Interview with Team Rozzi / Panzera

I met with Michael Lutz of Rozzi’s Famous fireworks and Maria Grazia Gerbaudo of Panzera whose companies are collaborating to put on the closing show of the 35th edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition.

Rozzi and Panzera have a close working relationship and so this year’s closing show will feature almost 100% Panzera products, save for a few nautical and slice cakes. Many shells were specially produced for this closing display – Maria Grazia joked that the factory were frustrated by orders or “5 shells with pink stars and 10 shells with magenta” – though, in reality, many of the effects were custom-designed for this show.

Michael noted that this year’s closing show will feature more cues than last year’s, but this was dictated by the soundtrack largely. Fired using 185 32-cue modules, the cue count will be in the 6000 range and the item count in the high 6000 range.

PanzeraShells

Shells being loaded on ramp 1

Design time was short because the soundtrack wasn’t received by the Rozzi team until April – the songs having been selected by famed Quebec chanteur Gregory Charles and refined by the competition technical director Paul Csukassy and then mixed in Studio Piccolo as usual. Michael said he had a solid week to complete the design so the Panzera factory would have time to complete the production of the special shells. Michael noted that his design style has the music leading but having the fireworks draw the audience to the next level without being too mechanical with note synchronization.

July is a busy time for Rozzi – over 120 shows around July 4th plus nightly shows at various theme parks take their toll so Michael said it was fun to be in Montreal for some team-building with his crew. Fans of large calibre shells will be pleased to note there are 7 12″ Italian shells in the display as well as many cylinder shells – over 200 in the finale alone! The weather promises to be perfect, too!

TeamRozzi

Maria Grazia Gerbaudo and Michae Lutz

Comments are closed.