Illuminating The World of Avatar
This article summarises the content of Joe Falzetta’s NextGen Showcase presentation on Lighting Design, from 4th December 2023.
NextGen Showcase participants had the pleasure of learning from Joe Falzetta at a recent educational session. Joe spent an incredible 38 years at Walt Disney Imagineering as a Show Lighting Designer. His work started on Spaceship Earth at EPCOT Center and concluded with Pandora: The World of Avatar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Before Walt Disney Imagineering, Joe was trained as a set and lighting designer, where he learned the importance of collaboration between the theatrical disciplines. Besides studies of his specialty of set and lighting design, he was required to take classes in directing, acting, makeup, costume design and theatrical design to name a few. The idea was to encourage collaboration by understanding the other theatrical disciplines, ultimately making one a better designer in their chosen specialty.
After his academic studies, Joe spent eight years as a teacher of theatrical design at several universities where he also designed sets and lighting for numerous productions.
Joe quoted Walt Disney: “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park. I want them to feel they’re in another world”.
This is key to remember in the role of Lighting Designer at Walt Disney Imagineering; charged with designing the lighting for all guest accessible areas within the berm at all Disney Parks worldwide. It is all about telling the story.
Joe then explained how he will take the students through many projects where he contributed to telling the story with light. This included rides, exterior facades, landscaping, special features, fountains and icons, restaurants and retail spaces.
“Lighting is a powerful tool used to evoke mood or feeling…lighting design is a vital part of every project.”
Lighting has a number of different roles and functions in a themed entertainment setting.
At its basic level, light provides visibility. But beyond that it creates a mood, reveals the story, establishes a time of day or year or period. It can evoke a style, provide movement and act as a special effect. Importantly this always links back to the story, enhancing it for guests.
Mysterious Island at Tokyo DisneySea. Image courtesy of Joe Falzetta during his NextGen Showcase presentation.
Joe explains that in his experience as a lighting designer he is involved in all phases of the process from concept through to opening, from the idea to reality, from imagining to actualization. The process itself is not always linear but is one where the project has a framework for getting work done. As a lighting designer this starts as an artistic act, immersing yourself in the story. Next comes the melding of imagination and engineering: how do I make this story real?
This of course, as noted earlier, is done together with the other disciplines. This teamwork is important for the success of the project. Early on there are collaborations with the creative team to agree on the direction, answering questions such as “what should the lighting achieve?” and “how can lighting help tell the story?”
As the project develops the lighting team works closely with a myriad of other disciplines including project managers, estimators, engineers, and schedulers. In the installation phase, show lighting is heavily involved with on-site installation, and may include providing a list of deficiencies that need to be corrected before opening. Testing and adjustment of equipment is also completed, which leads into programming and ongoing reviews with the creative team.
Finally at close out, key documents are produced and turned over to maintenance and the show quality group who are responsible for ensuring the show is maintained for the life of the attraction.
Joe then moves on to discussing the specific project of developing the lighting design for Pandora: The World of Avatar. Developments started in 2011 and the area opened to great acclaim in May 2017. In 2013, Joe was brought into the project. The main theme for the land is conservation and environmental stewardship, which fits in well with the overall premise of Animal Kingdom.
““Ultra-realism” was the mantra of the creative director on the project, transporting visitors to another world.”
There were various different cultures in the story of Pandora that impacted the theming, each affecting the look of the land and the requirements of the lighting fixtures. Pandora sits on twelve acres of land and includes two attractions, Avatar Flight of Passage and Na’vi River Journey. The land also includes a major quick service restaurant, gift shop and the overall area development of the land which included the Valley of Mo’ara with its floating mountains.
The Valley of Mo’ara was an area that was the most complicated for Joe as a lighting designer, where he used techniques typically used in interior dark ride attractions on the exterior environment at a very large scale. With guests viewing the ‘floating mountains’ from all angles, all lighting needed to be hidden, and glare to be avoided. Joe also had to consider how weather proof and durable the equipment was, and how accessible and maintainable the lighting fixtures would be.
Illuminating the floating mountains of the Valley of Mo’ara was a particularly complex endeavour. Image courtesy of Disney, via Orlando Informer (2017)
Early in the design phase, the creative team introduced Joe to the story. Concept models and artwork were available at that time, so Joe started by completely immersing himself in the world of Avatar. To learn all that was needed for this project, Joe did a deep dive into Bioluminescence and immersed himself in the film. This helped him to create a vision for what the land should look like.
The challenge Joe and the rest of the team now faced was how to make a computer-generated environment come to life and make it a reality to the thousands of people that would visit the land each day.
“Guests would need to see the light but not the lighting fixtures, and those that were visible had to be themed within their surrounding environment.”
At the beginning Joe took some lighting fixtures home and played around with them in his backyard. This progressed to an early mock up, testing a range of equipment. As many fixtures as possible were included in this process. Unusual potted plants, glowing pavement ideas and underwater lights were all tried in this mock up.
Models were developed; a half-inch (1/24th) scale model was created for the entire land. As more and more details were added, it became a reference guide for positioning of lighting equipment. Joe shows the students a rockwork model for a part of the queue for Flight of Passage, showing how there are pins representing where the lighting fixtures would be placed, light posts and wall mounted lights too.
A late evening at Pandora: The World of Avatar, as the lighting shifts from day to night. Image courtesy of Disney.
Joe explains how large-scale projectors were used to illuminate the Floating Mountains; rooftop fixtures were important here. These were hidden from guests, but were not initially fixed to the roof. Flexibility was necessary to allow for testing and adjustments prior to ‘locking in’ the position of the projectors. These fixtures were key to achieving the transition from day to night in Pandora.
At the beginning of the project, there were very few weatherproof UV features available; lighting manufacturers were asked to address this in a way that kept them small and unobtrusive, in the 365 nanometre range without white light. Light levels needed to be considered from a safety point of view, including the light levels of emergency exits. This, however, needed to be done in a way that fit the story - easier said than done!
To finish off, the students were shown a range of the Pandoran Plants that inhabit the land. Many of these are interactive - with motion sensing technology embedded to enhance guest experience.
Joe ends his presentation there, and we thank him for his engaging and interesting education session before opening up to questions from the students.
We at NextGen Showcase would like to express our gratitude to Joe Falzetta for his contributions to our Educational Program. Thank you!
For more information on the NextGen Showcase Educational Program, go to: NextGenShowcase.com
This article was written by NextGen Showcase Alumni: Dr. Emily Budzynski-Seymour, with support from Rosie Willoughby.
Image sources:
Steven Diaz / Disney via The New York Times (2017): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/travel/pandora-avatar-film-disney-theme-park.html
Disney via Orlando Informer (2017): https://orlandoinformer.com/blog/nighttime-photos-pandora-the-world-of-avatar/
Disney Imagination Campus (2020): https://www.disneycampus.com/blog/the-science-behind-the-magic-pandora--the/
All other images are courtesy of Joe Falzetta, during his NextGen Showcase presentation on December 4th 2023.
