For years, Stone Mountain Park's Lasershow Spectacular has packed such a patriotic punch and conveyed such strong Southern pride that visitors come away from it wanting to kiss their mommas, cheer for the Braves, eat an apple pie, walk on the moon and hunt down bin Laden -- all while crooning "Georgia on My Mind" just like Ray Charles.
The message has stayed so spirited that probably only the most advanced techies among the more than 1 million per year who take in the show on one of the world's largest screens, the 825-foot-tall granite outcropping itself, noticed that the Lasershow Spectacular was powered by some seriously dated technology. Novel when the show was launched in 1983, the lasers had come over time to appear like Etch A Sketch on a monumental scale.
Starting Saturday night, the newly renamed Lasershow Spectacular in Mountainvision kicks a classic metro Atlanta summer pastime into the 21st century, employing state-of-the-art digital video projection to give the show 3-D-like effects without the funky glasses. If the old production's visuals were quaintly retro like "Ms. Pac-Man," the new one's promise to be more in the arresting league of "Halo" (sans, of course, the extreme violence).
"It really is a dramatic difference," said Paul Creasy, president of Full Spectrum LLC, longtime Lasershow producer. "The lasers we use are restricted basically to line art. That's why they're elementary-looking animation. The video opens up for us to do all the stuff that the lasers don't have the ability of doing."
Stuff like Stone Mountain turning temporarily into a volcano, spewing lava down its side. Or frozen crystals shooting out of the center of the world's largest granite outcropping, which also becomes wrapped in vines like kudzu gone wild. Or "the Rock" cracking open to reveal a futuristic view of Atlanta's skyline, flying shuttles and all.
But perhaps the biggest piece of visual trickery the new technology allows is to create non-distorted projection via 3-D mapping on the mountainside, essentially turning it into the equivalent of a 5,500-inch high-definition TV screen. Correcting for the 45-foot-deep carving, cracks, ledges and other natural imperfections, it essentially creates a perfect and perfectly aligned virtual mountain face.
Once Full Spectrum had the Rock "mapped," Creasy said, "your mind is the limit to what you can create visually."
While a 10th "module" is being added to showcase the new technology, bumping up the run time from 37 to 42 minutes, the nine returning segments will make the show seem familiar, just more visually pumped up and color-saturated.
One sequence that's receiving some serious renovation is the popular historical module (dating to the show's 1983 beginning) featuring Elvis Presley's "An American Trilogy." In prior editions, lasers would trace the outlines of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson carved into the mountainside, animating them and making them appear to ride their steeds.
Mountainvision makes rock appear to crumble around the carving, and out of the dust other Confederate generals and many more soldiers suddenly appear to surround the original trio, referencing artist Augustus Lukeman’s more populated carving design from 1925. The horses of Lee, Davis and Jackson even sprout legs, and the three generals at one point appear to float off the mountain face, hanging momentarily, and dramatically, in the night air.
The Lasershow's last major modernization, for its 25th anniversary in 2008, amped up the sound as well as the pyrotechnics. Creative director Stan Morrell, in a nod to Stone Mountain's increasingly diverse visitors, diversified the music menu then and each year since, upping the contemporary Christian and rock ‘n' roll for the new edition.
"When they did the show 20 years ago, the audience was a lot different that it is today," Morrell said. "And so now the goal is to give everybody who comes something that they like."
There are so many song snippets that if you don't care for one hit, you don't have to wait long for another. The mix tape includes Ray Charles, Willie Nelson (both singing that old sweet song), Black Eyed Peas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Edgar Winter Band, Boston, Whitney Houston with the Georgia Mass Choir, Little Richard, Indigo Girls, OutKast, R.E.M., Sugarland, James Brown, Third Day, Charlie Daniels Band, Aaron Copland and the closer for several years going, Sandi Patty bringing it all home with "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Though subtle tweaks have been made every year to the Lasershow, Stone Mountain Park was not looking to make a major change this year when Full Spectrum made officials of the state's No. 1 attraction aware of the new technology. The park's investment is more than $1 million, coming on top of the $4.1 million restoration of the expansive sloping Memorial Lawn completed last year.
The advanced technology is more readily found in Europe (the projectors, in fact, are manufactured by the Belgian company Barco), though Disney World introduced a version of it earlier this year on the side of Cinderella Castle. Disney's nearly 10-minute, twice-nightly show, "The Magic, the Memories and You," is built around snapshots of guests enjoying the Orlando park from earlier in the day, but its hocus-pocus includes birds and flames flying out of the castle.
More than 25 million have taken in the Lasershow Spectacular since 1983, with as many as 20,000 viewing it nightly on the busy July 4th weekend. So the addition of Mountainvision can be seen as a way of enticing old guests and potential new ones to come out and spread a picnic blanket on Memorial Lawn (or pay extra and get reserved a VIP seat on one of the side terraces).
"The show has been so long-running that everyone here in Atlanta knows [what to expect]. People who've seen it may say, ‘Well, we've seen it now,'" Creasy said. "But this time when people come out, it's going to be back to that 1983 buzz of ‘Have you seen what they're doing at Stone Mountain Park?'"
And if all the flag-waving -- in addition to the Stars and Stripes, every branch of the armed services now gets its unfurling moment on the mountain -- feels more like hopeful 1983 than cynical 2011, the show's creative director begs to differ.
"The patriotic stuff, given the times that we're in ... it works, you know," Morrell said. "It's not rocket science. We're not trying to educate people. You just want to let them have a good time."
Lasershow Spectacular in Mountainvision
Opens Saturday. Shows nightly starting at 9:30 through Aug. 7, then on limited nights through Oct. 29. Free with the park's $10 vehicle entrance fee. Terrace seats ($10 with snack; reservations recommended) and meal and all-attraction packages also available. Free admission Saturday-Monday for veterans and active military. Stone Mountain Park, U.S. 78, Exit 39B, Stone Mountain. 770-498-5690, www.stonemountainpark.com.
About the Author
