Elation shares the magic of Dollywood Wildwood Grove

At the heart of this attraction, Located in the Great Smoky Mountains Theme Park, you will find the Wildwood tree that comes to life every night, thanks to Elation technology and the creation of designer Susan Rose. A light and sound experience showing a canopy of green leaves covered with 650 RGB Led butterflies.

En las Great Smoky Mountains, East Tennessee, is found Dollywood a theme park that opened a new area last year, Wildwood Grove, and in its heart there is a magic tree, Wildwood, that lights up with technology Elation Professional and creativity Susan Rose.

The Wildwood tree comes to life every night offering a unique light and sound experience created by The Imagination House for Dollywood and narrated by Dolly Parton herself. Designed and built by LifeFormations, the gnarled trunk of this tree of more than 15 meters tall emerges from a rock base before spreading out into a beautiful canopy of green leaves covered with 650 RGB Led butterflies controlled and programmed by Weigl Controls.

Lighting designer and programmer Susan Rose has created four seasonal experiences. She had previously been in charge of lighting for Dollywood shows and has spent almost a year with the Wildwood Tree project.

“when I started, the tree didn't even exist, so we start from scratch. I knew we needed outdoor lights that would fight Mother Nature and have good intensity to shine at dusk.. Elation was the answer.", Rose comments.

Every season of the year offers visitors a new and captivating experience at the Wildwood Tree, with a narration that is accompanied by music and a projection of butterflies that are on the tree and change color.

How is it an experience of 360 degrees, Rose placed lamps on four posts to illuminate it from all four sides. Mounted on each pole - each pole is at a different shooting distance- There are four Proteus Maximus Led profile moving heads, four SixPar Led Par lights 300 and four Lekos Led.

The SixPars splash a series of colors at the base of the rock, tree trunk and canopy, while the 50.000 Maximus lumens project custom gobos onto the tree to enhance story telling through custom patterns and animations.

Each Proteus Maximus fixture houses custom gobos with some spares also in use. Rose says specific gobos play a key role in storytelling - butterflies, lightning, dragonflies, christmas decorations, snow or leaves falling from the top of the tree- and that they must be indexed properly.

Rose explains that he really had to put a lot of thought into loading gobos into the four Maximus lights.. “Gobos really tell a story and are important. I really had to think about which gobos go on which wheel and which slot, which needed to be indexed and which could go on the static wheel, considering how you could create transitions. The complexity is that this must be multiplied by four”.

With CMY color mixing and full effects package including framing, Proteus Maximus can be used as a profile, beam o wash. With a zoom of 5,5 a 55 degrees and a 950W white Led motor, their 50.000 Lumens of brightness can travel great distances.

With three different light zones (on the rock, the trunk and the canopy), Rose worked in layers of light to create visual depth, with intensity, color and pattern.

Las Elation Rayzor 760 RGBW are potted at the bottom and used to illuminate the tree and the bottom of the canopy in layers of color.

The SixPar 200 IP Pars, that change color, They are mounted at the base of the rock, illuminate the canopy green or blue, while the Led SixPar 300, located on poles, add shadows.

Additional layers of color emanate from Acclaim Lighting Dyna Accent Mini architectural fixtures, hidden along the base of the tree, while mixed-color Lekos are projected onto the rocks and trunk to add texture. The lighting layers appear to work in tandem with the 650 canopy butterflies, whose wings can receive colors and effects in pixel maps.

The beginning of all four experiences is the same, with tree roots growing along the rock and vines climbing up the trunk, but each experience has its own visual effects: autumnal ambers and yellows with falling leaves, a powerful summer storm with lightning, or the snowflakes that fall in winter.

Rose says she used every feature of the Proteus when creating the scenes. “I used the frame shutter all the way, and then I opened them in a straight line horizontally to make it look like the roots are climbing up the rock. I put the animation wheel behind a gobo and focused well to make it look like it was raining on the trunk. Even the movement of the light was very smooth”.

Each experience is a few minutes long with ample time between shows to enjoy the majesty of the area and the beauty of the tree itself.

“During the shows there is a lot of color, but for our static look between shows I wanted it to look like a real tree. I kept the gobos out of focus to give it some depth and outline and on the rocks I added some steel blue to make it look like a real rock. in the trunk, incorporate amber and green for the canopy. "I was basically painting the tree with light and accentuating the natural colors in it to make it look real.".