The Immortals
Designed by Alain Carboneau, FireMaster firing with 1200 cues
Another perfect summer’s evening for debutante competitor Apogée and, despite being a Wednesday, a very large audience in the grandstands at La Ronde.
Alain had promised a dramatic start to his display and he did not disappoint, filling the sky at all levels with bright colour and studata shells. The soundtrack was enjoyable, but the length of the songs was a bit unbalance, with shorter segments during the first third of the show (where more than half of the pieces were used) compared to much longer segments in the second two thirds of the display. Some of the transitions between songs seemed a tad clumsy, with just a simple fade-out, whereas others allowed a mini-finale to be created, particularly noteworthy being the one at the end of Michael Jackson’s Earth Song, which was more impressive than the actual finale (more on that later).
On the pyrotechnic side, there was a good diversity of products used, though I found some of the effects, particularly crossettes, to be a bit repetitive, as were the various crackling cakes. Nautical products were quite diverse, but shells were only used once. Good use was made of all levels of the sky, though, as well as the full width of the display. There was certainly more interplay between the levels than in the earlier competing displays this year. The three small towers added to the diversity of firing angles, but the products used on them were a little bit weak and due to the higher level products above, were a little bit lost. The promised special effect for the beginning of Under Pressure didn’t end up being set up as originally intended and so was not really noticeable.
Synchronization was largely excellent with some good sequences of one-shots and other note-synchronized effects. Indeed, it was impressive to know that a relatively low number of cues were used so when tight synchronization was required, it was done well, though this did leave a few other places where it was less evident. The audience certainly appreciated the obviously note-sequenced parts.
The finale was a bit on an enigma. A music mix of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah performed first by Elvis and then Cohen himself naturally tied into the gold kamuro theme established at the start of the almost five minutes long mix. Alain had promised the ending wouldn’t be the classic barrage of salutes and so I expected maybe a final big barrage of horsetail/waterfall shells and may the same type of product in mines and nauticals below. I was a bit surprised when the intensity of the finale diminished and a disappointingly dim kamuro was the final shell fired quite a few seconds before the music finished.
The audience definitely appreciated the display and gave the team an enthusiastic standing ovation at the end. It was well executed with good interplay between the levels and, despite the low cue count by “modern” standards, was an enjoyable display. In many ways, it reminded me of the best displays of the late 1990s / early 2000s – before “one shot madness” became common. It had a much more organic feel and, at the time of writing, is my favourite this year, despite the small issues noted above. Definitely a very good effort by Apogée.