Since 2024, my studio has produced the opening ceremony for IAAPA Expo — the toughest, most expert audience I work for.
Here's a design problem worth thinking about: how do you open a show for an audience that builds shows for a living?
That's the brief at IAAPA — the global organisation for the theme-park and attractions industry. It's where the people who design the world's parks, rides, aquariums and immersive experiences all end up in one room. And because the whole industry runs on spectacle, the event doesn't open with a speaker; it opens with a show. Since 2024, my studio has been asked to create and produce that opening-ceremony show, for IAAPA Expo and IAAPA Expo Asia, plus the Legends and Honours events.
The interesting constraint is the audience. These people can see through spectacle instantly, because they engineer it. They know how every effect is done — they invented the effects. Going bigger is pointless; someone out there has gone bigger. So the usual lever, sheer scale, is off the table.
What's left is the thing I think actually matters in this field anyway: meaning over magnitude. Design for a feeling, not a spec sheet. Make something true and well-crafted, sized to the moment instead of inflated to fill it. If a room full of people who build spectacle for a living walks out having actually felt something, you've done the job.
And honestly, the main thing I feel doing these is grateful. Getting to work among so many giants of this industry — and to be the one who opens the room they're all sitting in — is not something I take for granted.
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About Patrick Larsen
Patrick Larsen is an Emmy Award–winning production designer and the founder of Studio Bound. Since 2024, Studio Bound has created and produced the opening-ceremony show for IAAPA Expo and IAAPA Expo Asia. Over more than two decades Patrick has designed for the Expo 2020 Dubai ceremonies, Olympic broadcasts, Las Vegas residencies, and themed attractions across Asia and the Middle East.
