I met with Eric Cardinal of Groupe Fiatlux-Ampleman, designer of the Hommage to Celine Dion show, as well as La Ronde’s own chief pyrotechnician, Paul Csukassy, who designed and edited the soundtrack for the show!
So first things first, the music. Paul said it was hard to select as there are so many Celine songs, but he used the vision of an experienced pyrotechnician to choose music that would work well with fireworks. He ended up selecting 23 songs, but, of course, the challenge is how to fit this many songs into a 30 minute pyromusical.
In order to facilitate the sound editing task, Paul visited Celine’s own studio, Piccolo in Montreal to do the mixing and cutting necessary to come up with the final track. Paul worked with producer Luc Beaugrand to come up with a very musical and inspiring soundtrack. Most of the songs ended up in the 1m15s range and it’s a tribute to Paul’s skills that the final version sounds so good. He told me it took two weeks of hard work in the stdio following two months of song selection to accomplish this impressive feat.
In terms of choice of music, he wanted to cover her entire thirty year career, but avoid any instrumental sections as the idea of the show is to pay tribute to Celine, not the composer of her music.
Next, the fireworks, designed by Eric Cardinal.
I asked Eric how it felt to be designing a show that’s not in competition and he reminded me that it wasn’t his first time doing this at La Ronde, having designed the opening show in 2001 also in collaboration with Paul Csukassy. He told me that his approach to display design is the same irregardless of whether it’s a competition or not, though he did admit there is much less pressure on a non-competing show. That said, Eric did say he’d like the judges to evaluate his show using the same criteria that they use on the competing shows!
Eric also talked about the merger of Fiatlux and Ampleman and how it had come about after several years of talks. He said there was a lot of synergy between the companies as they were both using the same products and firing systems and had the advantage of being able to enlarge their geographic presence in Canada as both companies effectively operated in different regions prior to the merger. Fiatlux are known for their close proximity work (such as flame projectors) but Eric said that none of such effects would be used in this show.
In terms of special effects, he said it was tempting to fire a lot of heart-pattern shells in such a show, due to the music, but he was avoiding going overboard with them! For the first time this year, ramp 5 (the extra floating pontoons positioned on the lake close to the audience) would be used and Eric will also be the first to use 12″ shells this year. He told me there would be six 12″, six 10″ and fourteen 8″ shells in the show.
In terms of show design, he said it was a challenge to avoid repetition given such a large number of songs but they had been grouped into six thematic tableaux which did ease the task. Eric also had had input into the soundtrack song selection with his pyrotechnic vision.
One interesting special effect is the creation of a 100m long replica of the deck and four chimneys of the Titanic, composed of 1000 lances along ramp 3. There will also be some smoke generators too! These presented logistical challenges for installation so Eric came up with a method of creating 1m sections that could be folded up into 5m longer sections for ease of transport and installation. Eric also noted that there would be plenty of e-matches used to make sure the whole setpiece ignites!
Due to the use of ramp 5, Eric noted the nautical shells would be of the gentle variety and he said he was particularly looking forward to the third tableau which would have lots of action.
The technical information is that the show is using 67 32-cue FireOne firing modules, all of which are pretty much fully populated and pyrotechnical products from Igual of Spain, Red Eagle of China, Rozzi of the USA and Panzera of Italy together with some other products from Vulcan Factory.
Fiatlux-Ampleman are also competing in Knokke Heist (Belgium) in August, Barcelona in September and in Shanghai in October, where Fiatlux had won first prize in 2004.
Let’s hope the weather cooperates for what promises to be a very interesting display!