Themed Entertainment Design - Technical Lead

For the Nextgen Showcase 2023/24 educational program, I was assigned to be the technical lead for team 6. Throughout this wonderful program, I learned the ins and outs of how a tech lead guides a team though the creative processes of themed entertainment design.

The Brief:

Seven teams were selected to create an expansion project for a mock zoo/theme park hybrid called "Terratopia" whose goals were to rely less on live animals and pivot more towards education on environmental sustainability and the natural world, while still remaining respectful of the animals that still reside there.

Rockwork Mood Board by Alli Nauert

Drakengrotten Mood Board by Alli Nauert

Event Space Mood Board by Alli Nauert

Quiet Place Mood Board by Alli Nauert

The Concept:

Our team first presented three concepts in the "blue sky" phase and the client panel chose our "cave" concept for us to refine in the concept and schematic phases. The story of our concept is "Drakendorp", a village that began using resources extracted from the cave many years ago and have since then realized the impact they had on the ecosystem and the animals that lived there and changed their ideals from selling cave extractions, to selling tickets to see it's museum-quality preservation.

More info can be found here

FFE placement by Rachel Kossler

Audio and light placement by Rachel Kossler

Masterplan by Lydia Jose, Aiden Imbeau, Joel Richard Rodriguez, and Rachel Kossler

My Contribution:

Having been selected as the team's technical lead, I assisted the team from a technical perspective. What that meant for me, was that I could give my input in all phases on what I knew was feasible and what was new and innovative during the first two phases. Then during the schematic phase I got to really go in depth with the team on solutions for scenery, audio, special effects, projections and more.

This is the "Drakengrotten" ride script I worked on with the team featuring some color coding I did to help organize the effects within the ride.

The tech narrative for the "Drakengrotten" attraction within the land. I assisted the team in sourcing fixtures and information for this document as well as writing some of the text and editing. This was truly a team project split among 4 people and I am very proud we accomplished such a wonderful cohesive document together.

I helped the team develop various layouts and diagrams for the attraction and problem solve where to locate things such as the maintenance bay, projectors, speakers, lights, water effects, and more.