How Does your Show schedule work?

[Gooliez]

trying to get a general feel of how much attention span viewers have.

With your show, how do you break it down?
I've seen tom betgeorges shows on youtube. His shows seem to average about 20 mins, about 5 songs and filler "talking trees" to stretch the show out.

do you repeat the same show several times a night or have a "Kids" version early then an "adult" later on?

how many shows do you do? how early before xmas do you start the shows?

do you fill with just general effects running till specific times?

How long are they?


On the "talking tree fillers" side. how do you create the audio? Text to speech Ai, voice changers? what do you use?

 

[Croydon Lights]

I run my show from the first Friday of December until Christmas night
The show runs the same for each night and is made up off 5 different sequences that run for about 20 min then repeats until it shuts down
Show runs from 07:30 till 10:00 PM Sunday to Thursday and 07:30 till 11:00 Friday to Saturday
The busy nights are usally the week before Christmas day

 

[Katekate]

loop all the songs from 8 till 11 every night.

There is really no "correct" answer

If people are staying too long and causing traffic problems, you can run a shorter loop, or do A-B-C-A-D-E-A-F-G type loop, so when people hear A a second time they move on.

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

I loop the same playlist every night between 8:30 and 10:30, extended to 11 on Christmas Eve. All up, one rotation probably lasts about 25-30 minutes. I have shortened a number of songs, aiming to have a higher ratio of vehicle visitors see a more interesting and busy part of a sequence and not just drive immediately having only seen a slower part. It doesn't help that vehicle stopping points in front of my display are limited due to unbroken yellow lines due to a bend in the road.

Along side normal musical sequences I also have some short photo opportunities scheduled every 3-5 songs where my lights stay on with slow colour changes. This is in response to pedestrian visitors trying to take photos right when certain lights would be programmed to turn off. These days I think I have four different versions and one of them is playable on demand if I happen to be outside. Here's part of one example from a few years ago:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFQj_OAY6fc


Whilst my own show loops continuously, I have visited some people's displays that instead advertise multiple nightly show times e.g. every 15 minutes and people seemed willing to hang around to see it. I think it just depends on the kind of visitors you get and your own preferences, too. Like @Katekate says if you find you're getting too many visitors all at once then a shorter show duration may be warranted to encourage them to move on and make room for the next visitors. You might even find that different approaches work best at different points in the month, relative to how close or far away Christmas Day is or weeknights/weekends and the changes in traffic volumes.

 

[Gooliez]

I loop the same playlist every night between 8:30 and 10:30, extended to 11 on Christmas Eve. All up, one rotation probably lasts about 25-30 minutes. I have shortened a number of songs

Along side normal musical sequences I also have some short photo opportunities scheduled every 3-5 songs where my lights stay on with slow colour changes. This is in response to pedestrian visitors trying to take photos right when certain lights would be programmed to turn off. These days I think I have four different versions and one of them is playable on demand if I happen to be outside.

I've been trying to find a few shorter versions of some songs, when they go for over 3 mins even I get a little over it.

I love the idea of the Photo Opportunity runs, How do you set one of them to be playable on demand?

As far as High traffic flow, I'm a little out of town, plenty of parking outside, but people will have to leave their vehicle to see the show as all my trees are in the way. I feel after word gets around (seeing as it's my first year) it might be a bit busier, already have a bunch of friends who are teeming to see it. lol

 

[Notenoughlights]

95% of people who come to my display don't even put 2 and 2 together that there's music and lights sync'd together. They just get lost in everything else. The 5% that do, often hang around for a bit to see what happens, and ask a few questions about how it all works.
I just run the same loop of sequences from 8:30 till close (10:30 or 11:30 depending on the day/date)

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

I love the idea of the Photo Opportunity runs, How do you set one of them to be playable on demand

I have a show PC that runs xSchedule (xLights Scheduler) and the on demand photo op I can manually trigger using the xSchedule web interface through my phone outside via WiFi. I have it set up as an unscheduled one song playlist.

95% of people who come to my display don't even put 2 and 2 together that there's music and lights sync'd together.

I think we all get these visitors, who either don't stick around along enough to realise there is matching music or they don't want to change their car's radio.

 

[Notenoughlights]

I have a show PC that runs xSchedule (xLights Scheduler) and the on demand photo op I can manually trigger using the xSchedule web interface through my phone outside via WiFi. I have it set up as an unscheduled one song playlist.


I think we all get these visitors, who either don't stick around along enough to realise there is matching music or they don't want to change their car's radio.

I stopped broadcasting radio, inconsiderate people turning it up really loud, and it also clogged the road.

 

[Indigogyre]

I'm located in the Midwest of the United States, this matters for different timing.

Halloween is roughly from the 23rd until Nov 1st or 2nd. Thanksgiving is maybe the day before and the day after. Christmas will start after Thanksgiving.

I run many different schedules and playlists. It depends on how much time you have to run lights but during the fall and winter months I have a lot of time to run sequences. When the lights are up I run static lights in the morning from 5:30 - 8am. I run an early show from about 4pm - 6pm for the kids, and normal shows until 10pm on weekdays and 11pm on weekends.

I try to mix things up and my playlists last between 30 - 45 minutes and then have static displays for the rest of the hour. I have multiple playlists for even days and odd days each playlist is set to randomize the order so it's never exactly the same show each time. On Halloween, Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Years I play sequences all day long so there is always something happening.

I also run remote falcon and viewers can select songs to play. All my songs are requestable in Remote Falcon regardless of the season they get used in the show. It also has songs not in any of the other playlists.

My show is not advertised and is just word of mouth and those in the neighborhood. I rarely get more than 2 people watching the show at one time and have only talked to a handful of people every year. People flee whenever someone walks out of my house, it's weird since I obviously want people to watch and listen.

 

[merryoncherry]

trying to get a general feel of how much attention span viewers have.

This varies wildly. Some people brought someone along who they expected would be interested, only to find out they are not interested at all, and are gone in half a song, or who just roll by without getting out of the car. A few have plopped lawn chairs on the sidewalk and tried to establish how long the loop is (there is no loop ).

I've been trying to find a few shorter versions of some songs, when they go for over 3 mins even I get a little over it.

That's worth doing. Certain songs cause people to lose interest and leave. Long boring ones, or just certain songs (inexplicably, this one:
View: https://youtu.be/TOMnVUgGISs
).

I've seen tom betgeorges shows on youtube. His shows seem to average about 20 mins, about 5 songs and filler "talking trees" to stretch the show out.

Each person's circumstance is going to vary, which is why there is more than one right answer. Note that Tom's show is primarily, if not entirely, for youtube. All the fireworks and stuff are one and done. With his new home (Lyndhurst?) location, people can't go see it, and if you did you'd be less impressed because you need to be in a drone to see some of it; there's no viewing location that accommodates the variety of locations and scales of the things shown thus all the camera cuts. So it makes sense for him to have the right amount of material for a youtube-length video.

With your show, how do you break it down?

My needs are also different. We want people to park and walk back. So this means playing audio over the speakers. Which means you can hear it in the house. Which means we'd get absolutely sick of a short playlist, and have lots of songs instead, and kick the ones we're tired of out of the playlist. But then people won't know when the song they want to hear will be played, so we have viewer control with Remote Falcon. This also gives us an option for songs the world loves but we don't, such as "All I Want For Christmas Is You" -- don't schedule it, but allow it in Remote Falcon (and take it out of alphabetical order).

do you repeat the same show several times a night or have a "Kids" version early then an "adult" later on?

I do put the kiddie songs early in the playlist, there's a wave of them at about 7pm. I don't have any particularly "adult" songs, but do push the older/heavier songs later. The RemoteFalcon viewer control helps a lot here.

how many shows do you do? how early before xmas do you start the shows?

Oct 1-31; Black Friday (late Nov) - Dec 31. This year I also did July 1-5 but am not sure that would ever be routine.

do you fill with just general effects running till specific times? How long are they?

Yes. Prior to show time I have quiet static effects. That way as I turn everything on, I can tell if it's working. And viewer control is in effect then.

On the "talking tree fillers" side. how do you create the audio? Text to speech Ai, voice changers? what do you use?

You could do any of those things. There are several companies that have canned ones, or will do custom ones. You could create audio yourself or use AI.
When I do this, I get the material I want (usually groaner dad jokes - "Why did the ghost go into the bar?" - "For the boos"), give it to the folks at ShowtimeBumpers, and get the sequences back. Then sprinkle just a handful through the night (they get old, fast). A few of them did go with specific songs, but most didn't.

 

[algerdes]

With our display, there is a limited number of parking spots. (21 if everyone parks "correctly".) We watch the traffic flow and when it gets heavier, we run a shorter show. This keeps the backlog from getting too long waiting for a spot to watch.

Essentially this ends up with a longer show on Mondays thru Thursday. Friday and Saturday is almost always the short show. Sundays are depending on how close to Christmas.

As far as number of sequences, we have grown our catalog to the point that we can do 5 different shows in the same night. Our voice-overs are placed so that the visitor hears it, then x-number of songs, then they hear the voice-over again. Most people take this as the show restarting. It works 90% of the time.