Drone light show to illuminate skies above Flying Canoe Volant festival

A drone light show at this year's Flying Canoe Volant festival in Edmonton's French Quarter will tell the tale of pioneers wanting to join their families in winter, using a magical flying canoe to do so.

"The mood is quite eerie," Jean-Michel Dentinger, the president of show creator Pixel Sky Animations, told CTV News Edmonton about the story, which involves the pioneers making "a deal with the devil" to get home.

Dentinger's Vancouver-based company, one of the few drone show operators in Canada, has been in business for the last year and a half. Designers use 3D computer software to create shows and program drones to stage it.

"It's a fully automated process that goes from our designers, mind and imagination that gets translated through the technology into these beautiful displays in the sky," said Dentinger, who originally hails from Edmonton and grew up in Bonnie Doon.

Pixel Sky's show for Flying Canoe Volant uses 170 of their 250-drone fleet which is smaller than others across the globe that number in the thousands, but Dentinger says they make up for it in other ways.

"Here in Canada, we're a little bit restricted in the spaces that we can use and the sizes of operations that we can have, and we're also a little bit newer on the scene, so drone show companies in Canada are a little bit smaller, but what we find is that we're using the quality of our show, the quality of our design, to make up for having to use less drones," he said.

The Pixel Sky Animations drone show is slated to hit the skies above the Campus Saint Jean sports field for two 10-minute performances each night on Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. 

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Amanda Anderson and Matt Marshall