An award-winning media design and production company, Mousetrappe Media turns creative concepts into memorable experiences. Formed in 2005, the company will begin celebrating its 20th year this summer. Over the last two decades, its work has been featured in leading theme parks, museums and IPs worldwide, adding the wow factor to shows, spectaculars, immersive films and attractions.
In addition to creating some of the most intricate and captivating architecturally mapped projection spectaculars for the world’s best theme parks, Mousetrappe creates award-winning, internationally recognised media experiences. It has worked with museums, cultural institutions, zoos & aquariums and location-based entertainment destinations. Thanks to a team of multi-award-winning creative and technical talent, the firm’s experiences entertain millions of visitors.
As the company gears up for this milestone anniversary, we talk to the Mousetrappe leadership team to find out what makes it an active innovator in content creation for ride films, museums, and immersive experiences. They also speak about what they see as the future of media in this dynamic industry.
The evolution of Mousetrappe
Daren Ulmer, an industry veteran, founded Mousetrappe in 2005, after a decade with The Walt Disney Company working in live entertainment. Speaking about the vision that prompted the company’s inception, he says:
“No existing media studios were thinking the way I did, focusing on maximising the creative and technical execution of media while adopting emerging software-based visual effects, animation, and editorial tools. I created Mousetrappe to push those boundaries. I wanted to create a collaborative creative studio strictly focused on media content for entertainment, attractions, and cultural institutions.”
Over the past two decades, the company has flourished. It now has full-time teams based in offices in Burbank, California; Nashville, Tennessee; Montreal, Canada; and Orlando, Florida. Moustrappe has earned industry accolades, including IAAPA’s Brass Ring Awards and the Themed Entertainment Association’s Thea Awards. It has also garnered broader recognition at the Visual Effects Society Awards, the Telly Awards, and the Emmy Awards.
Ulmer then joined forces with Chuck Fawcett, a fellow industry heavyweight and member of the blooloop Power 10 theme park influencers, in 2021. Together, they formed Medici XD, which Mousetrappe now operates under.
“Mousetrappe cut its teeth creating iconic projection-mapped media for the global theme park industry. It built a reputation as the go-to animation studio for cutting-edge dimensional media,” comments Fawcett. “Now, as we look to the future, we are perfectly positioned to deploy our teams and talent and embrace all the latest technologies such as real-time, reactive, and AI generative content creation.”
New leadership
Media and entertainment veteran Tony Miceli now leads Mousetrappe Media as its president. In this role, he is driving strategic growth and fostering partnerships, as well as spearheading innovative projects.
“Tony is a true asset to our leadership team,” remarks Ulmer. “He brings a level of experience and creative authorship that fits the Mousetrappe culture like a glove. He’s the perfect partner with a vision and flexibility that is rare in our industry.”
Miceli adds:
“I have always appreciated Mousetrappe’s accomplishments and recognised them as pioneers in crafting immersive narratives that seamlessly integrate with physical spaces. This strategic focus on specialisation sets Mousetrappe apart as an industry leader. It opens doors to exciting partnerships that further elevate our profile in the immersive media production landscape.”
With three decades of experience in themed entertainment and film, Miceli is uniquely qualified to steer Mousetrappe Media towards a new era of growth and innovation. His leadership roles at Soundelux Entertainment Group, Showorks, PGAV Destinations, Technomedia, Electrosonic, and Universal Creative have honed his expertise in creating and producing film, music, and media for themed attractions and live entertainment.
Mousetrappe pushes boundaries
Historically, Mousetrappe has pioneered new and complex emerging media formats. Notably, it was the first to projection map a theme park icon, Hogwarts Castle for the grand opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando in June 2010. It also developed Disney’s first projection mapping on Cinderella Castle for the Thea Award-winning, The Magic, The Memories, and You! show in 2011.
Continuing this legacy of innovation, Mousetrappe became the first company to implement drones, rather than helicopters, in a flying theatre film production. This was for PortAventura Worlds’ Flying Dreams attraction, filmed in 2016, and the technique is now standard practice.
Now, the company is advancing further by acquiring a cutting-edge flying drone system. This is equipped with an 8K/120 FPS resolution Red V-Raptor Camera and a specialised lens for upcoming flying theatre projects.
In 2022, Mousetrappe also opened Expressions of America at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. This nighttime outdoor immersive experience features massive projections and a custom music score. It tells individuals’ stories of courage during challenging times.
Sponsored by the Bob & Delores Hope Fountain and narrated by Gary Sinise, this type of outdoor immersive experience had not previously been done by other museums in the US.
Stormie Miller, Mousetrappe’s head of production, says: “This project pushed the studio’s technical and creative boundaries to their limits. The enormity of the building facades required doubling the total rendering power utilized by the studio on previous productions. Yet it was essential that on such a massive canvas, we continued to offer guests an intimate storytelling experience honouring these wartime heroes.”
Not just projection mapping
In addition to Mousetrappe’s successes in projection mapping, the teams’ capabilities stretch far beyond this skill set. Particularly when producing media for ride attractions.
Mousetrappe is renowned for its global work in media creation. This includes ride films and content for pre-shows, queues, and dark rides. Along with Flying Dreams at PortAventura World, the company produced and directed the film for the park’s Racing Legends attraction. A successful stereoscopic dome simulator, it showcases iconic Ferrari racing moments.
In 2022, the company produced four ride films for the acclaimed Gateway to Space attraction at the Kennedy Space Center. These were carefully crafted to take guests on educational yet fantastical journeys into deep space while accurately representing NASA’s vision for the future of space travel.
Hypersphere 360
Most recently, Mousetrappe crafted the ride film media for the acclaimed Hypersphere 360 at SeaWorld Abu Dhabi. This groundbreaking project is hailed as the world’s most immersive ride. It showcases a colossal 17-meter spherical LED screen paired with an Intamin ride system. With 17 million pixels and 2x 6K LED technology, the ride plunges guests into a captivating underwater realm. The team created the entire ride film in Unreal Engine, pioneering the use of a real-time game engine for spherical content.
Cedar Connor, Mousetrappe creative technologist, says:
“Hypersphere 360 was a fully spherical LED environment, which meant any creative change became extremely time-consuming, so we elected to use Unreal Engine to speed up iteration. That was our first use of Unreal for final pixels at that scale. Getting 12K resolution out of a game engine is a Herculean effort. But ultimately, Unreal’s flexibility was worth it, and the client loved it!”
Mousetrappe’s team broke new ground in designing and creating the content for this IAAPA Brass Ring Award and blooloop Innovation Award-winning attraction. The company was also nominated for the Visual Effects Society Award for Best Special Venue project, a rare honour.
Mousetrappe’s senior creative director Ryan Kravetz says:
“With Hypersphere, the unique 360-degree canvas allowed the audience to see beyond the screen and be immersed into a fully realised world where sea life, characters, and guests share the same space.”
Museum content with emotional connection
The firm has plenty of expertise to bring to museums and cultural attractions, including Beyond All Boundaries in 2009, produced for The Hettema Group (now THG) with executive producer and narrator Tom Hanks. This broke the mould for immersive theatrical museum experiences and still fills seats 15 years later.
Actor Tom Hanks remarked:
“Beyond All Boundaries establishes something I’ve never seen in any sort of museum setting. This building itself is an art installation. It exists for one thing only. It’s an immersive performance art experience from the moment you walk in the door until you walk out again.”
Another notable project is the Space Shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. This earned the firm a Visual Effects Society Award in 2013. Adored by audiences for over a decade, it was meticulously crafted to emotionally engage viewers and deliver a dramatic, breathtaking reveal of the actual Atlantis orbiter.
Adding to the impressive list of credits is the Voices at One World Trade Center, See Forever visitor experience, which received a Thea Award in 2015. The team developed an ultra-high resolution, personalised media gallery portraying the stories of those who reconstructed the World Trade Center.
Elsewhere, for Herschend’s Adventure Aquarium, Mousetrappe designed and created an immersive media-enhanced experience in the Hippopotamus habitat called Hippo Haven.
When museums and cultural destinations seek historically accurate yet emotionally compelling experiences, they can rely on Mousetrappe to deliver. Cynthia Brown, principal at Museum EXP explains:
“Mousetrappe is creating some of the most intriguing and resonating work in the museum space, particularly through their commitment to authentic storytelling. Their ability to activate artifacts and historical narratives through the production of digital media is not only compelling, but they also meaningfully deliver on the mission of each project.”
Mousetrappe creates immersive experiences
Mousetrappe has been a pioneer in immersive experiences long before they became a buzzword, and founder Daren Ulmer’s recognition as one of blooloop’s top 50 immersive influencers last year is a testament to the company’s expertise. Ulmer says:
“While we’ve been most publicly recognised as large-scale media producers, our real success and proudest moments have been when we transport audiences into new or fantasy realities using all of our creative and technology tools together seamlessly.”
Creating highly immersive, dynamic and transformative media environments is in the company’s DNA, from the Space Shuttle Atlantis’ main theatre, which surrounds the audience in architecturally mapped film, to the large-scale media projections that build excitement and help to transport guests to another world in the queue lines at PortAventura’s Ferrari Land.
Mousetrappe is also currently creating a groundbreaking immersive luxury dining experience called The Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, set to open summer 2024. It has developed proprietary projection mapping systems for the diners’ tabletops, featuring dimensional scenic with video mapping—a departure from conventional projected dining experiences, which typically project onto flat tabletops and plates.
The venue boasts video mapping on walls and windows, theatrical lighting and 10-channel surround sound with custom music, as well as live performers. Mousetrappe’s innovative system tracks tabletop objects and motion, offering unprecedented real-time interactivity.
Connor adds: “Mousetrappe is excited to partner with The Gallery Dining Experience and further our partnership with Panasonic. Their projection technology was a perfect fit for the gallery. The project allows us to explore generative AI incorporated into interactive content. Creating 20 different dining tables, each with its own unique interactive experience, is an exciting engineering challenge.”
Mousetrappe and the future of themed entertainment
Despite this long track record of innovation, the company is not resting on its laurels. Instead, it continues to innovate, take on the most challenging digital content experiences, and make them the most powerful emotional experiences in the industry.
“We reaffirm our philosophy of being the studio that maximises creative and technical execution of media inside a larger project while delivering deep emotional impact to the audience,” explains Ulmer. “We make media work!”
Part of its vision for the future will include embracing real-time content generation to build upon its success with Hypersphere 360.
Ulmer adds:
“This is a huge part of the future of media. Generative and constantly evolving – or non-repetitive – content is becoming the key to repeatability for guest experiences. We can now routinely create generative, interactive, and reactive content using Unreal Engine.”
Mousetrappe is also exploring the effective use of AI image and video generation and understands its place in the future of content generation. The studio will continue to grow and invest for the future.
“We see the future of attraction and experience design will include augmented and virtual reality, robotics, artificial intelligence, and also a place for the metaverse,” explains Fawcett. “Our plan is to continue to lead the way in these areas, embrace innovation, and bring practical solutions to market.”
Making media work
With Miceli, the co-founder of Soundelux Entertainment Group, and Ulmer, the former head of Disney Entertainment’s music department, Mousetrappe also boasts exceptional expertise in crafting audio and music soundscapes for films and attractions worldwide. Having contributed to numerous award-winning projects, the company now aims to further develop and showcase this aspect, as Miceli elaborates:
“Well-crafted sound and music have a unique subliminal power to transport the listener to a different place, time, or emotional setting. We are thrilled to offer this expertise to clients needing sound design and music production or as part of our turnkey services along with our visual media.”
Furthermore, Mousetrappe’s expertise in media extends to a comprehensive knowledge of media delivery hardware, encompassing projection and media servers. The company has forged a partnership with Panasonic Connect to design and deliver projection systems, enhancing the capabilities of media to its fullest extent.
Brian Duffy, strategic account manager with Panasonic, says:
“Having the privilege to work with individuals like Daren and his team at Mousetrappe keeps me passionate about my role as a technology advisor. Their creative vision continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, fostering innovation in our audio-visual industry.”
Mousetrappe will continue working with AVCL Hardware Integrators for comprehensive system design and installation. It will leverage these new partnerships to deliver both media content and hardware more competitively.
What’s next for Mousetrappe?
Looking ahead, Miceli dedicates himself to maintaining the legacy of creative excellence as well as strengthening Mousetrappe’s position as the top choice for exceptional attractions, visual spectacles, and large-scale multimedia experiences.
“I recognise that the most crucial element in what we do is the art of storytelling. We are deeply committed to infusing every project with a compelling narrative so that we can create experiences that resonate emotionally with every audience, every day.”
“Our goal in our 20th year is to get the word out,” explains Fawcett. “Mousetrappe is your best choice to help create game-changing visual media for your next awesome ride attraction. We have a superior set of creative ideas and technical tools to make your museum project stand out and connect with a sophisticated new audience.”
Finally, Ulmer says:
“When I look at what the Mousetrappe team has accomplished in the last twenty years, I am blown away! It leaves me speechless and drives me forward with even more determination and excitement for what’s next in digital media for the attractions industry. Here’s to the future as we continue to build a better Mousetrappe!”
