OTL’s Client Training Program Gives Property Stakeholders Unprecedented Control Over Water Shows

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”—Proverb

Programming the water features we design and build to deliver captivating and immersive shows is one of the many distinctive services that OTL offers our clients.

Through our detailed and meticulous process, we incorporate color, lighting, water jets, music, fire, and other effects into thrilling water shows that visitors will remember for a lifetime. These entertainment experiences entice guests to increase their length of stay at these destinations, as well as return to them time and again.

While we pride ourselves on the quality of our show fountain programming, we also recognize the value of empowering our clients to adjust the programming of their show fountains themselves as their objectives change. This is where “teaching a man to fish” comes into play.

In addition to programming our custom-designed water features, OTL also offers a training program whereby we teach our clients from how to use Syncronorm’s Depence software to program and choreograph our musical show fountains. The in-person training sessions explain in detail how the fountain equipment works – from pumps to nozzles to light fixtures and more – and teaches clients about DMX controls, how to create time-based show sequences, and how to utilize a heavy-duty graphics card to produce a visualization of the sequence. In other words, instead of giving our clients “a fish,” we are teaching them “how to fish.”

OTL’s Project Designer Allison Long recently led a programming training program for one of our clients, Legacy International Center, an ultra-luxury waterfront resort and spiritual sanctuary in San Diego, California. Working with project architect Carrier Johnson + Culture and project water feature designer Aquatic Design Group, our firm had brought to life a spectacular show fountain at the destination that features state-of-the-art programming combining music, light, and spellbinding choreography.

Allison met with several of the project’s stakeholders and conducted a two-day training session on how to create choreographic fountain shows. The training covered creating and reviewing project files; understanding the visualizer; controlling pumps, lights, and effects; mastering sequencer functions; song-programming basics; nozzles; exporting and importing shows on site; and more.

“By meeting with our client in person, I was able to plug my computer directly into the fountain and show the team how to take control via the keyboard,” says Allison. “In addition to being extremely helpful to our client, the training also helped me improve the water feature programming since I could go on site, see the fountain that I had spent four months programming come to life, and tweak it to perfection. While the visualizer in the software allows me to time the splashes and achieve certain jet heights, once I’m on site I can adjust the program to improve the shows and make the experience of watching them even more immersive.”

Our client training program is an accompaniment – rather than a replacement – to the operational services we provide for every water feature project we complete. Clients who complete our training program have continued access to our technicians, who are available to help them with any operational issue or question that may arise.

Through our client training program and OTL’s complete roster of services, stakeholders can rest assured that their show fountains will function optimally and wow visitors consistently for many years to come.