I met with Fernando Macedo, patriarch and CEO of Macedos Pirotecnia, together with Diogo Vasconcelos, who designed the show and the soundtrack. Macedos had last competed in Montreal in 2017 with a display also designed by Diogo, that had garnered them the Bronze Jupiter. [Your author was part of the team from Jubilee Fireworks of the UK that won the Gold Jupiter that same year].
Diogo said that the team had learned a lot from their Bronze-winning display and intended to put that knowledge to good effect for this year’s display. Since then, the company has competed in many festivals and competitions in places such as Brno, Czech Republic, Hannover, Germany as well as in Monaco and Spain.
Fernando said the company had a difficult two years during the first part of the pandemic and are still having issues with manufacturing due to supply chain constraints as well as a shortage of workers for their factories in Portugal. Fernando said that about 30-35% of the products used in this week’s display are from their factories, with the balance coming from Italy and Spain (including products from Ricasa) as well as from China. He said that he would have liked to send more Macedos products but anything specially made for Montreal would not be certified for transport (so would not even make it onto the boat, even though it would be allowed into Canada under the special rules for fireworks competitions). He further said it is much harder now with the amount of paperwork required than it was in 2017, though the company were able to ship 1.1G products, though the largest calibre shells used will be 200mm (which are packaged specially as 1.3G).
Diogo said the design of the display was essentially their first one done completely with Finale3D. He said they had made quite a few video calls to Drew Espenshade, Finale3D representative in the US, in order to best work with the effects the program has included which didn’t necessarily match Macedo’s own products directly. Diogo also noted that they had been working on the design of the display from the moment they were notified in December 2022 right up until the container left the port and that they were still doing a few minor tweaks on site.
From a technical point of view, the display is being fired using 125 32-cue FireOne modules for a total cue count of just over 3500 but Diogo noted that there would be a lot more effects than cues. This time, they will be using five pontoons forming ramp 5 as well as a special surprise on the top of ramp 4. No further details of this were given! Maximum calibre of shells will be 200mm and some of these will contain special Portuguese-style effects that were difficult to describe but involved special kind of scintillations. I had made a similar comment in 2017 too!
The theme of the display is entitled “Tune In” and represents a day listening to the radio – with different times of day having different feelings and energy levels. Diogo said the music was mixed in-house by the Macedos production team and is a much more complex soundtrack (with around 23 tracks) and has a mix of all sorts of genres including many Portuguese styles including Fado. Diogo noting that he was particularly looking forward to the Lusitana Paixão track and also mentioned a special tribute to Queen as it’s the 25th anniversary of Freddy Mercury’s death. The finale will be full of adrenaline too – with plenty of noise, in pure Portuguese style.