Please post your thoughts/reviews of the French display here!

Cheers,

Trav.

That was a bold performance from JCO, the French recruit, who did a new type of fireworks extravaganza that I would tentatively name a pyrohumorous show, instead of a pyromusical one. The show featured a musical component, for sure, but the humorous text performed by various characters was prominent throughout the display. That was a risky choice. It may be much more challenging to please to a wide audience with a given humour genre than with musics.

To summarize, the storyline of the show was a festive traditional circus, whose target is primarily an audience of families with young children. As expected in this kind of circus shows, clowns have a typical ridiculous tone and a lot of laughs were heard throughout the first half of the show. Around the mid-point of the display, an allusion to the competition sponsor, Loto-Québec, and to La Ronde amusement park took the form of a lottery, with the draw of winning numbers, which appeared along the third ramp : 2-9-0-7-1-5, that is, the date of the show (29/07/15). Québec was “disrespectfully” celebrated with “une petite ronde québécoise” on folk musics and... the colours of the French national flag. The story took a dramatic turn as a Quebecker called to the circus and exposed the trickery. This “scene” was followed by sad segments of unhappy clowns. The trickery even took the form of a “false finale”, that is, a very minimal sequence, which was followed by recorded uproar from the fictional audience, who even claimed for reimbursement ! One of the clowns then apologized and asked for help from another character, Jérémie Mitraille, who properly shot the ultimate segments.

Given the storyline outlined above, the “pyrohumourous” design was pretty complex and it included some good ideas, like the draw of winning numbers, and the burst of popcorn during the fictional intermission with bombettes of crackling stars was another one. The 26-segment soundtrack was very original with a lot of circus-style sounds, songs, and musics. That repertoire is very uncommon. One part of the risk is related to this choice, as these musics are also unknown and may be less effective to connect with the audience (it reminded me the enigmatic soundtrack of the tribute to Cirque du Soleil in 2009). The narrative was played by several voices, including a Quebecker based in France and who was recruited to record the voice of one character. I can only imagine how long it might be to craft a such soundtrack. The synchronization with the musics and the sounds was good throughout the show.

However, the range of the fireworks products and the technical design were weaker. The show would have been better with more varieties of pyrotechnic effects. I counted at least five segments made with flights of white whistles, to give this example. While all firing ramps were used (including an inverted T-shaped fifth ramp) in addition to a circular structure installed on a lift, the technical design suffered of a lack of high-level activities and, more important, a serious lack of density. “Jérémie Mitraille” should have rescued his team early, as I am afraid that the more intense finale was “too little, too late”.

As I wrote early, JCO took a risky choice. I like to support innovative displays, but I was not appealed by this sort of humour. I found the show very creative, but not effective. I imagine that I was not the targetted audience for this kind of humour. Sometimes, first timers who sat around exasperate me as they exclaim “Oh!” and “Ah!” as soon as a basic shell burst into the sky. Consequently, to hear clowns who exclaim in this way at the beginning of the show (after a moment of darkness with unbearable voices) was a very anti-climactic start to me. While I have been puzzled by the sudden denunciation made by the Quebec character, and that we had a great finale, I felt desesperate at several moments, especially because the darkness periods and minimalist fireworks segments). I set my expectations for a pyromusical show, not a pyrohumorous one. The narrative was way too prominent and some improvements regarding technical design and the range of fireworks effects would be required before awarding this team, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, the French team received a standing ovation from the audience, which included countless families as we have reached the peak of vacation season. I feel that these children and their parents were more pleased than I was by JCO performance.

My complete ranking appears in this thread, with my Jupiter predictions and my own summary of the 31th edition of this event.

Fred

If you want to download the video file, right click on this URL and "save target as"

http://www.burchcom.com/2015/france.mp4

737 MB

That was a very fun show from JCO. I loved how they can make such a big crowd reaction without really firing much. A shame that they fired mostly chinese shells but the Zaragozana shells really stood out specially the bright colors. The highs and lows of the show was perfectly balanced and wasnt always just high. I love the creativity and artistry from the show and it was definitely a bold choice adding so many voice overs in the soundtrack. For me it worked succesfully and it's definitely something new.

The competition ended really quick this year! I'm sure souza will have a very good show this Saturday.

Best Regards,
Vander

My video compilation of this very enjoyable display (photos included at the end):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4euULFIUqA

Trav.

This is the second time this year where I feel compelled to do a review. This is what happens when I enjoy a show a lot.

From Paul's interview and some comments by Paul Csukassy after Rozzi's show about the high use of narration, I didn't know what to expect from JCO. From the purposefully minimalist set-up whose look from the Salon des Artificiers reminded me of BEM's opening extravaganza to the purposefully vague description from the designer, I had very low expectations and expected to be bored since I had never seen a circus-themed fireworks display being interesting. One has to think about the Cirque du Soleil display in 2009 to see that such an idea could be doomed from the start.

Well, JCO did it and what a good show it was !

Right from the start, the display took an unusual turn by having voice-overs of unintelligible characters (later confirmed to be a Minions imitation from the Despicable Me series) laughing all the way to igniting mischievously the first shell of the show. At the time, I thought these characters were scheming clowns of some sort, but those typical circus characters appeared later on.

Then, we had a tribute to La Grosse Femme Qui Rit (fat lady that laughs), another circus staple. However, this segment began to be quickly tiring, as the uninterrupted canned laughter lasted more than 2 minutes.

Then, there was the human cannonball, who did not want to go but was forced to anyway when his buddy lit the cannon fuse. His departure was depicted by a fan of comets made of individual stations on Ramp #3. There was a small segment about Star Wars, referring to the cannon powder charge being perhaps too powerful. This was also referred to at the end, where a fan similar to the launch segment erupted on Ramp #4 and one of the "audience" characters in the narration said "ain't that the human cannonball ?!"

The Lion Tamer segment was also quite funny, with a hoop made of golden fountains and the lion's roar illustrated with flame projectors.

The segment that had me laughing the most was the intermission segment, with the narrator enticing children to ask their parents to buy popcorn, which was depicted with broad fans of dragon eggs bombettes on Ramp #3 and #5 (using an unusual but effective inverted-T layout).

Another particularly funny segment was the lottery (referring to the main sponsor Loto-Québec), where a French won by changing the last number of the winning coupon (depicted with lancework) and an angry quebecker berated the narrator about the botched draw with typical Quebec idioms that were lost on the French guy, like "I'm gonna call my lawyer and it's gonna cost you an arm" (a lot of money), which the narrator interpreted as literally losing his arm.

There was then a "Sad Clown" segment to illustrate the narrator's sadness about the angry response he received about his lottery. This segment involved slow falling shells like falling leaves and horsetails.

Then, there was the "Grand Finale", which was actually a single roman candle with finale-level explosion noises added in the soundtrack and five small caliber shells as a final bouquet. Another angry response from the "audience" was followed by three finales, one of crackling crossettes, one of golden willows on an Elvis song and then a multicolor peonies-based proper finale.

Despite the high amount of narration, I feel that this was a very successful display by the JCO team, which goes to show that the 5000-7000 cue count used these days is not required to entertain the audience if the design is solid and well-thought. Presenting this kind of show in La Ronde was a very bold move by JCO, since it departs radically from what we are now used to see (high cue count, very high quantity of effects, quasi-mechanical synchronization, typical rock/film soundtracks, etc.)

The show it reminded me the most was the Silver Jupiter-winning Maudits Français by Lacroix-Ruggieri in 2011, but it again departed from this format by having very calm segments and more active ones while L-R's show was more involved and used sound bites rather than long segments of narration.

It was also very WECO-like for their Dreamcatcher display last year, both in its narrative style and its general structure.

A small criticism may involve the overall pyrotechnical design that may not have exploited the site as well as the preceding companies, but I'd rather see this kind of display were the theme is well exploited than using a beaten-to-death theme with popular music that was done 100 times before.

After a good night sleep, I therefore adjust my final ranking to this :

1. Hong-Kong
2. England
3. France (previously USA)

STL

My contribution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpvsN-u37s8

I just remembered the following song from geek singer by excellence Jonathan Coulton that could have been played as an encore to yesterday's display :

Bozo's Lament (search its name and click Play next to it)

It talks about most circus staples that were referred to yesterday like a lion tamer and a human cannonball from the perspective of a disgruntled clown in a travelling circus, whose real name is actually Bozo.

Pie in my face
Five days a work week
It's in my face
Pie in my face
It sucks to be a clown !

STL

This display was... interesting. It was creative, unique and definitely risky.

Overall, I'm not sure what to think about it. There were some excellent shells used, especially the ones with the 3-4 spheres of different colours in them. That said, they lacked significant shell density throughout the show. There were rarely any "large" shells and this resulted in many segments where the space was poorly used. Some of their lower shells were incredibly basic and repetitive. That said, the finale (the real one... ) was very good.

The soundtrack was clearly a very time consuming process and well edited. That said, I didn't completely care for some of the choices they made. The "oohs" and "ahhs" at the beginning came across as unnecessary and it was unclear how the Quebec music segment was relevant to the theme.

From all the shows this year that I saw (I missed only England), I give them credit as it was the only one that told a clear story. The theme was very clear throughout and everything was very well designed. That said, between the lack of large shells, what seemed like a lot of narration and too many segments without any shells *or* without any significant shells (ex: 20 seconds of red flares), this show was not one of my favourites.

It was definitely enjoyable and by all means an excellent show. Many loved it, including the kid in the row in front of me who yelled "thank you!" to the pyro team right after the show ended. Just to me, nothing memorable.

The show it reminded me the most was the Silver Jupiter-winning Maudits Français by Lacroix-Ruggieri in 2011

Ah, I thought that I was the only one whose thoughts were turning to France 2011's display in connection with this one! There was just something about it that constantly reminded me of that particular show!

Trav.

My report - with thanks to Simon as I reference his great description of all the humour elements used! http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=1092

I didn't post a review here since I think that I outlined everything that I had wanted to say in the prediction thread.

A very enjoyable and definitely different display, though!

Trav.