Please post your reviews of this display here!

Cheers,

Trav.

What a show from the Chilean entrant ! While the audience was smaller than for the opening display, it demonstrated much more appreciation, with a sustained standing ovation (certainly fueled by the intense finale). Indeed, I really enjoyed this 31-minute-and-10-second extravaganza, which I found very good*, but it did feature some weaknesses which may prevent Pirotecnia SPA to be on the podium this year.

Let’s begin with the soundtrack, which was a very original component of this pyromusical performance. The listing released by La Ronde indicated 37 titles. Some people thought that it was a record, but it wasn’t. The jazz-themed Pirotécnia Igual’s (Pirotecnia SPA parent company) show in 2007 had 48 segments and it is believed that a Panzera closing show (possibly “Montréal s’anime,” the one on cartoon musics in 2000) had a couple more. However, most excerpts of these 37 songs came from multiple singers or bands, with a total close to 100 sub-segments. A such level of fragmentation is not very effective for the development of some drama – and the storyline of the show was rather abstract – but it caused many surprises. Several times, a music segment began with a well-known interpretation, and it continued with a more exotic one. I also believe that sub-segments of some songs were intertwined with units from other titles, adding to the complexity of the musical design. The Chilean team is a strong contender for the Best Soundtrack Award.

Fueled by the soundtrack, the pace of the show was intense most of the time, and the rhytym of the fireworks mirrored the one from the musics. The synchronization was flawless. I have been very impressed by a series of sequences made of bombettes on the music of Funky Town which bursted in perfect synchronization with the “percussion”. Were they equipped with a chip to ignitate them more precisely ?

The quality of pyrotechnic material is also a remarkable component of this display. On this point, the contrast with the opening show was almost astonishing, as it was with the design of the tableaux, which were much cleaner. We saw numerous shells producing multiple effects and changes of colours, including rare colour-changing shaped shells (e.g., shells of spirales). The colours were especially vivid and bright.

We learnt from Paul’s interview that it was going to be the longest show made by this team. To design a 30-minute display is very challenging. I believe it was obvious in the range of pyrotechnic products used for this show. During the display, I thought that some effects were repetitive, especially with the type of shells exhibited. While many were complex and original, we saw many bicolour shells and go-getters. In opposition, we saw very few nautical effects. We had to wait until the 25th minute of the show to enjoy some water-based action, with a series of huge nautical shells, some of them bursting very close to the Ednor roller coaster. The circular device designed to shot with a 360-degree angle didn’t bring much to the show, probably because it was merged with many other effects during intense parts of the performance.

Overall, a very good performance of Pirotecnia SPA (and, more or less directly, Pirotecnia Igual). I would not like to have so many segments on the soundtrack of each show, but it made this one very different and entertaining. Of course, some songs may be very critical to the eyes of loyal viewers, as they evoke very strong performances from past displays. As I heard “Here Comes the Sun”, I could not think to something else than Pains Fireworks’s famous sun ignited in 2007. I would have the same bias whether someone else selected “The Final Countdown”, heard in the famous Italian Pyroemotions’ extravaganza in 2013. But these moments didn’t detract my attention from a great performance.

* I also graded the opening display as a “very good” one, but I may switch it to “good”. It doesn’t imply that I have not enjoyed it, but the Chilean performance brings some perspective and refreshes my mind.

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It now appears that, once again this year, Michel Lacroix is not on stage for on-competition shows. The protocolar ceremony was more modest, as it has been in 2015, and some segments have been pre-recorded by Michel Lacroix, including the anticipated countdown. Furthermore, it took about 5-7 minutes to reach the metal detector at the gate. In addition to a complete inspection of one of my bags, my wallet – as well as the one of my guest – has been closely examined by the employee, which I found pretty intrusive.

Once again, Trav’s updated forecast were perfectly accurate. We avoided the thunderstorm – the sky even became clearer at the time of the display – and light wind push the smoke toward the bridge and the Old Port area.

Fred

My report: http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=1134

I agree with Fred - definitely a strong contender for the soundtrack.

Paul

A sharp contrast in weather conditions to the opening night occurred for Chile’s debut. However, due to a comparatively unstable air mass, the risk of thunderstorms also existed. Luckily, convective coverage remained largely isolated and developed North of the island in a line of organized multi-cells. Thunderstorms continued to form into the evening period, with residual rain showers principally affecting the East end of the island (as far as the island was concerned). Winds also transitioned to NNW to straight northerlies in time for the display, allowing smoke to move slowly towards those on the bridge nearest to the firing site (passing clear to the left of those at La Ronde), and eventually towards the Old Port, as noted by Fred. High humidity also meant that smoke was accumulating rather quickly, but winds were just enough to allow the smoke to clear the vast majority of the time. Temperatures were 26-27 C in time for the display.

I found this to be an exciting and energetic display delivered by the Chileans, and to officially commence the 2016 competition! Indeed, we were treated with a glamorous and bright opening along low-level immediately after the countdown, with enjoyable synchronization to start! We also enjoyed a fairly nice musical selection to highlight the theme, “A Musical Ride”, which comprised of various popular songs very familiar to most. At times, we heard variations of the same song under different artists – sometimes in a mixture rather than separate versions immediately following each other as individual segments. There had also been a rich diversity of effects, and extravagant color arrangements were observed from one segment to another. The transitions in pace were also quite effective through some points, which, I thought, would be more of a challenge, given the massive number of segments integrated into a display that utilized this kind of approach. Some of the more definitive transitional points that evoked a more successful emotional appeal were from “Every Little Thing She Does” to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and most especially from “I’m A Believer” to “Imagine”. To and from “Here Comes The Sun” was also nicely done. I was also impressed with some of the single shots and firing angles used at certain points of the show. During Michael Bublé’s “Every Little Thing She Does”, for example, the way the single shots of silver along low-level raced rapidly from right (our right) to left and back was astonishing and worked well with the introduction of the soundtrack. Another point of exemplary choreography in the show was during “Funky Town”, when those small shells burst so intricately into a rainbow with the key components of the soundtrack at that moment. I also thought that “We Will Rock You” was portrayed very well and offered a splendid interplay between the music and fireworks, as was “Hit The Road Jack”. And just following that segment, hearing the crowd’s cheers of approval for the heart-shaped shells is always a pleasure! The circular structure mounted atop ramp 5 was also well integrated during the few moments it was involved. My personal favorite soundtrack was “Sweet Dreams”, especially being a fan of Eurythmics. For the finale, I found it to be exciting and fairly enduring! It would have been nice, though, if the barrages of shells lasted a little longer before the emergence of the rounds of salutes! Still, it was a nice conclusion, especially when those massive nautical shells (which first made an appearance during “Imagine”) emerged to join with the upper shells!

As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the display, a few negative feelings did surface. My criticisms are more so directed to the overall thematic framework and conceptual design of the display. I found that the theme, while relevant, seemed somewhat vague, or perhaps just too abstract. This may be that I found it usually challenging to pick up any real thematic direction from one segment to the other, or just having difficulty trying to consolidate connections with the overall musical selection. Synchronization was, as noted in the previous paragraphs, generally good. However, I found that the synchronization tended to have a fairly high variability, that is, it fluctuated from a basic music-fireworks connection to a more complex and creative one through most of the show. Choreography, though, became more predominantly intricate by almost exactly mid-way into the display, so this variability appeared mostly skewed to the first half. As mentioned previously, effective transitions in pace and emotion were observed at certain points of the show. That being said, I found the display to be generally “rushed” from one segment to the next most of the time. This is likely due to the numerous soundtrack used, forcing segments to move on and transition rather quickly. While this approach was beneficial to creating an exciting display, as we have seen in the past, this made it difficult to keep pace with the concept of the show, especially since it was sometimes unclear altogether how the theme was being represented. In some situations, too, some songs were disproportionately used over a longer period of time, and I would have, as such, personally preferred to see other songs endure a little more extensively. For these reasons, I thought that the complexity of the performance, overall, was a little reserved, and because of the variability in synchronization, some songs were obviously better illustrated relative to others. The overall complexity was also reduced with fairly redundant firing patterns with respect to the mid- to upper-level shells, as well as a reliance on drooping effects during moments of tranquility. I was also not too fond of the use of multiple artists for the same songs – I would have liked to only hear the originals (for me, the mixture method was a little audibly disruptive within segments). Finally, I was hoping to see more use made of the central circular structure, such as how it was seen momentarily in “Here Comes The Sun”, and the use of more nautical devices.

Overall, a successfully executed display that was extensively enjoyed by the considerably larger audience, reinforced by typical July conditions! I do agree that the team is in strong contention for the Best Soundtrack award, and even potentially awarded with a Jupiter, though the somewhat simplistic nature of the display may prevent it, depending on how strong the next entrants are!

Trav.