This is a a difficult report to write after the fact. New competitor Vulcan had had good weather to set up their display, save for a small rain shower about four hours before showtime. At that point, they had already completed their setup and had run continuity tests successfully. Despite being a complex design, their display was not overly complex to setup in the field – largely due to the large number of single slice cakes that provide a sequence of shots for a single firing cue. True, they were using around 3400 actual cues, but this is in the medium range these days. Weather conditions for the start of the display were perfect with warm temperatures, though rather high humidity, and favorable wind conditions.
As soon as the countdown was over, it was immediately apparent something was wrong. Two “lighthouse” structures on ramp five were supposed to illuminate – these were novel in themselves, containing a bright red flare and using pyrotechnic drivers to rotate a set of Fresnel lenses. The left-most flare illuminated but the cue to turn the lenses did not fire; the right hand lighthouse suddenly started to work about two minutes into the display (and actually worked correctly, with the lenses rotating and casting a beam of light over the audience). But at the start of the display, nothing else fired. There was black sky, despite the powerful music and my heart sank. As the blackout continued, I cried out, under my breath, “stop the show” – hoping that the show would be stopped, systems rebooted and we could start again properly – this would not be unprecedented either.
Problems continued, but we kept feeling hope as ramp 3 would burst into life, as did ramp 5 and occasionally ramp 4. Then large shells would fire from ramp 1. Then a return to black sky. As far as I could see, nothing fired on ramp 2. This is where all the “filler” shells are in 3″ and 4″ calibre, so with nothing firing here, this led to repeated periods of darkness. Things livened up later into the show and we saw great potential – runs of comets on ramp 3, great use of lycopodium fireballs on ramps 3 and 4 – all of which appeared to work perfectly. Then it was time for the suspended truss to fire. Once again problems, with only a small part of it working.
When we did see fireworks, they were of very high quality with exceptionally vivid colours and very beautiful effects. The lollipops – devices with circular slice cakes – worked exceedingly well – filling the front of the display area. We saw fountains tethered to steel wires writhing around, dancing with the music – a very simple but very unique effect, not something I recall seeing before on such a scale. The special device hinted at in the interview containing flares on ramp 5 sort of worked: the flares fired and then were dipped into the lake, continuing to burn and light up the water. The problem was that the water is not very clear and the angle of incidence form the audience to that part of the lake is very slight so it was difficult to see the glow under the water (even if the flares had been brighter or the water clearer). It was an interesting idea, but didn’t quite work out. Other devices that worked well were the chromotrope wheels on ramp 5 – all of them fired perfectly and were close enough to the audience to give a good effect. The photoflash shells John had mentioned in the interview also worked well, but I suspect we didn’t see all calibres.
We eventually reached the finale and enough modules were firing that we could appreciate it as a finale – especially as all the cakes of salutes (called “hammer cakes” in the script) functioned perfectly – pretty much deafening the audience. My ears were certainly ringing. The lake was filled with nautical shells and the air above was shredded by the ripping of the salutes as large shells fired above.
Surprisingly, no announcement was made to the audience that there had been technical problems – though this was obvious to everyone in attendance – though it would have been nice had this been publicly acknowledged. The audience enthusiastically cheered team Vulcan, though I knew they must have been feeling heartbroken. An audience member who was doing a video-voiceover reportage on the display asked if I would do an interview over the weekend. I declined saying that there was nothing I could say. As a pyro myself, I was feeling the pain that Vulcan were feeling and could not contemplate trying to do a description of the show, knowing what had been planned. What we did see, when things worked, was exceptional – great product, good use of the site and some innovative features. All the more frustrating knowing that there was really nothing the team could have done during the display to bring it back to life. With a wired firing system, cables can be un- and then re-plugged. But what to do with a recalcitrant wireless module suspended 35m in the air on a truss?
Afterwards, in the salon des artificiers, Cindy Vermülen took the unprecedented step of giving a speech of apology to the assembled audience, profusely thanking the La Ronde crew for all their hard work and dedication in setting up the show and apologising for only around 20% of it firing. She received the warmest and longest standing ovation I have ever witness in my 18 years of covering the competition on-site at La Ronde. Really, she had nothing to apologize for. I’m sure the reasons for the failure will eventually be found, but it’s hard to fault any of the crew involved as everything had passed the continuity checks. Hopefully the reasons will be found so that this kind of situation does not happen in the future. Mylène Salvas has the full text of Cindy’s speech here: here
Many people have expressed the opinion that team Vulcan should be invited back to Montreal and I concur with these. Various ideas have been mooted, the most appealing, in my opinion, would be to have Vulcan re-perform their display as either the opening or closing to the 2014 season. Since the 2014 season is the 30th edition of the competition, this would be an excellent idea. All of the product that did not fire is already here in Montreal (and storage could be arranged I’m sure). I urge the organizers to seriously look at this possibility and hope that, whatever is decided, we see Vulcan again in Montreal. They certainly have the design skills to present an exceptional show and quality product to make it something special.
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