I met with Wilson Mao, president of Pyromagic Productions and Patrick Brault his consultant from Sirius Pyrotechnics to talk about their upcoming display this Saturday.

Wilson is the chief designer, both musically and pyrotechnically, with consultation from Patrick. I asked what was behind this working relationship and Wilson told me that he has known and worked with Patrick for over 20 years. The main reason they're working together on this display is because of the problems in shipping large shells, classified as 1.1g, from China. Patrick's company imports a line of Spanish shells and these are being used in the 8", 10" and 12" calibre that are now classified as 1.1g. Wilson told me they will also be using a lot of 178mm (7" ) shells as they still classified as 1.3g and can therefore be exported from China.

Patrick also explained that some of the effects that Wilson wanted are not normally produced in China so his line of Spanish shells will fill this void.

Design on the show started back in March and, judging by the exchanges between the two, the final touches were still being made to the script in the placement of the Spanish products. Wilson and Patrick both know their own product lines very well so it was interesting to watch them interact in the planning of the combination of the two types of products.

The theme of the display, Feng Shui Melody, is obviously centered around the Chinese concept of Feng Shui and the movement of Chi energy. Wilson explained the Chi has to be kept in equilibrium and the display will respect the five aspects of Feng Shui (metal, fire, water wood and earth) as well as the ying/yang elements too such as the good/evil, woman/man etc. Nine pieces of music will be used in total (to be revealed tomorrow) with five representing the elements themselves.

The setup of the display is very complex with ramp 5 being extended to form a grid of 7x7 platforms - essentially extending it into the third dimension. Wilson explained that a special high-precision firing system will be used on ramp 5 to create some very special spatial effects - never before seen in Montreal. A total of 70 modules of 32 {edit: erroneously said 48 before} cues will be used for ramp 5 alone!

Another interesting revelation was that Pyromagic are going to paint words across ramp three using the same kind of technology that was used in the Bejing olympics to put footprints in the sky. They have special mines which project letters up to 40m by 40m and will use these to spell out the names of the Feng Shui elements. It will be very interesting to see how this works.

Wilson explained there is a lot of symbolism in the display - there will be male and female symbols used, but fired from shells, and a special sequence representing an egg surrounded by sperm!He told me he feels honoured to be in this special 25th edition of the competition and wants to do the best display he possibly can, also explaining that it's a very special venue which carries a lot of prestige. Winning a Jupiter was important for Pyromagic back in 2003 and he said it carried a lot of weight in Asia. In his opinion it's the most sophisticated and well regarded fireworks competition in the world.

There will be other special "mechanical" effects too - but he wanted to keep some surprises for the night.

In total, there will be approximately 260 Pyrodigital firing modules together with the special Chinese system for ramp 5. The Pyrodigital system will use six field controllers - 3 sets of 2 so there is backup in case of problems. Potentially, then there will be 6400 {edit: erroneously said 7500} cues. It should certainly be an interesting display.

Patrick, Paul and Wilson.

This must be a promising display... Atleast basing it on the interview. It looks like it's gonna be a very complex display. Hopefully everything works well for pyromagic I wonder what they'll do to the 7 x 7 platforms

vander

Thank you for theis great interview! This must be an interesting display! 7500 cues, innovative mechanical effects, a theme that seems to be worked, the platforms....


I can't wait !!!!

This is shaping up to be a highly promising and unique display. The last minute scripting worries me a little but at least today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) should provide good weather for the bulk of the setup.

Paul's "Interview Wednesdays" are quickly becoming my favourite part of the work week!

Tyler

Thank you, Paul, for this particularly interesting report. It looks that Pyromagic's display may be a very innovative one and is especially complex. But I have some questions...

The setup of the display is very complex with ramp 5 being extended to form a grid of 7x7 platforms - essentially extending it into the third dimension. Wilson explained that a special high-precision firing system will be used on ramp 5 to create some very special spatial effects - never before seen in Montreal. A total of 70 modules of 48 cues will be used for ramp 5 alone!

Am I right to understand that the setup will include 49 floating platforms scattered on the lake? The 3360 cues for the fifth ramp is much more than the total number of cues of most shows. With about 7500 potential cues to program, I'm surprised that the design process began as late as in March.

Another interesting revelation was that Pyromagic are going to paint words across ramp three using the same kind of technology that was used in the Bejing olympics to put footprints in the sky. They have special mines which project letters up to 40m by 40m and will use these to spell out the names of the Feng Shui elements. It will be very interesting to see how this works.

I don't know if I saw this thing during the TV Olympic coverage (though I spent a lot of time watching them!), but can you provide some basic explanation to help me to understand what this technology is?

a special sequence representing an egg surrounded by sperm!

That is funny! I suppose it will be made of a shell of stars along with a screaming serpent. It remember to me a display (I don't recall which one), back in the 1990s I believe, when smiley face shells were combined with glass-shape shells.

I'm looking forward to attend this particular (and, for me, until now, unanticipated) display.

Fred

Am I right to understand that the setup will include 49 floating platforms scattered on the lake? The 3360 cues for the fifth ramp is much more than the total number of cues of most shows. With about 7500 potential cues to program, I'm surprised that the design process began as late as in March.

The 49 platforms are not scattered, they're arranged in a 7x7 grid - effectively extending ramp 3 out towards the audience. The way I understand it is that the grid forms a "screen" - think of pixels .

As for the number of cues, the numbers are sometimes deceptive. If you have a lot of firing positions on ramp 3, say, this can easily consume a lot of cues in terms of firing module addresses, but in terms of cue points to the music, there can be far fewer. If you have 13 positions, you need 13 cues to ignite these simultaneously, but there is only one time point in the soundtrack. The scripting software helps with this task. I'm sure the same is true for the ramp 5 "grid" too. As to when the design process started, different people call the start date in different ways. One may have been thinking about the theme and music for a long time, but maybe the start date is after the soundtrack has been edited together and the first effects assigned to the time points in the music.

I don't know if I saw this thing during the TV Olympic coverage (though I spent a lot of time watching them!), but can you provide some basic explanation to help me to understand what this technology is?

The Olympic display had "footprints" projected vertically. The technology behind this is a kind of mine where the stars/comets are glued to paper in the required layout - be it a letter, footprint, smiley face or whatever. The mine can be precisely oriented - Wilson showed me the many angles they have to allow for firing 3, 4 or 5 letters at once (to prevent overlap). So long as the stars in the mine were in the right place to begin with, their spatial relationship is preserved when the mine is fired - you get an expanding cone effectively, but the relationship between the stars stays the same. I would imagine the stars have dark prime on them so they only light up some time after leaving the mine. In the case of letters, because these are projected away from the audience, the pattern used is the mirror image. Of course, this kind of effect is sensitive to the wind, so hopefully everything will be OK tomorrow.

The last minute scripting worries me a little but at least today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) should provide good weather for the bulk of the setup. I wouldn't be too worried about this - it was mainly because of the selection of certain Spanish products. Since Wilson isn't intimately familiar with these, the exact points in the script couldn't be put in place until Patrick could supply all the necessary information (pre-fire time, effect burn time etc.) and to ensure the effects wouldn't clash with the Chinese products being used at the same time.

Paul's "Interview Wednesdays" are quickly becoming my favourite part of the work week!

That's good to hear! Note that next Wednesday's interview will not take place until Friday as I have some work comittments that prevent me from going to the ramps on Wednesday - Mylene has hard publication deadlines which is why we do it then. It's actually more interesting to go on Fridays since there is much more of the setup completed to see.

Paul.

I leave you the video of the footprints, it seems fake, but its not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRpRDirHPh4&feature=related

The footprints viewed from the street:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN93BhdRUZw&feature=related

Hope you like it, I'm sure it will be an interesting display !!! Regards from Berlin ;-) This night is the first day of PYROMUSIKALE, a new fireworks copetition that want to be the biggest fireworks competition of the world... more than Montreal ? I don't think so... lets see.

A total of 70 modules of 48 cues will be used for ramp 5 alone!

Just to clarify something here Paul, Wilson Mao said the Chinese modules on the lake have 32 cues... so we can remove a little more than 1000 cues from your count...


Mylene has hard publication deadlines which is why we do it then. It's actually more interesting to go on Fridays since there is much more of the setup completed to see.

Paul, you wanted to accompany me on wednesdays. There's nothing that stops you from going there on Fridays instead you know... But your readers are now use to wednesdays...

ust to clarify something here Paul, Wilson Mao said the Chinese modules on the lake have 32 cues... so we can remove a little more than 1000 cues from your count...
Ah yes, you're right! My mistake - there was talk of 48 cues per module initially. Thanks for the correction!

I'll go back and edit my post!

Paul.

Paul,

Thanks for the information. I do have a question, though. The lettering that is expected to be occasionally projected through the mines for this display, well, I was wondering if moderate winds could distort the appearance of the letters to some extent?

Trav.

Hey, maybe the lettering will be more like in this style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jWrxUOPeg (1:13) rather than the big foots in the 2008 olympics. This ones has numbers and letters. In the interview in the website, wilson mao said that the letters will be facing the audience

Vander

In the interview in the website, wilson mao said that the letters will be facing the audience
They will, but they 're projected away from the audience (for safety) so mirror-image letters are used.

Paul.