Photo Credit Linda Evans
It’s easy to get distracted when walking through the Carnival, presented by First Community, at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™. There are tempting treats, games to be played, souvenirs to buy, and rides blasting music and covered with lights. But on Saturday and Sunday nights during the Show, one thing captured the attention of everyone — The Drone Show, powered by ExxonMobil.
Some people expected it. Others stopped in their tracks when the fireworks exploded in the sky. Almost instantly, people stopped talking and focused their eyes and their phones on the drones above NRG Arena. When the drones transformed from a swarm to a rolling tractor and then to a mare and colt in full run, children and adults alike pointed to the sky with delight. “Yeah!” “This is cool!” “Did you see that?” the crowd exclaimed.
The Vazquez family was headed home but stopped to watch the drones. “It’s something new I’ve never seen before,” Lamar Vazquez said. His wife, Nancy, agreed. “It’s our first time seeing something like that,” she said. “It’s really cool,” their daughter, Penelope, said.
During the show, 400 drones painted the sky with lights. In the12-minute show, you would have seen an egg hatch, a cowboy trying to outlast a bull, and even Howdy riding a rollercoaster.
“I thought it was really cool,” Maji Frye said, who watched the show from a line for a carnival ride. “I didn’t know if it was real fireworks or what. It was really cool how it kept changing shape.” Her friend, Israel Watkins, was also impressed. “We don’t have this where I’m from,” Watkins said.
This is the second year the Rodeo produced the Drone Show. James Davidson, who recently retired as managing director of broadcast and audio visual studio, shared how Show leadership wanted to build on the 2023 Drone Show. “The response was just overwhelmingly positive, and when you get a response like that on a new thing, you run with it for as long as it will go,” he said. “So, we asked, ‘how do you make it bigger and better?’”
The answer? Add pyrotechnics, use twice as many drones and design two unique shows — something made possible because of ExxonMobil’s support. Davidson, whose background is in video production, relished using this new technology. “It’s not unlike producing a video,” he said. “There’s a series of images to tell a story … themes like the $600 million mark that we hit this year in educational support, and the four pillars, and the things that we do — the Livestock Show, the Rodeo, the Carnival — all those we try to represent. And, of course, there’s Western heritage.”
While some people caught the show by accident, Jennifer Haydon planned to stay after the Lainey Wilson concert to see it. Her favorite image was of the flag bearer, but as a volunteer on the Gatekeeper and School Art committees, she was also proud to see one of them represented. “When we saw the paintbrush and the Howdy logo, it was very cool,” she said. “Everyone was super excited for it and was oohing and ahhing.”
The show was created in collaboration with Sky Elements, a Texas company that produced the 2023 show. Davidson described how the behind-the-scenes work is almost as fascinating as the result. “The drones are GPS-located, and the whole show is loaded onto each individual drone,” he said. “So, if for some reason their Wi-Fi fails or they lose contact, the drones know what to do. Not only are [the drones] keeping track of their locations, being in the right place at the right time, and showing the right color of light, they are compensating for the wind and things like that.”
Davidson, who worked for the Rodeo for 25 years, never imagined producing a Drone Show would be part of his job. “The leadership has always been forward-thinking and willing to invest in the technology to be the best at what we do,” he said.
If you missed the drones in 2024, check out the Rodeo’s social media channels for videos of the show. Don’t worry; you will have another chance to catch the drones again in 2025 when The Drone Show, powered by ExxonMobil, returns. Just watch the sky.