I met with Fernando Macedo of Macedo’s fireworks, who just celebrated their 75th anniversary in September 2009. Winner of the Zeus trophy in the Casino de lac Leamy competition in Gatineau in 2009, Macedo’s are competing in Montreal for the second time, their first participation being in 2006.
Macedo’s hold the Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks display – around 68,000 shells fired for New Year’s Eve in 2006 on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Despite a large display being held more recently in Dubai, the Madeira display is still rated as the World’s largest. Fernando said he hoped someone else would break the record so they could win it back again!
Recently Macedo’s won first prize in Szczeciński, Poland as well as prizes in Portugal for event planning companies in the “animation” and “logistics and equipment” categories.
Fernando said that the team is competing to win the Gold Jupiter and they are planning a great fireworks display which will live up to its title, Euphoria. A mix of dance and pop music (with some Portuguese artists), there will be a lot of rhythm that should get people up out of their seats dancing.
I asked if there would be any typically Portuguese fireworks, such as rockets, and Fernando told me that they hadn’t brought any rockets due to the nature of the La Ronde site. They will have some special Portuguese effects such as tremoladas (a kind of scintillating effect) as well as fogasas (a type of silver “bee” comet) and some black and white kamuros, which sounded intriguing. Macedo’s are also competing in the Casino de lac Leamy competition again this year (on August 7th), where they will be using some rockets as Fernando said the site was conducive to this.
I asked when planning started for this display and Fernando said the idea had first come to light in Madeira for their Atlantico festival last year. The idea then was to give people a feeling of happiness after a hard week’s work so as to relieve their stress by getting up and dancing. He said he was sure people would recognize the music. Fernando also said that he was using a piece, Lusitana Paixão, that had brought him luck in other competitions: every time he used this piece, Macedo’s won the competition. The I Gotta Feeling piece also became the anthem of the Portuguese soccer team in the World Cup in South Africa this year. There is a large Portuguese population in Montreal and so Fernando hoped the music would appeal to them and they would turn out in large numbers on Saturday.
Macedo’s are using products from their own factories, but due to the large amount of projects they are currently working on, they were unable to furnish 100% of the products for the display. They will be using products from Panzera as well as from the Spanish manufacturers Ricardo Caballer and Pirotecnia Igual together with some Chinese products.
There will be no special structures or use of ramp 5 – Fernando said he prefers to use large nautical shells which would be precluded by the pontoons. The technical details are they are using the FireMaster 3 and 4 wireless firing system from Parente with effectively 45 modules of 24 shots. Fernando said that they had created 138 sequences in the display which would use around 1500 cues and said that ramp 3 would have 13 positions, with 5 positions on ramps 1, 2 and 4 as well. He also said that, based on their experience in 2006, they would be using more larger shells this time, but the maximum calibre would be 8″ together with large studatas from Panzera.
Fernando said he was looking forward to seeing the Lusitana Paixão piece as well as the opening and that the finale would be very strong. The weather forecast for the weekend is good too so hopefully the audience will be dancing around the park.