Stephanie Briggs is Partnerships & Program Marketing Senior Manager for Paramount+, and with the help of an amazing team, she has just pulled off the biggest drone show the southern hemisphere has ever seen!
Tell us a bit about your career path, and your current role.
I am from sunny Queensland and studied Journalism and Communications, so it only seems right I’ve found myself in an incredible media organisation such as Paramount.
I have always been passionate about entertainment and have worked at a few places before finding my passion for streaming.
Moving from Queensland to Sydney was not easy, and following my passion felt like a dead end at times. But, I have got to where I am today through resilience, hard work and being motivated to carve out a space for myself within the industry I love.
Paramount+ recently lit up the Harbour at Vivid Sydney Light, Music & Ideas Festival with the biggest drone show ever held the southern hemisphere. Tell us about the event and your involvement in the project.
This project was handed over to me on my first day at Paramount+ in May 2021 and what a journey it has been since then!
We worked hand in hand with Destination NSW as well as UK company, SKYMAGIC, who supplied the drones and created the imagery in the sky.
This production has been MASSIVE for so many different people, with thousands of hours just in Government approvals.
The drone show used 600 drones, the BIGGEST drone show in the southern hemisphere. For context, Paramount’s last light show was in Mexico, and it used 300 drones, while other large scale drone shows have been done in places like Russia and China with 1,000 drones.
Before the show, the control tower had to go through multiple permissions before the drones could take off. This is what the tower radio sounded like before take off:
Radio: “Ok police?”
Police: “Ok”
Radio: “Ok Harbourmaster?”
HM: “Ok”
Radio: “Ok pilots?”
Pilots: “Ok”
Radio: “Ok Paramount?”
Paramount: “Ok”
Radio: “Queue drones in 5,4,3,2,1”
The drones took off from a large barge that we situated in Sydney Harbour, and they landed back in perfect synchronicity. We closed off the Cahill Express Way, closed the Harbour so no ferries came in or out, and slowed the traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In terms of my role, I was project manager and responsible for ensuring all major milestones were met and all parties were on target.
This also meant supporting and supplying information to the most incredible people who came on board to work on this project from Publicity, Creative, Legal, Media, Commercials and Event Operations.
As a team, we did everything from ensuring the barge was available to be towed into Sydney Harbour so the drones could take off, worked with SKYMAGIC on the creative you saw in the sky, created publicity and marketing plans, cleared music rights, ensured the live stream was set up and also dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s with regulatory approvals.
The team spent many hours last week at Sydney Harbour rehearsing with the drones before sunrise, so it’s safe to say that team will be catching up on some much needed sleep this week!
What have you learnt about yourself working on the drone show?
I learnt that you need to ask for help.
A project like this cannot be handled by one person, and you need to enlist the specialists within your team or broader business to bring their expertise to the table.
It will only be of benefit to your workload and also the project at hand.
It might sound cliché but team work really does make the dream work… or in this case, the drones work.
What are your favourite shows on Paramount+?
I am loving Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber! It is so interesting to see behind the scenes of Uber – an app we all use so often and has completely changed our lives.
Outside of work, we can find you…
No surprise but my main hobby is consuming of all types of content including reality TV, drama and any Jurassic Park film (if you want to chat Jurassic Park Dominion post June 9, please email).
On top of that, I am a fur mum to my two pets – a cat called Blue and a dog called Poppy. You’ll find Poppy and I most weekends enjoying a coffee at our favourite café, Dose in Willoughby!
