For my final interview of the 39th edition of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition, I met with Maria-Grazia Gerbaudo (Panzera’s Chief Sales Officer) and Michael Lutz of Rozzi, designer of the show.
The theme had been selected by Six Flags under the direction of Paul Csukassy, technical director of the competition. In previous years, Paul was also tasked with the montage of the soundtrack for the closing show, but, this time, this was performed by Michael, though Paul oversaw the process.
When asked if he was a “Swiftie”, Michael admitted that he was not, despite having a teenaged daughter and he further noted that she wasn’t either. However, he said he had enjoyed working on the soundtrack and noted that he ended up with some of the tunes stuck in his head! He said that his favourite track from the show was Mean from the Speak Now album. One of the challenges was finding representative works from her repertoire that would work to make an interesting soundtrack for fireworks. He also noted that most of the songs selected had some fun section in them that allowed for different effects in the pyro parts.
For the design process, Michael said his company uses Finale3D extensively, not just for designing and visualizing shows, but also in the preparation and inventory management. He said that features in the program allowed workflow improvements such that tasks that would previously take several days could be reduced to a day or less – important when setting up a large and complex show such as this one in Montreal. He said his company is very busy these days, especially as they have diversified into drone shows – one of which, at the Cedar Fair King’s Island park, runs for 90 days in the summer. He said there is barely any “off season” now, but it’s still fun to come to Montreal and put on the closing show in conjunction with Panzera, one of their key supplies. Rozzi represents Panzera in the United States.
On the technical side, the show is being fired using FireOne and will have 11 positions on ramp 3, nothing on ramp 4, a big deployment on the five floating platforms forming ramp 5 as well as 5 positions on ramp 2. More than 80% of the products are being sourced from Panzera, with all of the close to 3000 one-shots coming from the company and the vast majority of the shells. He said they don’t shoot 300mm anymore due to the complexities in sourcing 1.1g-designated products, but there will be five 250mm shells and over thirty 200mm. In total there are 160 32-cue firing modules used in the display so a total of close to 5,000 cues.
Finally, for the laser parts, Michael said that both he and Paul had collaborated with the laser company and he hoped that the parts would be interesting and well integrated into the display.
Maria-Grazia told me that Panzera had just completed one of their largest displays of the year, for Bastille day in Marseille – using a total of 31 barges. This was produced with French partner (and last year’s Gold Jupiter winner) Arteventia. This partnership also produces large displays in Annency – with the Fete du Lac coming up on August 2nd – as well as in Paris, also for Bastille Day (July 14th). She said the company’s production has been entirely plastic free for some time now and also that 80% of their products are also perchlorate-free. Some of the company’s “classic” items from the past are in the process of being reinvented and reintroduced using new production methods (such as special star molding machines). The company is also producing speciality pyrotechnic products designed to be fired from drones.
