The fickleness of the typical Montreal July weather had an impact on Western Enterprise’s debut display: torrential thunderstorm rains hammered the site at La Ronde during the afternoon as well as twice in the evening. Not only were the rains heavy, the storms were close enough to prematurely launch a fan of comets on ramp three as well as affect an unknown number of firing modules. It looked like the rains would abate as the sun came out just before sunset, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Gary Caimano told me during his interview that he’d never attended a display at La Ronde nor had watched any videos of previous displays and that this would afford him a fresh set of eyes for the firing site. I can see this is potentially an advantage, to come without any prejudices as to what the site offers, but there is also the risk of not fully understanding what the site offers. Gary’s passionate explanation of his display design during the interview lead me to believe that he did understand the potential of the site, but it wasn’t quite as evident as I had expected and there’s a good chance that the heavy rains and storms had had an impact on the low-level effects used in the display.
The display itself took fully one minute to start after the countdown, there being a narrative section giving the name of the company and the title of the display. This lead many to fear that there were technical problems as it’s not usual to start with such a long period of black sky. This is where prior experience would have been useful, or perhaps the organizers need to make it clear to potential competitors that the protocol of the evening already includes introducing the company and theme.
Things improved once the fireworks started, with very high quality shells being used. There was some very clever synchronization between fans of low level comets which changed colour twice or thrice, their final colour appearing at exactly the same time as shells above appearing in that colour. Western’s Skyworks brand of products certainly are of very high quality with extremely vivid colours and interesting effects. One effect they had mentioned in the interview was the so-called “plume” – this is a sky-mine type of shell which produces a mine-like uprush of stars which then turn over and descend – similar to a horsetail effect but different too due to the initial uprush. Western showed many varieties of these shells as they were used in pretty much every song.
Synchronization was good, but it wasn’t done in the usual manner with sequences of note-synchronized one-shots. Rather, groups of effects would start at some point in a song and then the synchronization would include the colour changing effects of the stars and comets, together with the shells that would be fired as companions. This is a different approach to what I’ve seen before but is perhaps a bit too subtle to be fully appreciated during the display. It could also be that some of the intricacies of the low-level effects were lost due to the weather, which undoubtedly had had an effect on ramps 3 and 5. Due to the presence of ramp 5, no nautical effects were used.
There was good interplay between the ramps and some interesting sequences on ramp 4 with horizontal firing large mines, particularly dramatic in the finale. The finale itself was quite restrained to begin with and featured many “plumes” but as it approached its apotheosis huge barrages of shells with carefully timed colour changes came into play as dramatic mines on ramp 4 threw their stars across the lake as vast volleys of salutes created a mushroom cloud effect from their lift charges as enormous comet shells exploded above to thunderous applause from the audience.
I certainly enjoyed the display but had the feeling that the subtleties of the design lead to the feeling that the overall display was more simplistic than it probably was – and the weather problems definitely left some unknowns here. Gary had promised lots of angles, and indeed there were, but these were more constrained within the vertical width of the display area than pushing outwards as far as some others had done in the past. Western’s Skyworks products are certainly of very high quality and the clarity of the colours used was a joy to behold. I enjoyed the soundtrack too – but it wasn’t really clear how the fireworks themselves expounded on the theme. However, Gary had said the display was really about the fireworks, and they certainly demonstrated their manufacturing prowess.
As to whether Western will receive a call to return for the awards ceremony, it’s still too early to say as there are still three strong contenders due to perform. I have a feeling that whatever happens, we will see a return of Western Enterprises in the future as they certainly did an excellent job for a debut display at this complex and unforgiving site.