I met with Rocco Vitale, the chief designer of Pirotecnico’s second participation in the Montreal International Fireworks Competition.
Since winning the Gold Jupiter in 2008, with a memorable display (which also caused my camera to crash with a buffer overflow during the finale) entitled Rock Loves, the team is back with “Rock Loves redux”. Rocco said that their win in 2008 definitely increased the company’s brand recognition externally and also gave a big boost internally. Rocco said they were very grateful for winning and their company now puts on around 2,500 shows a year across the United States. Following their win in 2008, for five years they organized an event called PyroFest, which featured world-class displays of the same calibre they had shown in Montreal.
Now that ten years have passed, they felt it was a good time to come back to Montreal and this anniversary was always front and centre in their design process, which Rocco said had evolved considerably in that period. He joked and wondered how they got their 2008 show off the ground!
The design process began with a one week session in Dallas, where Rocco now lives, with co-designers Matt Wood , Jason Farrell and Phillip Stewart, with input from Rocco’s brother Stephen. Several other co-design sessions took place to finalize the concept. Asked about the theme, Rocco mentioned that all the designers are rock-n-roll guys and he recalled his early days as a teenager in the packing department listening to rock radio out of Ohio. They had all agreed there had to be at least one Rush song in the soundtrack! Each song will also feature a unique colour palette and design style.
This will be the most complex display Rocco has ever designed. Fired from 24 PyroDigital field controllers and a total of 695 16-cue modules (500 on ramp 3 alone), the cue and product count is enormous (and will be revealed in the display report). In terms of products, Rocco said he has an almost brother-like relationship with Ricardo Caballer (and two Pyrotecnico crew had helped Ricardo with his Gold Jupiter-winning display in 2016) such that Ricardo offered to specially build the entire show. Taking advantage of this allowed Rocco to specify particular effects he wanted and have Ricardo fabricate them. So almost all the one-shots and candles are from Ricasa, together with shells and 100mm mines from Yung Feng as well as products from Sunny and Vulcan of China as well as some Parente material from Italy.
Designers - Jason Ferrel (l), Todd Marcocci (soundtrack), Matt Wood and Phil Stewart(r)
Arches on ramp 4
Gregg Smith - director of safety for the American Pyrotechnics Association and former 26 year veteran at Pyrotecnico
Rocco said that he had used the ShowDirector design and visualization software mainly for the low-level effects and they are trying ideas they’ve never used before. There will be many structures (four arches, 13 small towers, 3 large towers and four mini domes) and a total of 13 pontoons forming ramp 5. The soundtrack was edited together by a professional that Rocco had used for work in Philadelphia . Rocco also said there will be lots of surprises in the show – you have to be there at La Ronde on Saturday night to see them. In the words of Emerson, Lake and Palmer:
You gotta see the show
It is dynamo!
You gotta see the show
It is rock n’roll
