I met with Cliff Hooge, founder of HC Pyrotechnics (HC being Cliff’s initials reversed) and representing Belgium for his company’s first time in Montreal. Belgium has only participated once in Montreal, in 2002 with the company Hendrickx & Lefeber Fireworks. This was one of the oldest fireworks companies in the world, being founded in the 18th Century. Cliff started to work for them around 1997 when he was a 15 year old student – his job being to help clear-up after displays. Around 2009, Cliff started HC Pyrotechnics and essentially managed Hendrickx for two years. Hendrickx had partnered with Panzera and both companies had collaborated on the manufacture of certain civilian pyrotechnic devices. Following the Enschede disaster in the Netherlands in 2000, it became impossible to maintain a manufacturing facility in Belgium as the permits required to continue operation became impossible to obtain due to residential areas having encroached on land close to the factory. In 2020, Guy Hendrickx passed away leaving no more Hendrickx involvement in HC. Guy had been a mentor to Cliff in many aspects of the business.
HC Fireworks is well known for organizing the annual Knokke Heist fireworks competition, held every year on the beach of the Belgian resort town. Cliff said his company designs and fires the closing show each year and he had tested some ideas for his potential Montreal display at last year’s closing – where the audience had reacted favourably. Since starting HC, Cliff has taken his company though many competitions in Europe, including Monaco, Hannover, Szczecin and Courchevel where the company won the 1st prize this year. Cliff had visited Montreal once in 2010 to see the Surex display and was contacted by the organizers afterwards – they found out how young he was and said he needed to win a few competitions first, which, as the above list attests, he did!
HC is very closely associated with Hamex of Slovenia where they provide display design and firing logistics whilst Hamex manufactures items specifically for the displays. However, following a terrible accident earlier this year, Cliff said Hamex were unable to manufacture some of the things he would have liked. Aleš Ham was injured in the accident and is on the way to making a full recovery – his son Domen is on the HC crew in Montreal. Cliff said Hamex are very closely involved with HC and the majority of the shells in the display will be from their stock. Other manufacturers include Luso (Portugal), Ricasa (Spain), Giuliani, Parente and Scapato (Italy) as well as various Chinese manufactures for cakes and some shells. There will be 8″, 10″ and 12″ shells in the display too. The ramp 5 pontoons will be in use but not ramp 4. Cliff said there will be some surprises but didn’t elaborate further. You have to be there on the night to see!
Cliff used Finale3D for the design and said he was one of the first users of this program, starting around 2010. For the theme, he said he had picked legendary artists where 70% of the audience would know each song, so everyone should know something and will be able to sing along. For the sound design, he said he was using an approach (after researching on this blog) whereby there would be no break between songs and had tried to do use some unique approaches in the pyrotechnical design. The show will be shot using the fireTEK wireless firing system (designed in Romania) and will have approximately 4,000 cues shot from 80 64-shot modules.