It Must be Love
Designed by Pierre-Yves Angoujard. PyroMate firing with 60 45-cue and 51 32-cue modules. SmartShow and Finale Fireworks scripting with ~4000 cues
The weather gods conspired to give the British team weather they would be familiar with: a day of dark grey skies and heavy rain, with almost an inch of precipitation being received. However, despite the official forecast, but in accordance with montreal-fireworks.com’s own meteorologist, skies did inded clear out late afternoon and we were left with close to perfect conditions with clear skies, though cool temperatures. Unfortunately, the public were not so optimistic and La Ronde was extremely quiet. No matter for those hard-core enthusiasts who were about to have their hearts warmed by the debut display from team Merlin.
As promised, the display began with depth and passion. Barrages of large shells and runs of photoflash across ramp 3. It was immediately apparent that good use was being made of the space available, with shells fired at all positions across the sky. Indeed, sequences of shells that moved across the sky were frequently used, as well as firing angles that formed arcs of shells right over the firing site. Good use was made of ramp 3 with many angles used, but an unfortunate setup error had at least one position reversed. The many different angles allowed the production of the now ubiquitous “Mt Fuji” effect, but it was not overdone. Several times during the display, comets and mines were fired horizontally over the lake and mines of report-terminated tourbillons were fired towards the audience. This latter effect was lessened a little bit, though, as the music was very loud at that point.
Range of products used was good, and included whistling girandolas, though I found that strobe and flashing effect shells predominated. I also found that some of the dimmer gold glitter-type shells were marred due to very bright flash breaks. Some nautical effects were used, to dramatic effect in the finale. Despite the bad weather on the final day of setup, it didn’t appear that the rain had affected the one-shot effects – the only visible casualty been several wheels that didn’t light. These type of effects are always temperamental – either they don’t light or they refuse to turn!
The soundtrack was well edited with good transitions between the segments and the fireworks followed suite. I know some people don’t like this type of arrangement, preferring pauses between tracks, but I thought Merlin’s design worked well. I did find the sound quality a bit lacking – the dynamics seemed compressed and the level was a bit too high in some places (masking the report-terminated tourbillons, for example). It’s hard to say if this was due to the wind direction and somewhat sparse audience, but it was noticeable and I don’t think there were any audio equipment problems.
I found the connection between the theme and the music a bit hard to grasp, though it was clear in some places. I liked many of the individual tracks in the soundtrack but I didn’t personally find them giving me an emotional attachment to the display. I very much enjoyed the fireworks, but I didn’t find enough emotional highs and so I reserved my few WOWs for the finale, particularly during the nauticals.
All in all, this was an excellent debut display by the British team showing a great understanding of the potentials of the firing site through their excellent use of space and a plethora of firing angles, particularly for the shells. I am sure that we will see Merlin compete in Montreal again!
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