to tell stories on an epic scale.
I just had this feeling that I had the skill set to be able to harness this new medium. It turned out I did!
My partner at the time, who I set Celestial up with, was a drone engineer, so we had that side of the business covered, and I was leading the charge with the creative vision.

How many drone shows has Celestial created to date?
Despite the process of creating and animating a drone show still requiring a fair amount of time, the market is still growing and we’re producing more and more each year. This year to date, we’ve delivered over 18 shows globally and with the addition of our new ticketed drone shows - a brand-new concept - a single show goes on tour and plays in multiple venues for multiple nights.

When making a drone show, is the creative process always the same?
It always starts with a conversation. Historically, if we were doing a show for a brand, we’d usually take a brief from the client. 
Now we're doing ticketed drone shows, it's more of a collaboration with Yuup to come up with a concept for a new show. 
We get the project down on paper first, then go into the design phase, where we animate the show with the soundtrack. Then it's the final phase, where we deploy the show.

Has it been hard to adjust to creating narratives for a long-form show?
It's more satisfying. We're telling longer stories. Our shows are longer than traditional drone shows, which tend to be around eight minutes and are sort of seen as a firework-replacement gimmick. We're choosing to use this new medium to tell longer stories. Evolution is roughly half an hour long, which is much more immersive and involved. You can tell a much fuller story that emotionally carries audiences away with the narrative. 
What's exciting about the ticketed drone show paradigm is that we're now really playing to our creative strengths; getting to flex our storytelling muscles.

Are you able to do trial runs beforehand?
We're good at being able to judge a show on a computer and get a really good, solid understanding of what it’s going to look and sound like. We test our productions as much as we possibly can using this method before we have to deploy them, but there’s nothing like standing there in person and seeing what you’ve created go live.

In a single production, how many drones are in the sky?
In Evolution we've got about 650 drones, split into three different flights. Drones have a duration cap - they can only fly for a certain period of time, so in order to extend our shows, we've got several flights staggered. It feels like you're watching drones in the air for 30 minutes, but actually it's been three separate flights cleverly stitched together.
In the cricket stadiums that we're currently flying in, they will be flying quite low down to the ground, keeping them enclosed within the stadium - I think the uppermost part of the show can be 100 metres.

How do you troubleshoot problems?
Putting on drone shows isn’t easy. It's very complicated, and it's taken four years for us to fine-tune our processes, which are now way better than they've ever been. It's night and day from when we first started doing this.
We tend to hire people who are brilliant problem-solvers. What we do is unprecedented, so we are a self-solving team. 
Safety is our number-one mantra. We've never had any safety issues in any of our shows. I think we've only had one or two shows within four years where we've had any technical problems at all - so we’re pretty good!

Let's talk about Evolution. Is it your most ambitious project to date?
Absolutely! And I would argue that it’s the best show we've created. We've had so many thousands of people buying tickets to come and see it, and such great, positive reviews. Absolutely it's the most ambitious.

What sparked the idea to use evolution as the subject matter?
The concept of Evolution was something that Celestial have been toying with for a while. The way in which our drones transform and morph from one object to the next felt very apt for the concept of evolution, which is a constant morphing of objects. We really like the scale of the story. It felt like the right tale to tell as our opening show.

Do you personally have a favourite moment in Evolution?
I really like the cave-painting sequence that we created in the third act of the show. It was one of the hardest to get right with the animation design. I think now that I look at it, it brings me more pleasure.

What are your hopes for Celestial in the future?
The ethos of Celestial - that we are an entertainment company who use drones to tell stories - is very important. We're not just a drone-show company that puts a logo in the sky. We want to take this new genre of drone art in a completely different direction. 
We feel like we're only scraping the surface of what's possible. Ultimately, all of the stories we want to tell carry a meaningful purpose that we build the show around. With this beautiful, epic, and very emotionally powerful new art form, we want not just to entertain crowds but inspire people to live greener, healthier, more connected lives. 

Feature by Jessica Clixby

Celestial presents Evolution at Birmingham’s Edgbaston Stadium on Saturday 26 October. Visit yuup.co/evolution for tickets