I met with Paul Csukassy, the technical director of the competition, Pierpaolo Serafino (pyrotechnic designer) and Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo (export director) of the Torino-based Panzera S.A.S., presenting this year’s closing show and their company’s 29th participation in Montreal. Paul was responsible for the design of the soundtrack, this year, a tribute to U2, in the continuing series entitled Feux des Etoiles.
Paul told me that he spent over one hundred hours working on the soundtrack, composed of thirty two U2 songs. Whilst he as already a U2 fan, he noted that the 80s and 90s were more “his years” in terms of knowing their music and he was less familiar with some of their more recent albums. To provide a sense of balance in the display, he attempted to group tracks together from albums that had had similar levels of popularity (in terms of sales etc.) with the public, but from the different eras of the band, juxtaposing the old and the new. He said that this was quite challenging as it provided some tough constraints on what could be chosen for a particular section. Some of the pieces, though listed on the soundtrack, were as short as eight seconds, and served to link segments together. Once again, Paul did the mixing at Celine Dion’s Studio Piccolo, ably assisted by Luc Beaugrand. He said it took over 100 hours and was both enjoyable and exhausting. He laughed when describing how Pierpaolo kept calling to ask if the soundtrack was ready, which it was by the end of May.
For the pyrotechnic design, Pierpaolo said it took about 25 days – with about 10 days for the script concept (with him listening to the music repeatedly, though he is also a U2 fan) and then another 15 days or so in the factory preparing the products that they’d need especially for the show that weren’t in stock. Unusually for Panzera (famous for their Roman Candles), they fabricated a lot of one-shots for this show, in part because they are using the same PyroDigiT firing system as Pyroemotions, with the PyroDigiT team helping them with this. Of course, Panzera and PyroDigiT have collaborated on large shows in the past. Pieropaolo also noted that most of the one-shots are at least dual effect (such as comet and starmine or comet and bombette). In terms of products, 90% of
the material is sourced from Panzera – Maria-Grazia noting that they want to present a real Italian display. The other 10% is Chinese material, for things like cakes. We can expect to see many traditional Italian shells as well as some special horsetails where the stars are pressed into small tubes to give an extra-long burn time. The Panzera factory is moving forward with the design of lower smoke and more environmentally sensitive products too.
Pierpaolo noted that it’s an honour to be displaying in Montreal again, first appearing during the inaugural year of the competition (in 1985) and missing only one year since then. With two shows in 2000 (opening and closing) this is their 29th show for the 29th year of the competition. Pierpaolo promised us a power traditional Italian finale so that the audience can applaud the winners of the competition and enjoy a top-quality display.