I met with Joseph Couturier, son of the founder, Jacques, who learned his craft in Spain. Founded 25 years ago, JCO have won first prize in Monaco (2009), Macau as well as Vietnam (2010). Joseph said the three most important competitions as far as he was concerned are the “Three Ms” – Monaco, Macau and Montreal. JCO performed over 80 displays for Bastille day (and Jacques was born on that day) with the largest show they did this year was a Festival of Metal, which had a front of over 1km in length!
Joseph was a bit circumspect about the setup of the display and, unusually, we were not invited to view the ramps, though impending thunderstorms as well as the high heat and humidity may have been a factor in this. Noting that the use of one-shots can become very mechanical, he said JCO prefers a more fluid style of display and this is reflected in the relatively modest cue count of around 1600. JCO designed their own firing system, called VegaElec XL3, to support their style of display, as they felt the majors such as FireOne, PyroDigital and FireMaster have limitations in one way or another. Their Montreal display, then, is using 104 of their 16-cue firing modules.
Joseph said that all of the space available in the site would be used, including a configuration of the floating platforms to give an inverted T facing the audience. He said that it is very unusual in France these days to fire shells of 200mm and above and hence their Montreal display would only contain around 10 of such calibre. He said it was his opinion that a front of 150mm shells gave more energy to the audience than a single shell of larger calibre.
In terms of products used, Joseph said that they had had various devices specially constructed in China by one of the companies that they deal with, together with products from Spain as well as Pirico (the manufacturing arm of Parente) from Italy. Pirico are renowned for their traditional cylindrical shells.
Design of the show started in December with work on the complex soundtrack together with his cousin David. JCO is essentially a family collective, with his sister (and father) also involved. Joseph does not use visualization software but had seen demos of all the products used in the display. He noted that putting together a simulation with a lot of one shots takes too much time anyway as the design is in his head!
Joseph Couturier
The show is designed like a circus performance, with the fireworks essentially being characters in the display. There will be lots of rhytmic elements in the display, as well as many jokes. JCO worked with a locally based Quebecois in France to ensure the Montreal audience will “get” the jokes as well as understand the accent of the narration! There will be many surprises in the display, but Joseph was keeping these to himself, but noted that it’s not feasible to ship complex “props” to Montreal. In other displays, they have done complex multi-media displays mixed with video and lasers, but Montreal will be only pyrotechnics. He said they have used elements of this show before, just as a master chef does when preparing a new dinner service, but it is especially designed for the competition.
Asked for a “one liner” to entice the audience to come to La Ronde, Joseph said something in idiomatic French that has no direct translation,
but a close attempt is “Come and crack up laughing and enjoy the show”. Due to the weather conditions, we omitted to take Joseph’s photo, so I used a stock one.
