Bells and Drums
Designed by Patrick Brault; FireOne Firing with 90 32-cue modules and ~2600 cues
The first in-competition display of the 36th edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition was blessed with perfect weather for the setup, but, unfortunately, the large audience was subjected to light winds blowing smoke almost directly at them. The smoke contributed to making the display appear somewhat dim, but more on that later.
I did not have very high expectations for this display. Despite a potentially interesting and rhythmic soundtrack, the design, as presented to me during the interview, appeared simplistic and conservative. This was surprising as the designer is very familiar with the site but didn’t appear to want to push any creative boundaries, eschewing the use of ramp 5 and nautical products, save for some “magic carpet” type flares/fountains. Often a designer will avoid nautical products when using ramp 5 so it was disappointing that, without ramp 5 present, there were so few nauticals used. As was evident from the setup, the design was simplistic with a relatively low cue count by recent standards and relatively few positions (seven) on ramp 3. Sometimes this is offset by using a wider variety of firing angles, but this was not the case in this display.
On the pyrotechnic side, despite the relatively simple design, the display was dense and active most of the time, with some good note-synchronized sequences (though with limited variety in effects and patterns used). The biggest issue I found was the quality and variety of the products used. First of all, there were many low breaks or shells that fired as mines – more in this display than I recall in any other over the past 29 years of covering the competition. Secondly, many of the larger shells broke with poor symmetry or with few stars lighting. Thirdly, many of the shells were either dim and/or had weak colours. It was clear that the Chinese shells used in the display were, in general, brighter and of purer colours than the Mexican products. The variety of products used was also rather limited with much repetition of effects throughout the display and a somewhat chaotic mix with many assymetries. Even the one-shots were largely of mediocre quality with inconsistent heights and, again, weak colours and brightness, though some were better than others (such as the whistles and salutes).
The soundtrack was enjoyable and approached what appeared to be the finale with AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells. This was enjoyable with a thunderous blast of hundreds of salutes fired simultaneously. Then the designer appeared to completely lose the plot with the bizarre final two minutes to Luis Marino’s Chanteur de Mexico. After the energy of Hell’s Bells, this fell completely flat with very few shells fired and a completely out of place piece of music. It caused a great feeling of anti-climax, even though there was another volley of salutes at the end and then a few random large shells. It was as though the designer wanted to sabotage any chance of winning. Very bizarre.
Back in 2012 when Sirius last competed, as well as Archangel in 2015, one of the goals was to showcase the production of Spanish-type shells of large calbre in Mexico, to circumvent the increasing difficulty of shipping anything over 6″ calibre from China. Being able to service the North American market by road transport seemed like a great idea. Tragically, if this Sirius display was supposed to showcase these products (forgetting about the design of the display and the soundtrack ) then it was a failure. They were largely of poor quality: dim effects, asymmetrical breaks, low quality (too many low breaks or stars not igniting). A few were of reasonable quality (such as some of the farfalles and some gold glitter effects as well as the titanium salutes), but otherwise, they missed the mark. Of course, the direction of the smoke made the shells appear dimmer and less saturated than ideal conditions would have, but the other issues were definitely present.
All that said, the audience did enjoy most of the display so it’s a shame the deficiencies mean that it will be very unlikely to appear on the podium.