I met with Dominique Brézac of Brézac Artifices, competing for their fifthtime in Montreal. They nearly won the Bronze Jupiter at their debut display in 1997, also just missed a place on the podium in 2001, won the Silver Jupiter in 2006 in a very closely fought competition as well as bringing home the Bronze in 2010.
Since their last participation, Brezac won first place in Macau and, this year alone, are competing in three international competitions (Philipines, Macau and Montreal). For the week of Bastille Day alone, their company was called upon to supply 2,800 displays of all sizes around France!
At their last participation, it was clear that Dominic was disappointed with the result. At that time, they had put in a lot of time and effort to analyze the competition and, they hoped, come up with a winning formula. One area where they put a lot of effort was in the production of the soundtrack. Much of it was custom-composed and Dominic was very passionate about the work that had gone into it. He was most disappointed that Brezac hadn’t won the Soundtrack Jupiter as, to his mind, their effort had been much more creative than just assembling well-known (to the audience) pieces of music.
But every competition is different and Dominic realized that for their participation this year. The idea of an homage to Nelson Mandela came to him on the day of Mandela’s funeral – which is when he received the invitation from the organizers to compete in 2014. It seemed to be a timely coincidence that one of the greatest figures in modern history, one whose passing caused universal sadness across the world, would have his funeral at the very same time Brezac were invited to Montreal. Dominic noted there are very few people in the world who could evoke such emotions as Nelson Mandela. Thus the theme was born.
They spent found a month and half researching the music for the soundtrack and broke down Mandela’s life into different periods. The music and display will be very rhythmic To illustrate the concept of the display, they have produced a booklet which will be handed out to the audience and which I will use to describe the different sections.
The overall theme is “Freedom”, as illustrated on the front cover of the booklet. The next section is entitled “Madiba” and represents Mandela’s youth.
Following this, we have “Apartheid”
which represents the dark era of South African politics, when whites were separated from blacks and coloureds.
After this, we have “Prison”,
covering the terrible twenty seven years Mandela was imprisoned. At this point, the soundtrack is rooted in the 1980s and many of us will be able to remember such great pieces as “Free, Nelson Mandela”, by The Special AKA.
Mandela was released from prison in 1990, leading us to “Free!”
Nelson Mandela became the first black Prime Minister of South Africa in the years following his release.
The next section is “Liberation”
which is a celebration Mandela’s years as a free man.
The penultimate section is entitled “Nation Rainbow”
aptly representing freedom around the world as well as the South African flag.
The back cover of the booklet details the complete soundtrack as well as credit to a friend of Dominic, Martin Lascelles, who arranged the soundtrack and gives us the subtitle to the finale “Place à la liberté!” and a quote from Nelson Mandela “It always seems impossible until it is done.”
As was the case in 2010, Dominic was coy about naming the manufacturers but said that he merely selected the best products in each class for the effects he wanted to produce, using manufacturers from Spain, Portugal, Italy and China. He said he was more focused on the quality of the effects themselves rather than the brand-name of the manufacturer. He didn’t reveal how many large calibre shells would be in the display and was very consistent in his focus on the choice of the appropriate effects for his script. He did say that it was a very important consideration for him to use all of the official jury evaluation criteria in producing the display – meaning that every possible position in space would be utilized in the display. Even the cue count he kept to himself, saying only that the firing system used is FireOne and that there would be lots of special surprises in the display!
