I met with Nicolas Guinand, Sugyp’s co-owner and chief designer, competing in Montreal for their third time. The company was effectively founded in 1971, but Nicolas, together with his brother Jean-Pascal and their father, bought the company in 2007, after having becoming more interested in the emotional aspect of fireworks after having witnessed the competition in Chantilly in 2004. They founded Pyro Éphémère in 2006 and took over Sugyp the following year.
The company is in its busiest time of year as they put on around 250 displays between the 31st July and 1st August for the Swiss National Day, the largest of which is fired on Lake Geneva, which is “just over the hill” from their home in facility that’s close to Lac Neuchâtel.
I asked what would be different this time, compared to their (Bronze Jupiter-winning) displays of 2016 and 2012 and Nicolas said he felt he had more courage and confidence as a designer now to bring a more evolved spectacle to the audience. One where the products and their grandiosity could be appreciated as he built up the complexity and layers during the display.
The technical design of the display is different this time, too. In 2016, their display only used ramp 5 for flame effects (and these ended up less successful than had been hoped) so this time, the five floating pontoons will be used to their full pyrotechnic potential. The ramp 3 setup is also more optimized compared to the previous times with the team using 15 positions compared to the 22 used previously and this time there will be no elaborate lancework (last time they had used 22 panels). Ramp 2 is similar to their 2016 setup, and uses 3 positions (most companies use five or more), but the design of this ramp is also different from 2016 where Nicolas had described that it provided 9 different sky positions. This time, it has been optimized to provide four non-overlapping firing zones. This is achieved by angling the 75mm shells in the centre position left and right by 10° and the 100mm shells by 12°. Nicolas showed me this on the Final3D visualization and the concept looks like it will work well.
Ramp 1 will also be different to the previous time as they will be making use of many 175mm shells (imported from China). It is becoming very difficult to ship any 1.1g products from China now – and 200, 250 and 300mm shells are classified as such, whereas 175mm can be shipped as 1.3g. Nicolas explained that they had specified the shells to use the same size and type of stars as 200mm shells, but in a form that could be readily shipped. Fans of larger shells should not despair, though, as there will be European 200, 250 and 300mm products in the display, including a special type of studata with cascading waterfalls from Vaccalluzzo. Other European manufacturers include Parente (Italy), Europla (Spain), Ricasa (Spain) and Hamex (Slovenia). Nicolas told me Hamex have produced some special shells with stars that have nine colour changes, with the same in one-shot mines too! Around 70% of the products will be Chinese from high-quality manufacturers including Jinyi, Vulcan and Lidu.
Despite there being a fully utilized ramp 5, Nicolas assured me there would be plenty of nautical products of all types used in the display including cakes and around fifty shells in the finale! Total cue count is around 3900 with approximately 1400 of these being used with one-shots. Ramp 4 will also be well utilized with very wide fans of candles firing in all possible angles. Previously Sugyp had used a Galaxis firing system but, for logical reasons, this time they are using PyroDigital. Speaking of logistics, Nicolas lamented that if Sugyp were to be invited to attend the awards ceremony on July 31st, it would be very very difficult as that is the start of their busiest time of the year with all the national day displays.
Nicolas told me that after he had assembled the soundtrack, the total amount of time to design and refine the display amounted to around 150 hours which had commenced in January and had to be completed by early May in order to ship the container. Nicolas said he wants the display to work as a complete emotional experience, as the theme is Musical Comedy, hence he didn’t point to any piece of music used in the soundtrack, though there is a nod to the location of the competition as a thank you to the organizers and audience. Astute listeners should be able to work out which piece this is! Nicolas had used Finale3D for the design process and showed me many snippets of the display. He had worked with the laser company to integrate the four mandatory segments and said he’s taking advantage of the rules that allow a few seconds of overlap with pyrotechnics at each end.
Let’s hope the weather cooperates as we have yet another day coming up where there will be high heat and humidity leading the thunderstorm watches.