Flyover in Chicago combines Brogent’s reliable flying theater hardware with the latest in storytelling technology
by Joe Kleiman
A two-year collaborative effort between creative designers, engineers, and filmmakers transformed a 48,000-square-foot IMAX theater perched above Lake Michigan on Chicago’s historic Navy Pier into Flyover in Chicago, the latest flying theater attraction in Pursuit’s Flyover portfolio. At their core, flying theaters combine a narrative- or locale-based film with a complex ride system designed to simulate the thrill of flight, and Flyover in Chicago marks advances in both areas.
On the film side, Flyover employed the latest in advanced drone technology, with one of Hollywood’s leading pilots at the controls, to create a new take on the Chicago landscape. Creative director Rick Rothschild of FAR Out! Creative sees the production as the latest evolution of the flying film format. “We were able to take the traditional flying theater film style and adapt it to showcase Chicago’s urban beauty,” he says.
On the hardware front, Brogent’s latest iteration of its i-Ride ride system provides the synchronized motion and special effects required to give guests that feeling of flight. i-Ride offers a full six degrees of motion while suspending riders as close to the screen as possible. Brogent has supplied hardware at all of Flyover’s venues since the chain’s first installation in Vancouver in 2013. For Flyover in Chicago’s signature film, Believe Chicago, Brogent created a custom motion profile featuring brand new movements to perfectly match the unique flying patterns of the drone camera.
To learn more about the creation of Flyover in Chicago, InPark Magazine spoke with representatives from the development and operations team:
- Lisa Adams, COO and executive producer, Flyover Attractions
- Eric Sambell, global director, construction and entertainment technology, Flyover Attractions
- Derek Poitras, general manager, Flyover in Chicago
- Stefan Rothaug, director of sales & marketing, Brogent
- Rick Rothschild, creative director, FAR Out! Creative
- David Mossop, writer, director and creative associate, Sherpas Cinemas
- Kevin Murphy, senior VP, Kraftwerk Living Technologies
Tell us a little about the guest experience.
Derek Poitras: Flyover in Chicago is divided into three acts that total about 30 minutes, with the ride itself being nearly 10 minutes long. Guests begin in the gallery, which provides a brief introduction to the city. They then go up a flight of stairs to the preshow room, which is similar to our Iceland and Las Vegas venues. A series of screens surround the room, with a circular screen in the middle, viewable from both sides. By essentially standardizing the preshow area, we can easily swap out the different preshow films. The preshow features the people of Chicago, many of which appear in the ride film. Finally, guests transition to the gateway to view a safety video and be routed into groups.
To make the experience more accessible, we have elevators and for those with mobility devices, we can shut off one of the gondola units and they can enjoy the experience without motion, while accompanied by one of our team members.
What is the gondola configuration for this venue?
Stefan Rothaug: Because this is such a large space, we were able to fit in three levels of seating, with three gondolas per row. There are between five and eight seats on each of the gondolas, for a total of 61 seats.
What’s neat about this theater, as with Vancouver, which is also a former IMAX space on a pier, is that it’s 100% electric and this new ride model hangs from I-beams above. Older versions utilized hydraulic support footers for each gondola, so this really shows the potential of the i-Ride system.
What is unique about Chicago’s film experience?
Lisa Adams: We thought about doing a film about America, which would have been very broad in scope. One of the typical flying theater motifs involves gliding through canyons or large bodies of water. Our director Dave Mossop came up with the idea of using Chicago skyscrapers as canyon walls and the Chicago River and Lake Michigan providing the bodies of water.
David Mossop: We wanted to do this in one single take. It actually is fourteen different shots, three from helicopter, the rest from drone, edited together in one single shot. We like to think of it as a weekend in the city because you start at sunrise, then night falls, then it’s day again. We did that because some scenes worked better in different times of day, like the flyby of the Joffrey Ballet studios. If we had done that during daytime, all you’d see would be glass reflecting at the drone. But because we shot it at night, you can see the dancers performing in front of you illuminated by the light of the two studio spaces.
Our secret weapon was Gabe Kocher, who has a natural eye for drone photography. He is frequently hired for Hollywood blockbusters because he just instinctively can get these amazing shots.
director David Mossop views the action on a monitor.
Rick Rothschild: There are points where we take guests from one part of the city to another and we wanted it to be seamless. In the past flying theater films, we would just do a direct cut between scenes or come up with a thematic transition. For example, in the Iceland film, a church steeple blends into a mountain peak.
For Chicago, we tried to keep the transitions as practical as possible. We used existing tunnels or we created structures that the drone would fly into, and then we’d move that structure to a new location and the drone would fly out of it somewhere else. So the transitions between locations are cohesive.
To make the experience as exciting, yet comfortable as possible, we also brought in Dr. Eric Muth, who is a leading expert on motion sickness. He reviewed the animatics [a series of images played in order, used as an animated storyboard] with David and gave us a few tips on adjusting the flight path. The final product very closely matched the timing and motion of the adjusted animatics.
What is the film’s storyline?
Mossop: The film’s narrative is the musical culture of Chicago. Guests see real musicians performing as they fly through the city. It took a year of mapping everything out and creating an animatic for this to work.
What’s neat is that the Chicago film links varying musical styles from the blues to classical to hip hop. While prepping for the film, I was watching Baz Luhrmann’s movie Elvis and realized that Elliott Wheeler’s score was linking together a cornucopia of styles, just like we wanted to do. I told Lisa, “When you look for a composer, this is the kind of thing you want to keep in mind.” So she contacts Elliott directly. It turns out they’re both Australian and they got along great, and he composed the music for our film.
Rothschild: Music makes all the difference on an attraction, and I appreciate all the composers I’ve worked with going back to Jerry Goldsmith for Soarin’ [the first flying theater Rothschild helped create for Disney California Adventure]. What Wheeler captured was not serendipitous; it was a result of spending a year with David, starting with the animatics. Because of this, everything was finely orchestrated by the final stage of the shoot and the whole ride experience syncopates with the counts and rhythms of the score.
How has advancing technology impacted the experience?
Eric Sambell: One of the main things is the progression of projector technology. In Vancouver, we had a single 4K projector with a fish-eye lens in front of the ride aligned with the screen. When we opened Iceland in 2019, we used an 8K equivalent three-projector lamp-based system because the public’s expectations had increased. The Chicago location uses three Christie Griffyn 4K RGB laser projectors, which meets the Rec. 2020 standards for the color spectrum. A huge advantage for us is that the laser projectors don’t require dedicated cooling.
When we were planning for Chicago, we also realized it was time to upgrade Vancouver to match our new standard. Image quality is better – and there’s no need to add catwalks, which would have been challenging and expensive.
Kevin Murphy: This is Kraftwerk Living Technologies’ third installment for Flyover, and we also carried out the refurbishment and upgrade in Vancouver.
In addition to the change from lamp-based projectors to RGB laser projection, the Chicago location features 34.4 channels of audio, utilizing the IOSONO spatial audio system, which creates a three-dimensional sound environment within the dome. This is an upgrade we have also made in Vancouver.
Chicago was also our first time bidding and winning the integration of the preshow, which uses four Christie and eight Panasonic projectors and JBL audio. As with Iceland and Las Vegas, the preshow AV systems are managed by the ISAAC platform from Smart Monkeys, Inc. and in all the main theaters the AV and media replay is carried out with BRAINSALT media systems.
How does Brogent’s ride system impact the guest experience and what was done differently this time?
Rothschild: I have worked with Brogent on many projects including as creative director on Bermuda Storm at Chimelong Spaceship, which was honored with a Thea Award this year by the Themed Entertainment Association. In Bermuda Storm, the ride consists of a huge 304-seat motion base “boat” from Brogent [the v-Ride Vessel]. I appreciate Brogent because they are true innovators in the space, and their systems are ideal tools for storytelling. With their i-Ride, having the simulator divided into individual units allows for versatility based on the size of the space, whether it’s a small 40-seat theater under a parking garage in Las Vegas, or the much larger former IMAX spaces in Vancouver and Chicago.
Rothaug: Even though we’re known for our motion simulators, it is motion programming software that is truly the core of Brogent Technologies. The theater is large in Chicago, with nine individual gondola units, each one with a different perspective. We solve this with our software by being able to modify the motion programming per individual gondola. We can have a gondola on the top floor pitch more than those below in order to provide the best angle of view. The motion can also vary per gondola based on what the viewing experience is in its location – whether it is centered to the screen or to the sides.
With the drone, the flight path is very different than with films shot by helicopter or plane. For instance, there are lots of tight turnarounds in the film, and that fits i-Ride very well. The creative and technical teams were far more daring with this movie in trying to get new types of motion out of our system, and it shows. •
For more information on Brogent, visit brogent.com.
For more information on Flyover in Chicago, visit experienceflyover.com/chicago/
Flyover in Chicago represents the latest step in Flyover’s evolution as a company
It’s been over a decade since we opened Vancouver and, at the time, we thought it would just be a single film about Canada that would play year- round. We now have four locations, with a fifth licensed location at Mall of America. We felt this was the right time to ask who we are, where we are, and where we’re going.
Flyover is now the name of the experience. Instead of FlyOver Chicago – our original naming structure – it’s Flyover in Chicago, and we’ve adjusted our other locations to match. We’ve also given each of the films their own titles, so our Canada film is now called Awaken Canada.
There are four pillars to the Flyover brand: epic places, captivating stories, immersive experiences, and exhilarating flying rides. To accomplish this, we’re creating a library of original content, and our films are rotating among the locations. Believe Chicago, which opened March 1 at Flyover in Chicago, is already showing in Iceland and Las Vegas.
-Lisa Adams, COO and executive producer, Flyover Attractions
