Hi everyone,

Please post your comments/reviews for the French display here (and final in-competition show)!

Trav.

Clearly number one in my opinion.

Full review soon!

Im suprised you picked this one as the best this season

I wasnt there and live experience is very important when it comes to fireworks but my overall thinking watching the video was: they just tried to do what arteventia did last year but they didnt succeed as Arteventia did. Somehow the show looked emptier and less emotional to me, less clean than arteventia when it comes to angles and use of space (probably the reason is the lower quality effectz used by Lux, which from my point of view werent as good as the Arteventia used last year)

I really liked the music selection but I just felt the show wasnt consitant enough. The first half to me is much better than the second one. Somehow the design patterns just became a bit repetitive and I got a bit tired of the design approach being always the same for almost every song: starting quite small, with lower small effects, then adding candles, then shells and building the picture as the song goes on. I love this style but not for almost every song in a 30 minutes show.

That being said the show should be in the podium with Italy and Japan. To me
Italy should be the gold winner, Japan and France can both get the other medals but i would pick Japan over France cause some of their segments were just exceptional.

For a couple of reasons: good soundtrack and best use of the display space. All the displays this year had some repetition and most of them had a dull section in the middle. Arnaud managed to avoid this. Sitting there in the audience it didn't feel empty at all — especially with the use of ramp 5 — some of the products fired so high they went out of your field of vision. The wide-angle lenses used in the videos completely hide this aspect.

Paul.

Time to re-connect! France had an interesting theme combined with a soundtrack intended for a wide audience. The description and interviews indicated that the show was designed in three parts: «Connexion, Déconnexion, Reconnexion...». While it truly connected and disconnected, I'm not convinced that the third part managed to create the desired intensity of emotions. That said, what a night it was!

I liked :
— Soundtrack was well edited.
— 7 positions with the Tower/Crane in the middle were fantastic!
— A lot of ground effects (gerbs, flames, flashes) in the first half of the show. Very creative.
— «Carmen» was great with colored beginning, then all whistling mines/comets, and a powerful gold ending.
— «Mr Blue Sky» with many different cyan/blue tints.
— Ramp 3 and 5 effects were nice.

I noticed :
— «Robot Rock» was a bit long and repetitive at the beginning of the show.
— Starting at «You Learn» and until the end, the design became less precise, out of synchro. There were almost no ground effects either.
— Also starting at «You Learn», several effects didn't launch on ramp 3, creating some emptiness and unbalanced moments.
— Simple finale. I didn't get the pink-gold strobing nautical shells while everything else was white/silver to fit with the more serene song. With such a first half and an overall show, it was surprising not to see something more powerful and elaborate at the end.

Personal thoughts
The first half of the show was amazing. Precise patterns and shooting style following the music, it was impressive. True competition material! Then a certain disappointment after «Louxor, j'adore». It became a different show, losing its energy, its emotion. It's almost like if the «Re[Connexion]» didn't work. Maybe a sign of what our society is really becoming after all: impossible to reconnect?

After 6 shows :
1) Italy
2) France
3) Japan
4) United States
5) Canada
6) Switzerland

Best soundtrack : Japan.

Dan

It would have been hard to imagine a better extravaganza to bring the 39th Montreal International Fireworks Competition to a close. In its first appearance in Montreal, Lux Factory presented a touching and evocative poem in lights. Despite a few imperfections and a certain slackening in the final minutes, the design of this EXCELLENT show establishes this newcomer from France as a serious contender for the podium, possibly even for the Gold Jupiter.

Entitled «Re[Connection],» this pyromusical creation explored the promises and challenges of contemporary digital communication tools. The description given to the audience emphasized three concepts: connection, disconnection, and reconnection. The soundtrack, consisting of excerpts from 13 songs and musical pieces, served this purpose in both explicit and evocative ways. Robot Rock and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by the Parisian electronic music group Daft Punk and Echoes by Pink Floyd reflected the promises of digital connection. The «Connection» part began by dialing a phone number that activated a modem. A few minutes later, a series of ringing tones evoking abusive digital connections marked the beginning of the second part, «Disconnection.» It featured Belgian artist Stromae's adaptation of L'amour est un oiseau rebelle from the opera Carmen, which highlights the sense of alienation created by social media. Then, chaos and distress emanated from ADHD by French metal composer Igorrr and Breathe Me by Sia. The third part, covering roughly the second half of the show, addressed human «reconnection» outside the digital world. Unlike the first two, it was not given a specific introduction and appeared to begin with Mr. Blue Sky. The choice of minimalist music with seemingly imaginary lyrics as the finale (Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós) was somewhat surprising. The theme of the show was reminiscent of the epistolary theme of the Italian display, which focused on the evolution of written communication and also faded towards the end. However, no such distortion occurred in this program, unlike the Olympic performance of Céline Dion's L'Hymne à l'amour at the heart of a Japanese soundtrack, which would have been more appropriate for this show.

Of all the competitors this year, Lux Factory had the most complex technical design. In addition to using all the on-site launch ramps, the French company erected a vertical launch ramp (the 6th ramp!) consisting of a tower several dozen meters high that was kept in balance by a forklift vehicle. The tower had seven firing stations, six of which were distributed along its length and one of which was installed on the platform at the top. This installation resembled a similar one deployed by Göteborgs FyrverkeriFabrik (Sweden) in 2016 and Atlas Pyro Vision (United States) in 2019; unlike theirs, however, it did not include a 360° device. As Paul points out in a post above, videos taken with a wide-angle lens to capture the entire display make such an installation appear smaller than it appears to us directly from the stands. Furthermore, poles along the third ramp enabled horizontal firing of certain pieces and right-angle ignition of a highly synchronized sequence of gerbs for Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. During Echoes, electric comets converged from each of the rafts that made up the fifth ramp toward the center of the firing zone. There were fewer nautical products than in some other displays, but a barrage of nautical shells occurred at the end of Carmen, and a few others were included in the finale. Finally, cakes placed on the two access piers at the ends of ramps 2 and 3 caused comets to converge above those emanating from the fourth ramp during One by Johnny Cash. These devices allowed for a variety of firing patterns throughout the show.

Another aspect of this show that photos and videos hardly capture is the variety of shades within certain colors. Several pyrotechnic products went beyond the usual color palette. This was particularly evident during Mr. Blue Sky, when numerous shades of blue, ranging from pale to dark, combined with warmer tones of yellow and orange, evoking the sun. Elsewhere, pink and turquoise stood out, as in the mines on Stromae's Carmen, some of which seemed to end with effects resembling flames: orange and very bright. This compensated for more conventional tableaux in white, silver, and gold. Some pieces featured color changes, but rarely more than one at a time. There were also a few multi-break shells, notably during Matthieu Chedid's Je Dis Aime, but they were few and far between.

The soundtrack, pyrotechnics, and technical setup enabled a sophisticated pyromusical design throughout the show. This symbiosis was evident from the opening sequence, when a few white tourbillons appeared to the sound of a modem trying to establish a connection. The emotional turmoil expressed in ADHD was reflected in a red-themed tableau. The colors of the sky and sun in Mr. Blue Sky have already been discussed. The penultimate segment of the display culminated in an all-white climactic moment, accompanied by heart-shaped shells on the lyrics of Je dis Aime. Another highlight of the French performance was the correct quantity of pyrotechnics, which complemented the music's intensity very well. For instance, the serene and contemplative part in Echoes was represented by gerbs, fountains, and silent shells.

The synchronization's remarkable precision was evident from the very first tableau, where rapid sequences of flashes, mines, and comets along ramps and the tower followed the jerky notes of Robot Rock perfectly. This precision reached its peak in an extremely fast sequence at the end of ADHD.

This level of technical and pyromusical design and synchronization prevailed throughout much of the show. Around halftime, I gave a thumbs up to two people sitting near me: it was clear that we were witnessing a sophisticated pyromusical performance. However, it seemed as if the designers had run out of time to finalize the last three tableaux that followed the last laser segment, as the pyromusical design appeared less polished, the synchronization was more relaxed, and the firing patterns were more conventional. Moreover, minimal pyrotechnic effects could have been added at the beginning of the introductory segments, such as the continuous telephone line sound at the start of the «Connection» part and the repeated ringing tones at the beginning of the «Disconnection» part. Some pyrotechnic devices did not ignite at the right moments, and some seemed to be missing (there were asymmetries during Alanis Morissette's You Learn). Finally, as I mentioned above, the choice of the last song did not seem optimal for building to a climactic finale that could have been the highlight of the show.

All in all, it was an excellent show, of the highest caliber, and one that, in my opinion, probably rivals PyroItaly in a close race for the Gold Jupiter.

My final ranking :

1. Lux Factory (France)
2. PyroItaly (Italy)
3. Sugyp (Switzerland)
4. Great Sky Art (Japan)
5. Blue Star Pyrotechnics (Canada)
6. Pyro Spectaculars (United States)

You can find my prediction about the winning fires in this other discussion thread.

On this Sunday evening, at the height of summer vacation in Quebec, the largest crowd of the season snapped up the last-minute tickets sold near the stands' entrance. We had to wait two more minutes for the start of the show, as some technical issues delayed the start at 10:02 pm (people where visible in the control room until 9:25 pm and other navigated around the 5th ramp during the national anthem). For once, the probability of precipitation had been revised downward, and the weather was not threatening. The air quality index, which had been poor in Montreal due to forest fires in the Canadian Prairies in recent days, also seemed to have improved. If not for the excessive humidity, it would have been a perfect summer evening. Cooler, drier weather is forecast for the closing night.

Fred

For the sixth straight time, thunderstorms/convective rainfall were once again affecting a display day, although their distributions this time were isolated/sparse, and with no Severe Thunderstorm Watch. By mid-afternoon, however, a strong multi-cell thunderstorm, which had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning tied to it due to its history of significant rainfall rates and brief rotation, could be seen over the Vercheres-Joliette-Sorel-Tracy corridor as it moved SSE until weakening completely before it could reach Sainte-Hyacinthe. Very humid conditions (narrowly ahead of the United States and Japan for the most humid this year among display times, with a YUL dewpoint of 21.7 C at the time) also accompanied the French display (day) under a display time temperature of 28 C. SSW winds were blowing the rapidly accumulating smoke reasonably quickly to the right of the La Ronde audience, but upper-level smoke was drifting almost perfectly perpendicularly overheard towards right-hand and partially central sections of the audience.

Despite a nearly 3-minute delay, the French show was delivered with much success. During the opening segment, though again anti-climactic not because of the delay but just the slow start, it became evident that this display would offer at least some very tight synchronization and higher complexity. The «Happy Together» segment was my personal favorite and really showcased the use of the firing space very nicely, as well as an exemplary attempt at synchronization. The choice of effects was also well implemented, such as the use of girandolas and nautical shells, and the gerbs, mines and candles created an effective use of lower portions of the display. Although the coloring scheme was lower in this display, there was regularly a nice brightness to many of the stars that were used, especially the reds and whites. As mentioned, synchronization in this display was among the strongest this year (I think the strongest). The musical arrangement seemingly had the audience engaged with the display, and there were indeed several enjoyable tracks that flowed quite well with the pyrotechnics most of the time. We were additionally treated to some very interesting firing patterns along low- to mid-level which served to articulate the intricacies of several songs.

That said, the show did have some pitfalls. One aspect that I found diminished the complexity of the display was the repetitive firing patterns along low-level. In that respect, there had been too much reliance on low-level sequences which compromised a demonstration of more energetic higher-level support. The theme itself was clear early with the sounds of online connectivity attempts via dial-up, which appropriately featured a depiction of connecting to the online world or cyberspace at the beginning. However, it was not long before I found this representation to quickly slip away as the display progressed – to the point where it seemed that many of the selected songs have no «connection» to the display's purpose. As such, it was increasingly difficult to realize when the show was actually reaching signature moments (i.e. the pinnacle of the online world, and then a sense of disconnection towards the end). The color richness in this show was further more limited and carried a reserved diversity compared with most other shows previously. The central structure/tower looked to be incorporated nicely into the display, but I found that so much more could have been done with it for reinforcing sequences – I was envisioning something like Italy 2013 with its ring structure, for example. Oftentimes, the show would additionally begin too quietly at the start of many segments, and there were moments where the conclusions of segments would be a bit too lax.

The finale was good, but it needed more color richness and endurance. One overlapping theme this year is that all displays lacked continuity or endurance for finales. The French display's finale, though, was the longest lasting (about a full minute) before letting go, but the gas still seemed to be used up a bit too early with quickly diminishing crescendo, and the generally monochrome approach was less appealing.

Overall, a strong performance from this debutante French team – the complexity was among the highest this year, and the show offered good to very good product quality and tight synchronization. It is just unfortunate that the conceptual design of the show became so loose – there was so much potential to develop an explorative story that would enforce the theme and subsequently create more of an emotional appeal behind it.

Trav.

This was a very good show for me, but for some reason, not my favourite (of the 3 that I saw this season).

The overall theme and choice of music didn't entirely resonate with me; however, the sounds of the dial-up modem and MSN Messenger were enjoyable.

I did enjoy the multiple large shells though and the interesting colours/firing patterns. There were also many interesting effects. As well, the synchronization was decent overall. The finale was very good, but lacked a bit of colour in my view.

Overall, this show will very likely win the gold. I do find that a full audience does increase the «energy» / «excitement» a bit vs. what we tend to see earlier in the season. It's equivalent to the energy seeing a show with a full audience at Place des Arts (in Montreal) vs. one that has many empty seats. That said, the win would still be merited for the many reasons listed above.