Our work

A lasting themed experience needs both continuity and reinvention: the moments visitors return to see, and the discoveries that make each visit feel new. Across fifteen years of involvement with The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, JWD helped shape that balance. What began as a focused assignment to add themed lighting around an existing jack-o’-lantern exhibit grew into a long-term creative and technical partnership—encompassing lighting design, embedded lighting engineering, site-wide infrastructure, installation crews, production logistics, programming, and seasonal operations. Our responsibility expanded alongside the event. We returned to support and remount earlier work while developing new experiences, exploring emerging technologies, and finding fresh ways to tell stories through light. Throughout that evolution, the carved jack-o’-lantern remained the heart of the experience. Our work gave it a larger world to inhabit. FROM ILLUMINATING THE LANDSCAPE TO SHAPING THE EXPERIENCE In the early seasons, JWD introduced programmed lighting to landscape, architectural, and jack-o’-lantern elements. Trees and buildings that would otherwise disappear into darkness became part of the composition, revealing the scale of the grounds and extending the experience beyond the illuminated carvings. A significant turning point came when our scope expanded to include the lighting inside the jack-o’-lanterns themselves. That brought two opportunities together. We could improve the reliability of the electrical lighting in outdoor conditions, and we could begin using emerging RGB pixel technology to make the pumpkins active participants in the design. Color, movement, and timing became tools for storytelling within the carvings—not simply around them. JWD’s role evolved from adding a supporting layer of light to helping develop the event’s overall visual language. As new elements joined the landscape—including a windmill, carousel, entrance archway, and immersive tunnels—they created new possibilities for design. Each addition had to stand on its own while becoming part of an experience that returning visitors recognized and loved. A STARRY SKY MADE OF JACK-O’-LANTERNS The jack-o’-lantern tunnel of light was an early demonstration of what that expanded role could achieve. An arched structure surrounded visitors with carved pumpkins, each incorporating an individually controlled RGB light source. The artistic idea was simple: recreate the wonder of looking into a starry night, with a sky made of jack-o’-lanterns. The lighting unfolded in layers. Washes of color traveled along the tunnel. Illuminated stars swept from front to back and corner to corner in response to the music. Shooting stars traced paths overhead. Every movement related to the audio, turning a physical structure into a composed experience of light and sound. Timecode provided the precise timing needed to keep those relationships intact. It allowed the sequence to repeat throughout the night, preserving the rhythm and detail of the story for successive groups of visitors. The response was visible firsthand. Visitors stopped inside the tunnel, looking up and watching the light move around them. Across repeated seasons, it remained a place where the experience invited people to pause and feel wonder. GIVING A HISTORIC HOUSE A VOICE The manor house became another central storytelling element—and one that called for particular care. A larger-than-life jack-o’-lantern stood in front of the building. JWD developed the idea of illuminated vines growing from that pumpkin, climbing the columns and spreading across the architecture. When unlit, the vines blended into the building. As the lighting sequence progressed, they appeared to crawl across its surfaces and take possession of the house. Then the windows began to respond. Lighting inside the building gave the architecture a personality. The windows became its eyes, its mouth, and its way of speaking as the vines enveloped it—all closely synchronized with the soundtrack. Creating that effect required a sensitive approach to the historic setting. JWD worked with curators to develop approved, nonintrusive installation methods and carefully coordinate equipment, cabling, and technician access within delicate interior spaces. The story continued to evolve. New lighting layers, changing technologies, and revised musical arrangements offered opportunities to revisit the sequence without losing its identity. The manor house remained a major anchor of the experience: a complete show within the larger journey. A QUIETER CROSSING: THE PUMPKIN ZEE BRIDGE Not every moment needed a dramatic lighting sequence. The Pumpkin Zee Bridge offered a quieter transition: a walkable, scaled-down interpretation of a familiar Hudson Valley landmark, reimagined in pumpkins and light. Visitors could approach closely and cross the structure themselves. Its lighting emphasized the form and supported that intimate encounter, providing a change of pace within the larger journey. JWD provided the lighting design and installation labor, then supported the element through seasonal operation and removal each year. It was a reminder that restraint is part of storytelling too—giving the more animated scenes room to stand out. A CAROUSEL COMPOSED IN MOTION The carousel brought a different character to the landscape: the fun and childhood nostalgia of a carnival, recreated with jack-o’-lanterns and light. Its location turned the visitors’ path around three sides of the structure. The scenery rotated as the audience moved around it, making the composition a changing, three-dimensional experience rather than a single view. JWD designed the lighting for every illuminated pumpkin and treatment, considering the carousel as a whole while giving its horses, interior panels, and roof their own roles. Outlined architectural details became distinct layers in a composition synchronized to the audio through timecode. Keeping those layers working on a large rotating exhibit required careful power and data planning. Wireless control had to remain dependable as the moving scenery passed between transmitters and receivers, while power reached the rotating structure through a commutator. City Theatrical’s case study explores the wireless-control work in more detail. Our involvement also included power infrastructure supporting the automation and other technical elements. For many seasons, the JWD crew took responsibility for physically assembling the carousel as part of the installation. The result was an element whose technical complexity served a straightforward feeling: whimsy, movement, and the pleasure of watching a familiar carnival image take on a new life. ATMOSPHERE AND A MOMENT OF SURPRISE The sea monster and waves illustrated another approach: using a small number of well-chosen effects to give a scene character. JWD combined steady lighting inside the carved pumpkins with lighting on their surfaces and the surrounding landscape. A moving water effect helped establish the setting. At timed intervals, a plume emerged from the creature’s mouth, caught by colored light and accompanied by an audible whoosh. This was not an elaborate, individually addressed pumpkin sequence. Its impact came from the relationship between the illuminated creature, the water effect, and that brief moment of surprise. From lighting design and installation through ongoing support and removal, JWD coordinated the systems as one scenic experience—matching the complexity of the solution to what the scene needed. COMPOSING A JOURNEY ACROSS ACRES Designing Blaze meant considering more than individual displays. It meant thinking about what a visitor would experience every few steps along a walk lasting roughly forty minutes. Some moments were intimate. Others opened into broad views of the landscape. Lighting helped shape that rhythm of compression and expansion. A scene that was one visitor’s immediate focus could also be the distant backdrop to another scene. Its color, brightness, and movement therefore had to work at both scales. Each composition belonged to a larger picture of trees, architecture, carved pumpkins, and sound. Some elements were visible before visitors even entered the event, building anticipation from the parking area. Others needed a more contained treatment that held attention close and preserved a sense of discovery. JWD approached the grounds as one connected design, continually balancing the small picture with the whole. That approach extended into programming. We developed a mobile programming setup so equipment normally used at a stationary theatrical control position could move around the property and work in outdoor conditions. Programming took place at night, sometimes over as many as ten nights. We built scenes from positions where we could see them, then walked the grounds, stepped back, and revisited earlier work to understand how each new sequence affected the larger composition. INNOVATION THAT SERVED THE STORY As pixel technology matured, it offered better color control, improved light quality, and more robust options for outdoor installation. Years of practical experience also changed how JWD engineered elements for repeated seasonal use. The later Horseman Tunnel brought those developments together, including a multisensory sequence built around carved bats. Carved jack-o’-lanterns depicted bats along the tunnel and beyond it into the trees. Lighting sequences mapped their apparent flight, while a purposefully composed soundtrack established the scene’s rhythm and atmosphere. At the dramatic moment, coordinated airflow, strobes, and audio created the sensation of bats rushing toward the visitor. The illuminated carvings then carried that movement through the tunnel and upward into the surrounding trees. The effect was multisensory, but its foundation was still the carved pumpkin. Technology connected the individual carvings into a moving story. It also reflected a more mature approach to construction: an experience designed not only to work for one opening night, but to be installed, operated, stored, and returned to service over successive seasons. FROM SUMMER CONCEPTS TO WINTER STRIKE As the event grew, JWD’s involvement extended through the full seasonal cycle. Creative development began in summer, with conversations about new elements, potential technologies, and their placement within the grounds. Those ideas informed both individual designs and the larger site plan. We planned temporary power distribution across the acreage, along with the extensive data infrastructure needed to control the lighting. Equipment requirements, rental bidding, and detailed drawings translated the creative direction into an installation plan—from the overall property down to individual scenic elements. JWD also supplied production staff and, for many years, the theatrical installation crew. At its larger scale, that meant coordinating roughly forty technicians and support personnel, substantial equipment inventories, and the logistics of working across a large outdoor property. Installation could take six weeks. All-terrain lifts, forklifts, utility vehicles, organized supplies, and carefully coordinated crews were as essential to realizing the design as the lighting equipment itself. Once programming was complete and the event opened, we operated and maintained the systems within our scope. That included nightly startup and shutdown, troubleshooting, contingency planning, and staffing capable of responding when problems arose. In later seasons, that support continued through nearly nightly operation for the better part of two months. The work ended with removal, packing, returns, and storage—often in December’s cold, wet, and muddy conditions—with the goal of leaving no trace of the temporary installation. This was a complete seasonal commitment: from the first design conversation to the last piece of equipment leaving the grounds. BUILT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON—AND THE NEXT ONE An installation beginning in August and remaining outdoors into December encounters more than rain. It moves through heat, sunlight, humidity, falling leaves, mud, freezing temperatures, and sometimes snow. JWD’s engineering evolved through direct experience with those conditions. Protecting delicate electronics meant considering moisture, ventilation, temperature changes, cable routing, and even wildlife seeking warmth inside equipment enclosures. Durability also depended on what happened after the event: how components were removed, handled, packed, and stored before their next installation. Electrical protection and outdoor reliability were considered together. The objective was to create robust temporary systems that supported dependable operation while keeping safety central to the planning. Season after season, those lessons informed the next round of designs. New elements benefited from the accumulated knowledge of the ones that came before them. A PARTNER IN SUSTAINED GROWTH The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze demonstrates the breadth of a long-term creative partnership. JWD helped develop stories, compose an expansive landscape, engineer specialized lighting, lead substantial crews, and support the nightly operation. As the event grew, our resources and responsibilities grew with it. Just as importantly, our commitment extended to the work already in place. Returning elements needed care, maintenance, and thoughtful reinvention alongside each season’s new ideas. For a client developing a themed environment, that is the central lesson of this project: JWD can help imagine the experience, build the systems and team needed to realize it, and remain an engaged creative and technical partner as it evolves over many years.