I met with Yanick Roy, president of Royal Pyrotechnie, thrice winner of the Gold Jupiter in 2003, 2009 and 2014 (jointly with Fireworks Spectaculars), and the designer of this out-of-competition opening show.
The theme of the soundtrack, A Tribute to ABBA, was imposed by the competition organizers. Yanick, previously not necessarily an ABBA fan, spent much time and effort researching their music in order to put together an 18-song mix of their most popular works. Yanick noted that he had previously used a disco theme for some of his large displays and so used that knowledge to help with this design of this show. The soundtrack will feature excerpts of songs of the order of 1 1/2 to 2 minutes long, also allowing a more relaxed feel. Yanick said that the script took around one hour per minute of display time – so just over 30 hours of work.
As the display is out of competition, Yanick noted he didn’t want to go too “high” and so used a more laid-back mix so as to not outshine the competitors-proper. That said, there will be some interesting surprises during the show which, of course, require being an audience member at La Ronde to fully appreciate.
On the pyrotechnic side, the display is using products from Dancing Fireworks (China), many of which are new for 2018 and were specially selected for this show, including special effects shells of the Japanese character Doraemon. Other manufacturers include Panzera (Italy), Vincente Caballer (Spain), Zaragozana (Spain), NextFX (United States) as well as Vulcan (Hong Kong). The display will use 11 positions on ramp three together with all three access ramps; ramp 4 will be used as well as five positions on ramps 1 and 2. The floating pontoons (ramp 5) will not be used, though many nautical devices will feature in the display.
The show design was performed with ShowDirector and there are just over 2300 cues and it will be fired using a PyroDigital system. The weather forecast is perfect for this inaugural show of the 34th edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition!