I met with Michael Lutz, designer for Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks together with Paul Csukassy, Technical Director of the competition and the designer of the soundtrack for this special out-of-competition closing show as well as Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo, Panzera’s Export Director.
As with other shows this year, originally this Tribute to Genesis display had been planned for the 2020 season. Paul Csukassy had started working on the soundtrack in December 2019 and had finished it by February 2020, doing the final mixing at Studio Piccolo as usual. The 2020 season was cancelled and there was hope this display would be fired in 2021, but that wasn’t to be the case so Michael started work on it in spring of this year.
Thanks to the reverberations caused by the ongoing pandemic, it was not trivial for Rozzi to receive their containers of products as normal, Michael noting that everything they required for their usual 4th July rush was not received in time. Fortunately, the container of Panzera products, used in this display did arrive, but with a greatly increase costs compared to pre-pandemic times.
Michael said he’s a Genesis fan but without the deep knowledge of the band that Paul has. He normally formulates the overall design of a display before completing the soundtrack so these special closing shows where the soundtrack is already design represent a different way of working. He said that the music of Genesis is more symphonic than the usual rock-and-roll so this presented its own challenges when he designed this show, though he did enjoy doing it immensely. Of course, the show is also the chance for Panzera to showcase their new products – and the evolution to more environmentally friendly formulae and packing is an ongoing effort in the company. Maria-Grazia explained that they have three chemists working on new formulations and that now their products are 90% perchlorate-free. Also, they have moved to producing one-shots that are low smoke (due to using sulphur-free blackpowder) and that produce no waste on-site. In the past, one-shots would typically leave a lot of paper or plastic residues on-site after firing. For shells, now more than 90% of their products use only cardboard in their construction.
On the technical side, the display will use all the ramps – Michael particularly enjoying using ramp 5 and will feature around 4800 cues and over 5500 products. Michael said there will be a lot of 150mm shells and there will be around 10 300mm, and quite a few in the 200mm and 250mm calibre. Of course, Panzera are renowned for their cylinder shells and many of these are in the 150mm calibre but are much larger than a 300mm spherical shell. There will be some special ghost-effect shells used in the display with four colours as well as a special type of star-headed timed-salute shell called a truenetti.
Paul talked about his choice of bands for the closing show soundtrack and said he liked to go for groups that are essentially timeless and appeal to all generations. These have included the likes of Elton John, Madonna, Pink Floyd, and U2. For this soundtrack, there are twenty pieces, but some of the segments are quite short. He said that most of the montage was done before going to the studio, but they helped make the transitions perfect with the correct alignment of beats from the corresponding measures of the pieces. Paul said some of the links between pieces are as short as twenty seconds to give a flavour but without becoming too epic in sound. He said that he avoided discussing with Michael what the pyrotechnic realization will be as he wants it to be a surprise on the night. Paul was actually in a band in the 1980s and his musical focus was evident in the way he designed the sound track.