Lest people forget the theme park's heritage, Universal Studios' new multi-spectacle, nightly closing show is all about reminding them: movies.
Universal 360, a show that premieres at 9:45 p.m. Saturday, has fireworks exploding, fire leaping, lasers spraying, music pumping and projected images dancing across Universal's lagoon, the building facades surrounding it, and the sky above.
But if the four, 30-foot-tall "light balls" (as one park visitor kept calling them just before a test run Wednesday night) floating in the lagoon don't command attention all on their own, then their montage of 160 movie clips, internally projected onto the spheres' 360-degree screens, likely will.
Jaws. Frankenstein. Bruce Almighty. Jurassic Park. Rear Window. King Kong. To Kill a Mockingbird. On Golden Pond. Gladiator. Psycho. Shrek. The Breakfast Club. The Fast and the Furious. Out of Africa. Schindler's List. Scarface. True Grit.
For 16 minutes, as theme music plays, films flicker past a few seconds at a time, offering fleeting glimpses of stars, snippets of dialogue and iconic moments, and bouncing through the history of the movie company. Meanwhile, the lighting and pyrotechnics build around the projection spheres.
Director Tom Vannucci said he strove to evoke "remember when?" moments in the crowd.
"One of our super objectives was, if you're standing next to a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, and you say, 'Oh, remember where we were when we first saw that movie?' That type of emotion. That memory. Memory emotion is one of the strongest things," Vannucci said. "What that is going to do is either make you see that movie again, or see another movie."
Universal hired film director John Landis to help select and sort the clips. The production features three of his movies -- Animal House, Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London -- but Landis said his struggle was to include enough vintage moments. He said the process demanded "a huge amount of give-and-take from everybody."
"There were tons of things: I felt you should have this, and they kept saying, 'Yeah, but people who are 15 don't know what that is.' Cary Grant. Rock Hudson," Landis said. "What was interesting was, to make sure they had Abbott and Costello in there, to make sure they had W.C. Fields in there."
The "light balls," which reportedly cost more than $10 million apiece, are not the only high technology worked into the show.
Various scenes are projected onto the lagoon-front building facades in synchronization with the movie clips. In one example, technicians laser-mapped the facade of one building to the millimeter, then reconstructed the edifice's image by computer. In the virtual image, computer animators set the place on fire, including flames visible inside the building.
As a clip from Terminator 2: Judgment Day rolls, the computer image is projected back onto the building, making it look as if it bursts into flame.
Those sorts of effects can scatter the crowd's attention -- and easily can be missed entirely. Vannucci said he doesn't mind.
"The word that I always use is immersive. You can be immersed in something. So that you can be looking at one thing and I might be looking at another. We have a shared experience even though we are seeing different items," Vannucci said. "You're in the middle of it, and it's going to evoke the emotion whether you're seeing a slightly different image than me."
Universal producers and engineers, who ran the full rough-cut of the show through for the first time Wednesday night, are rushing to complete details in time for Saturday's premiere. Timing, planning and technical issues haven't been the only concerns. Last Saturday night, a power surge, probably caused by a lightning strike, shorted out the video-control system, sending technicians scrambling for a few hours to get it working again.
"So for the last two days they've been ahhhhg!" Landis said.
The show also faces some hostility from residential neighbors, who live within a few hundred yards of the lagoon. Many have been complaining for months about late-night noise and occasional debris fallout from previous Universal fireworks shows. While planners responded by pulling much of the fireworks deeper into the park for this show, they've added other booming effects and a 300-speaker sound system for music.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/busi...0,0,3762077.story?coll=orl-business-headlines
Universal 360, a show that premieres at 9:45 p.m. Saturday, has fireworks exploding, fire leaping, lasers spraying, music pumping and projected images dancing across Universal's lagoon, the building facades surrounding it, and the sky above.
But if the four, 30-foot-tall "light balls" (as one park visitor kept calling them just before a test run Wednesday night) floating in the lagoon don't command attention all on their own, then their montage of 160 movie clips, internally projected onto the spheres' 360-degree screens, likely will.
Jaws. Frankenstein. Bruce Almighty. Jurassic Park. Rear Window. King Kong. To Kill a Mockingbird. On Golden Pond. Gladiator. Psycho. Shrek. The Breakfast Club. The Fast and the Furious. Out of Africa. Schindler's List. Scarface. True Grit.
For 16 minutes, as theme music plays, films flicker past a few seconds at a time, offering fleeting glimpses of stars, snippets of dialogue and iconic moments, and bouncing through the history of the movie company. Meanwhile, the lighting and pyrotechnics build around the projection spheres.
Director Tom Vannucci said he strove to evoke "remember when?" moments in the crowd.
"One of our super objectives was, if you're standing next to a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, and you say, 'Oh, remember where we were when we first saw that movie?' That type of emotion. That memory. Memory emotion is one of the strongest things," Vannucci said. "What that is going to do is either make you see that movie again, or see another movie."
Universal hired film director John Landis to help select and sort the clips. The production features three of his movies -- Animal House, Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London -- but Landis said his struggle was to include enough vintage moments. He said the process demanded "a huge amount of give-and-take from everybody."
"There were tons of things: I felt you should have this, and they kept saying, 'Yeah, but people who are 15 don't know what that is.' Cary Grant. Rock Hudson," Landis said. "What was interesting was, to make sure they had Abbott and Costello in there, to make sure they had W.C. Fields in there."
The "light balls," which reportedly cost more than $10 million apiece, are not the only high technology worked into the show.
Various scenes are projected onto the lagoon-front building facades in synchronization with the movie clips. In one example, technicians laser-mapped the facade of one building to the millimeter, then reconstructed the edifice's image by computer. In the virtual image, computer animators set the place on fire, including flames visible inside the building.
As a clip from Terminator 2: Judgment Day rolls, the computer image is projected back onto the building, making it look as if it bursts into flame.
Those sorts of effects can scatter the crowd's attention -- and easily can be missed entirely. Vannucci said he doesn't mind.
"The word that I always use is immersive. You can be immersed in something. So that you can be looking at one thing and I might be looking at another. We have a shared experience even though we are seeing different items," Vannucci said. "You're in the middle of it, and it's going to evoke the emotion whether you're seeing a slightly different image than me."
Universal producers and engineers, who ran the full rough-cut of the show through for the first time Wednesday night, are rushing to complete details in time for Saturday's premiere. Timing, planning and technical issues haven't been the only concerns. Last Saturday night, a power surge, probably caused by a lightning strike, shorted out the video-control system, sending technicians scrambling for a few hours to get it working again.
"So for the last two days they've been ahhhhg!" Landis said.
The show also faces some hostility from residential neighbors, who live within a few hundred yards of the lagoon. Many have been complaining for months about late-night noise and occasional debris fallout from previous Universal fireworks shows. While planners responded by pulling much of the fireworks deeper into the park for this show, they've added other booming effects and a 300-speaker sound system for music.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/busi...0,0,3762077.story?coll=orl-business-headlines
