As design director at LCI Productions, a leading multimedia show design and production company, Rob Paul is renowned for pioneering advancing art forms to create immersive experiences that deliver significant value for brands and destinations. He has been at the heart of this for over 20 years, developing a variety of evolving platforms, bringing the benefits from the attraction space into vertical markets and ensuring results through solid business cases.
With a background in science and engineering, Paul’s approach to delivering immersive experiences starts with the concept that ‘nothing is impossible’, or at least ‘if it’s not possible we can create the illusion that it is’. By developing novel techniques for immersive delivery, such as world-first solutions utilising water, building exteriors, natural settings, virtual environments, and pixel mapping, he has widened the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. He crafts remarkable events that enthral audiences, optimising reach and engagement and ultimately driving traffic and extra sales.
One notable example is his rethinking of the Windsor Park Illuminated Christmas light trail experience, where he used every instrument in LCI Productions’ immersive toolkit, including Hydro screens, underwater and three-dimensional projection mapping, interactive motion-tracking fireflies, holographic floating fairies, and immersive holograms of forest animals, to bring 2.2 km of forest to life.
LCI has curated night-time shows at several theme parks, including Symbio at Ocean Park and Ocean Flower at Hainan. These encourage people to stay for longer, resulting in additional spending into the evening. Paul has also extended the benefits of these approaches to wider markets outside of the attractions space, including for BID programmes to drive people back to local retail destinations. This includes the Bournemouth Coastal BID with 3D projection mapping in Boscombe High Street.