Life’s Letters
Designed by Marco Bottazi and Federico Tibaldi. Pyromac firing with 256 modules and 4000 cues. Some Finale3D visualization
The rains that threatened to spoil the final day setup of debutant PiroItaly’s display failed to materialize, but the large audience was left with perfect, but somewhat cool conditions and plenty of wind to remove the smoke.
Anticipation for this first in-competition display was high, especially as Federico had been on the crew of the 2013 Gold Jupiter winning PyroEmotions display. At the time, this had set a record for the number of cues used, an astounding 8727. Federico said this display would be more balanced with respect to the different levels in the sky used, with relatively more shells than the 2013 display.
Let’s get the laser segments out of the way before the rest of the report. The first segment appeared to have technical issues with some of the laser projectors appearing to stop working for a while. The other three segments were fine and better designed than the opening show, with fewer direct projections into the eyes of the audience. Together with the decent wind, they did allow for smoke to clear plus the smoke itself helped the laser beams to be more vivid. It can be debated if four segments of around 85 seconds is less or more distracting than two segments totalling five minutes. The jury is still out on this.
Now the display itself began powerfully with dramatic runs across ramp 3 whilst 300mm shells burst dramatically above. The two outside pontoons of ramp 5 were brought into play with wide fans of stars and comets. It quickly became apparent the quality and brilliance of the fireworks used, with vivid colours and long-lasting effects. The 300mm shells used were very impressive, with multiple colour changing pistils and outer stars and they were fired without other clutter in the sky so they could be better appreciated.
Federico had mentioned to me special mines of cylindrical stars that would rise up and then fall into the lake and we did see these a few times, in brilliant form, though their height was not quite as much as I expected. The 3D flower effect on ramp 4 was shot only twice so you had to be paying attention to see it, but it did contain the three layers of petals as expected.
The pace of the display built to the level of a finale just before the midpoint to the music El tango de Roxanne, but this was nothing compared to the real finale. For the design of the display, I found the ramps were well used, but sometimes the patterns and effects were a little bit repetitive and not much use was made of the lake, except for a couple of sections with small nautical effects. I also found there were quite a lot of horsetail-type effects used, though these were of diverse types. One aspect that was a little bit surprising was the lack of studata or other multi-break type of effects. These are actually not ubiquitous to Italian fireworks but depend on the region. During the interview we were promised some kind of spinning serpent effects shot towards the audience, but these didn’t project as far as I expected. We did have other star-skipping effects shooting across the water in front of ramp 3.
The finale was magnificent, with two surprise booms of ground salutes across ramps 3 and 5 and the finale itself built to a thunderous sky-filling dazzle of brilliant white strobes embedded with salute-terminated serpents as well as fans of crackling effects. None of the videos recorded can do justice, however, to the final volley of around one hundred of the 150mm 1kg salutes. People involuntarily screamed as the concussion hit them and rose to their feet to give the team a well deserved standing ovation.
This was an excellent display and one of the most powerful we’ve had in years as the opening contender. Of course, there’s many more still to come but the bar has been set really high!
