Hi everyone,

Please post your reviews and comments for the Austrian display here!

Cheers,

Trav.

Six years to the day after its debut show in Montreal (July 11, 2018), Steyrfire Fireworks presented a very good display entitled “Made in Heaven.” However, due to the heavy rain caused by the remnant of Beryl on the day before the presentation (and, to a lesser extent, the very same day), I suspect it was actually made in hell. I am not sure whether the Austrian team members have achieved the performance they had hoped for. I guess the challenging weather conditions during the setup have impacted the delivery of the show.

With a line-up of hits recorded by singers who have passed away, the Austrian entrant has favoured a fairly minimalist theme and sure choices. The 31-minute soundtrack was made of 10 songs, each a few seconds apart, and sometimes several seconds apart (up to 10 seconds a couple of times, and nearly 15 seconds between Michael Jackson’s and Tina Turner’s ones). The concept was slightly more elaborated in 2018 with the introduction of various dances. The soundtrack was also simple, similarly to the Omagari’s one, whereas La Rosa’s one featured many medleys. Those had required much more editing, and contributed to the overall rhythm of the show. (I had no problem to hear all the musics. I think the sound from the speakers was louder than with the Italian show.)

The pyromusical design was generally well done, as the overall pace of the fireworks was well-adjusted to the soundtrack. It was excellent during Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, with very fast sequences of gerbs, and a dramatic pause to fit with the song, among others. On Imagine, the decision to rely almost entirely on white products was a good choice given its peace theme. Furthermore, the show featured a good balance of paces, with a number of more serene parts, even during the finale song. The finale was also a very good one.

The pyrotechnic material was different from previous contestants. Two large shells (probably 12 inches) have exploded at the beginning of the show, one being a shell of blue turning to green stars, with a double pistil – the central one ending in crackling, the larger one featuring another change of colours. Apart from these two shells, I have not seen many other colour-changing products. The number of multibreak shells also appeared more limited to my eyes than during the Japanese and Italian shows. Generally speaking, I wonder whether the shapes and luminosity of some pieces have not been impacted by the rain of the recent days.

The technical design may have suffered from the rain too, as some stations did not appear to work, causing a number of asymmetries during the show, while these problems were relatively minor. The design was more simple than in 2018, when Steyrfire had used two lifts for elevated racks, including some circular devices which added to their debut show. Last night, such structures were missing.There were also no nautical products in this display. However, the mines and fans of thick comets located on the fifth ramp made a huge contribution to the extravaganza.

Most of the time, the synchronization was excellent with several note-synchronized sequences. However, it was not exactly perfect, especially at the end of many songs, typically because pyrotechnic effects stopped a couple of seconds later. For example, the horsetails ignited towards the end of Imagine were still visible for a few seconds. In other cases, the pyros stopped before the musics (like with the Michael Jackson’s song). Moreover, the synchronziation was not as obvious on Simply the Best as on other songs.

Is SteyrFire in a good position to reach the podium? It is hard to say, as I have heard a wide range of opinions after the show from a number of people who were at La Ronde.

My personal ranking so far :

1. La Rosa S.R.L. (Italy)
2. SteyrFire Fireworks (Austria)
3. Omagari Hanabi (Japan)

Laser segments

The two laser segments last respectively 2 min. 40 sec. during Wake me Up and 2 min. 20 sec. on Higher Love. I appreciate that these songs were not entirely combined with lasers, that pyros expanded the laser effects following the aforementioned time periods, which was an improvement from the Italian show. The laser beams appeared to move with some synchronization with the songs, especially the first one. I found somewhat surprising not to see more red lights on the second segment given its theme.

With three shows since the introduction of these new laser segments, I come to a conclusion which I posted in this thread created by Paul.

Fred

P.S.: When this website published an article dedicated to Martyne Gagnon's retirement in 2022, René Langer (owner and president of SteyrFire) posted a personal comment about his first meetings with the former competition director. It is worth to read it, at the very bottom of that page.

Here are some of my notes about Austria.

I liked :
- Multicolor gerbs/fountains were awesome.
- Gold with silver strobing gerbs/fountains were nice too.
- Large caliber shells with several color change were right on timing and super nice.
- Use of ramps 4 and 5 was interesting.
- Mines with all those twisting particles at the end were spectacular.
- Single shots angles were really well executed. Clear patterns.
- Cakes were nice and surprisingly didn't messed up synchronization too much.

I noticed :
- Range of color was limited. I don't remember seeing any cyan or orange... I remember yellow in mines but nothing else.
- Loved the ramp 3 effects in the finale, but the rest was gold... gold... gold... gold... gold...salute...gold...gold...gold...salute...gold...gold...gold... (you got the point that I don't like gold only finale...)
- Single shots patterns were repetitive throughout the show. Creativity is the key.
- Lack of "wow effect" shells. Some of them were nice, but nothing really surprised me.
- Some segments were a bit too long (end of "Valerie" for example) and contributed to a linear feeling.
- Feeling with soundtrack was lost couple of times. For example, the beginning of "Imagine" : comets were shot fast and were distracting. The beautiful horsetails in the sky were enough at that time.

Personal thoughts
Performance of Austria sounded like a hockey team not wanting to make any mistake. It ended up like a defensive, conservative demonstration and emotions were somehow lost. I personally expected the total opposite : something very colorful, lot of surprises, new patterns, a lot of creativity, taking risks. It was not the case.

There is a lot of talent in Austria Team. They showed it in 2018. Unfortunately, I doubt this year's show will make it the podium. Judges will decide.

After 3 shows :
1) Italy
2) Japan
3) Austria

Dan

My report on the steyrFire display. http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=2345

Paul.

Following very significant rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl (79.2 mm of rainfall observed at YUL on July 10th alone) and ongoing smaller contributions through early-July 11th, the Austrian display was faced with almost damp, saturated air and a fairly low stratiform cloud deck. In addition, with this saturation effect occurring with a display time temperature of 20 C, the humidity was very high, prompting vast accumulations of smoke at times. Fortunately, for the first time this year, the winds were directed away from the on-site audience, allowing the thick smoke to advance towards adjacent sections of the bridge (more bothersome for those stationed on the bridge, unfortunately). The light (9 km/h) NNW winds mostly guided the smoke quickly enough to see most of the display, but the vast accumulations often covered a fair amount of left sections of the display (right-hand sections relative to those those on Notre-Dame).

I have previously heard a wide range of opinion concerning this show from those around me not long after it had come to an end. Some demonstrated much enthusiasm about the show’s execution and overall appeal, while others showcased a plethora of feelings as to why he/she didn’t particularly like it. Despite the pressures the team faced, especially in terms of the impact caused by the extreme weather situation for setup, it became clear early in the show that the impressive rainfall observed the day previous unfortunately had some influence. Periods of asymmetry would make themselves known during points of especially the first few minutes of the show. At other points, firing positions wouldn’t ignite when they should have along low-level. Nevertheless, this show offered some enjoyable moments for me.

Ignoring the technical issues faced, I thought that the show generally represented a good improvement from their 2018 entry. The extent of redundancy did diminish, and I felt a tighter engagement with the show in terms of synchronization. The coloring scheme was decent, despite high humidity and corresponding thick smoke affecting its richness, and the team often did not miss too much opportunity to carefully balance the activity from high- to low-altitude, and from right to left. The musical selection seemed appropriate for such a theme, and the section featuring one of Michael Jackson’s best songs was well represented, overall. There were some moments of interesting exploration for different emotional transitions (for instance, before and after “Smooth Criminal”), as well as coming out of the introductory portion of the show. The show itself did not waste too much time reminding the audience as to the purpose of the display through the initial lyrics at the beginning, which I thought was clever. Finally, the complexity of the synchronization became increasingly clear deeper into the show, especially with note-tight sequences along low-altitude.

Outside of these points, the show, unfortunately still relied on a relatively high degree of repetition, notably with drooping effects, such as horsetails – horsetails being actually extensively used across competitors so far this year during tranquil moments, reminding me a little of their use in 2008. This limited the overall technical design of the show. Together with the limited diversity of color, utilizing such effects fairly frequently did give the impression of a less complex design. Conceptually, too, the thematic premise was quite light and somewhat vague in its portrayal - here, the music highlighted the theme better than the pyrotechnics for a good percentage of the time.

In terms of the musical direction this show took, there were also some points where either a song would end with the notion of a “cliff-hanger”, or it would continue to have fireworks several seconds after the affected segment ended. To that end, “Smooth Criminal” was one piece that fell victim to this – as efficiently as this part of the show was depicted, it did end with a rather strong anti-climax that affected the efficiency of the transition to the next section. In other segments, I think that more energy was truly required to better illustrate those specific songs – I, therefore, found this soundtrack representation sometimes lacking, as compared with the more complete delivery exhibited by the Italian team.

The musical selection, while appropriate, showed a sense of imbalance, likely because some songs just did not need to appear in nearly full-length (an issue that I had with the Japanese display, as well). In light of this, reducing the length of longer tracks would have invited a less missed opportunity to integrate more (relevant) songs. That said, as effective as the transitions were in delivering a successful range of emotions through the songs and fireworks, it was not always clear to me why different emotions were necessary under such a theme to begin with. At the same time, I additionally was not a fan of the overall soundtrack, which steered by enjoyment differently at times.

The finale had the correct endurance, but it was much too monochrome for my taste – in fact, as mentioned, the range of colors was a bit more reserved in this display collectively. Given the generally quieter nature of the show, the finale did, however, appear quite strongly.

Altogether, this was a good effort from the Austrian team, and this version offered a decent amount more complexity from what I remember from their 2018 performance. A pity the weather conditions during most of setup and the day itself carried such a profound impact on this display. That said, despite these obvious challenges, it was great to see the show executed in such a fashion – this speaks a lot to the rigorous efforts of the Austrian team.

Trav.