Fright Night
Designed by Mike Cartolano, produced by Matt Peterson; soundtrack produced by Jon Gesse. PyroDigital firing with around 5500 cues
Competing for the third time in Montreal, Melrose gave the audience a card with a summary of their display, similar to what they had done in 2009 for their Reel Love display, which garnered the Bronze Jupiter.
Unusually, the display began at around 21:58, the earliest I remember in all the time I’ve been attending the competition, except for HongKong in 2009 which began five minutes early due to an approaching storm.
It began with deep red flares, creating an atmospheric effect as shells of bright white photoflash burst above with the same along the front of ramp 3. Brilliant red strobing horsetails burst above as the familiar music of Michael Jackson’s Thriller began, to cheers from the audience. Bright shells of palm-core red peonies were followed by farfalle shells with red meteor comet candles below as this strong introduction lead into a scary cackling laughter which preceded the introductory narration, by a really appropriately voiced actor who managed to sound like Victor Price in both English and French as photoflashes and strobing nautical flares added to the atmosphere.
The display used very high quality products throughout with some interesting effects. I particularly liked a simple addition to traditional “smiley face” shells in that they had rings of crossettes. As the orientation of the face is random, sometimes it is only seen edge-on, so the addition of the ring of crossettes ensured the shells were always interesting. Lots of great repetition shells, shells of bright-coloured crossing-stars and other multi-effects were greatly appreciated. However, I did find there was some repetition of effects, particularly palm-cored peonies (though in various colours) and shells of gold comets with twinkling comet pistils.
The low-level effects were good, with some very broad fans of brilliant colour mines and runs of starmine comets and other one-shots. However, I found the design patterns used to be a little bit repetitive. During the “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, ramp 5 was used to provide some interesting note-synchronized designs using purple micro-star gerbs as well as mines of green and purple on ramps 3 and 5. There was a rainbow effect produced during the Wizard of Oz medley, though the colours were not quite in the correct order!
The soundtrack was very well put together, with familiar pieces that the audience really appreciated. I did find, though, a couple of times where the fireworks ended before the final bar of the music. There were some humourous sections, where the lyric talked of purple monsters, we had purple “jellyfish” shells in the sky! However, despite the theme title “Fright Night” I didn’t find any scary moments, though the fireball effects and photoflashes were certainly atmostpheric.
The Bat Out of Hell segment provided a great pre-finale and the finale itself, set to another version of Thriller, was really well done. It was very well structured and built in grandeur and intensity with huge salutes, massive mines of dense silvery gold comets and fantastic runs of mine clusters across ramp 3, bringing the display to a thundering close! The audience jumped to their feet and gave the Melrose team a standing ovation!
This was a very good display, with an excellent range of high-quality products and a very popular and well put-together sound track. The design was good, but was a bit less complex than other competitors this year and I believe this will preclude Melrose from the Gold Jupiter position. We have had some really excellent displays this year and still have two strong contenders so it’s really difficult to make any kind of accurate prediction just yet!