I met with Andrea Scarpato of Pyroemotions, together with Filippo and Franceso Losi of PyroDigiT ably assisted by Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo of Panzera, who acted as interpreter for the interview.
First of all, I wanted to understand the name of the companies involved. Pyroemotions is a company that was founded by Andrea Scarpato and Michella Martarello (his wife) in 2005. For Montreal, they have worked in special collaboration with PyroDigiT to put on this unprecedentedly complex display. Pyroemotion have put on some very large displays in recent years, including participations in the 2010 and 2012 International Symposium on Fireworks in Porto and Malta respectively. They also have won competitions at Knokke-Heist in Belgium as well as the International Fireworks Festival in Malta. The team also has worked on a large display in Marseilles in collaboration with Panzera.
One-shot rack
Andrea noted that it has always been a dream to come and compete in Montreal and they would have liked to have done this earlier but noted the economic crisis in Europe (and the rest of the World) did not help. They approached the competition organizers at the 2012 Symposium in Malta (where everyone was extremely impressed with their displays). When asked how he feels to represent Italy, given his country’s strong performance in Montreal the past few years, he said that he is not necessarily impressed by the other displays as everyone has their own style. What counts is having good people working with him and putting on the best show they can.
The idea for the theme came from his wife and she wanted to use music that people would remember from the past and bring back happy memories. The soundtrack took around two months to put together and, given the large number of songs, is more of a mix rather than full songs. The display design itself took around one month and a further ten days to enter into the choreography software, which forms part of the PyroDigiT system and allows full visualization of the display.
20 slices of 30-shots
The PyroDigiT collaboration allowed them to design the show exactly as they wanted, with no technical limitations, beyond what it is possible to set up in five days. Special firing racks were manufactured for the display, with the firing modules actually built into the racks. This is important as the display uses a truly phenomenal amount of cues: a total of exactly eight thousand seven hundred and twenty seven (8727) a record for Montreal and the largest display Pyroemotions has ever designed. All ramps will be used and there will be two sets of twenty 30-shot “wheels”, suspended in the air at a height of 40m. Ramp three will have 11 positions, plus a further 10 positions at a height of 3m each.
Products come from several Italian companies including Scarpato, Pirotecnia Padra Pio and large shells from Alessi. There will be some Chinese-manufactured Italian products imported by Martarello too, but Andrea noted that all the one-shots are of Italian manufacturer. Amazingly, they were able to install and wire all the one shots – around seven thousand nine hundred (7900) in only two days, so efficient is their racking system. The PyroDigiT system can shoot either wired or wirelessly (as used by Mirnovec) and they decided to use the wired form for their display. Given the recent technical problems in Montreal, the team assured me that they have done everything possible to ensure the display will be fired flawlessly. I noticed the great attention to detail in all the labeling for the connections – plus their one-shot system seems to be very easy to setup and install. There are many more photos of the setup one the PyroDigiT facebook page for their participation.
When asked for a one-liner to entice people to come to La Ronde to witness this record-breaking display Andrea noted that it would be a very emotional show (hence the name of their company) and people should come and see “When Dreams Come True”.
Franceso & Filippo Losi, Andrea Scarpato and Michella Martarello
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