Creative Development & Animation: A Tribute in Motion
Veterans Day brings communities together to honor those who served. For this show, Firefly’s animation team worked closely with city officials to craft a visual story that honored veterans while celebrating Pompano’s beautiful ocean culture.
- Blending patriotic symbolism with marine life themes, creating formations like sea turtles, sharks, the american flag, and a heartfelt "Thank You Veterans."
- Developing a custom narrative arc that opens with ocean inspired sequences transitioned into patriotic imagery.
- 3D choreography inside Firefly Studio, ensuring every drone's movement felt fluid, organic, and synchronized with the coastline environment.
- Music timing and emotional pacing, designed to create moments of reflection and celebration throughout the show.
- Client review using the Firefly 3D viewer, allowing the city to preview every sequence in real time on their actual map before event day.
Logistics & Planning
Large scale drone shows require detailed preparation, and Veterans Day makes the mission even more meaningful. Firefly’s logistics and operations teams coordinated months in advance to ensure every element aligned with safety, precision, and impact.
- Site surveys of the beachfront, identifying the perfect launch location and performance zone for maximum visibility.
- FAA approval and airspace coordination, ensuring the show met all regulatory requirements for holiday weekend traffic.
- Drone fleet preparation, with each Gen2 drone undergoing firmware checks, LED diagnostics, GPS tuning, and test flights.
- Crew assignments and scheduling, ensuring coverage across animation, setup, safety, piloting, redundancy, and post-show operations.
For setup, Firefly’s operation is entirely self-contained. Our drones are easily transported in rugged Pelican cases, allowing our team to arrive on site and quickly begin laying out the fleet in a clean, organized grid. Using the Firefly Pilot App, the pilot uploads flight paths to the drones, verifies the safety map and geofence, and ensures the show’s music is perfectly synced. We also meet with local security and law enforcement to review the safety perimeter and confirm all procedures are in place. Once everything checks out, it’s showtime.
