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 Montreal Fireworks Forum —› 2017 Display Reviews —› Opening - Panzera/Rozzi's Famous Fireworks re
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Posted: Jul 1, 2017 19:37:26

Hello everyone,

Although it is off-competition, please feel free to post here your reviews of the opening display of 2017.

Cheers,

Trav.


Posted: Jul 2, 2017 04:12:11

That may have been the most eventful opening night since I attend the competition, where good and bad surprises were augmented by a new lighting environment and changing weather conditions. The American crew of Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks*, in collaboration with Panzera, have taken up the difficult challenge to design a very good pyromusical show on a (mostly) French-language soundtrack, just before the busy July 4th. While July 1st was the 150th anniversary of Canada Day (or the British North America Act, to be more precise), the competition organizers decided to dedicate this opening display to the 375th anniversary of Montréal, for sure a more consensual theme in this province.

The vocal soundtrack was excellent. Reportedly made of the most supported songs by audience members who voted last fall, from a list prepared by La Ronde, it focused on Montréal and included a wide range of music styles. Transitions between many of them were well-crafted. The rhythm alternated from quiet songs to more energetic ones, so it was very appropriate for a pyromusical show. It is a bit unfortunate that some pieces recorded by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, listed by the organizers, have not been supported by the audience. Generally speaking, the pyros were very well synchronized to the soundtrack.

A live performance of “Montréal” by local singer Ian Kelly had been advertised by La Ronde since September. I did expect a performance during the pyromusical show itself, as “Montréal” was listed on the soundtrack. However, the performance was held at the end of the official ceremony, before the display. The floating stage has purposefully been augmented with tents. I guess that organizers had planned for a performance as part of the show, but had to adjust to uncertain weather conditions.

The pyromusical design was well done. I especially enjoyed the colourful and energetic segment on “Demain matin, Montréal m’attend” where spectacular pieces erupted from the 5th ramp, and the accumulation of kamuros effects on “Sous les cheminées”. The most spectacular and meaningful part of the show was certainly on Loco Locass’ “Le But” (“The Goal”). That song celebrates the Montréal hockey team in NHL, Les Canadiens (whose local speaker is... Michel Lacroix), how the history of this institution reflects national and linguistic tensions in Montréal, and its sociocultural function in the cohesiveness of our diverse society. The song is famous as a segment is played each time the hockey team scores in Montréal during the playoffs. It is another energetic song, so it led to an intense and surprising pyrotechnic moment. Whereas I did expect the appearance of the hockey team logo, lances appeared on a shape-structure to create the red cross which divides the flag of Montréal. Then, four sequences of tightly synchronized vertical single shots of stars created the fleur de lys (in blue), the red rose (in red and green), the thistle (in green and purple), and the trefoil (in green), which respectively represent the French, English, Scot and Irish communities. It seems to be trendy to create shapes in this way : we first saw a such effect in Jubilee show in 2015 (heart shape), then in Sugyp extravaganza in 2016 (various emoticons). But these flower shapes were much, much more complex.

The pyrotechnic material was of good quality. The third firing ramp featured many spinning effects which worked well. However, similarly to Rozzi’s show in 2015, I found the overall display a bit repetitive. We saw a lot, a lot of roman candles (in almost every segment), some colours were common throughout the performance (especially gold/yellow, blue and green), and a few consecutive segments were made of very similar pyrotechnic effects. Some products, especially the studatas which burst during the finale, could have been used in a better way.

The technical design covered all the firing zone, some comets even flew well above the Village area. A fifth ramp allowed some proximity effects and it didn’t prevent the exhibition of many nautical products : candles, flares, fountains and shells. Many structures of lances were set up. Unfortunately, several pyrotechnic pieces (including a “375”-shape setup) came into life at 9:58pm, causing a bad surprise among the audience and, I imagine, some anxiety in the control room. Then, the start of the show was delayed until 10:04pm without any public announcement, so we don’t really know what has happened. However, it didn’t cause apparent problems during the display.

Whereas rainy and windy weather conditions were forecast for this very humid day, the sky was partially clear during the evening and wind were not strong at all. As predicted by Trav, the smoke moved gently toward the right of the audience. However, during the last two segments, the wind suddenly turned toward the audience, then toward the left of the audience. As Trav sometime writes, such fuzzy wind patterns may be associated to rainfall. Indeed, just a couple of minutes after the show (before I even put my tripod into its bag), the rain began and it soon became heavy. We were fortunate to not have such precipitations during the show itself !

Before the show, starting at 9:20pm, Michel Lacroix hosted the opening ceremony, which featured typical speeches from La Ronde general manager Phil Liggett and competition director Martyne Gagnon. The Rozzi and Panzera’s team was introduced, then Ian Kelly performed his song “Montréal.” The Jacques-Cartier bridge featured a Canada Day red and white lighting sequence as the opening ceremony continued. Then, the bridge joined the Ferris Wheel into the countdown! Some adjustments are still needed to synchronize all these things, but I was very enthusiast to see a such achievement.

This year, La Ronde also has a new swing and spinning ride, Titan, which is located next to the firing area, where the Go-Kart used to be. The new structure doesn’t seem to impact the fireworks perimeter. In opposition to last year, the entrance through the metal detectors and the bag check was smooth, but I have to say that the crowd level was very low. There were a lot of empty spaces in the grandstands.

As I waited in the grandstands for the beginning of the show, I heard the new spokesperson of the event, Olympic diver Alexandre Despatie, who was interviewed on the local radio station which broadcast the soundtrack. It was a bit annoying, to say the least, to hear his candid confession that he was attending a fireworks show from La Ronde for the very first time. He added that “people may not know, but fireworks are synchronized with the musics, which can not be heard outside the park” (I quote from memory). The skillful radio host said that people outside the park can nonetheless listen to the musics thanks to the very radio station where the interview was held. Ouch.

Fred

*There was confusion in official communication regarding the record of Rozzi in the Montreal competition. The French version of the 2017 leaflets indicates a “sixième présence” (6th appearance) for Rozzi, whereas the English version states that Rozzi “participated six times in the competition.” Master of ceremony Michel Lacroix read the French version, but the English one is correct : Rozzi had participated six times (in 1992, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2005, and 2015), so their 2017 appearance was the 7th.


Posted: Jul 2, 2017 10:20:51

An excellent show from Rozzi/Panzera.

I've uploaded a video to the Members Only Video page!

Report to come later!

Paul.


Posted: Jul 2, 2017 10:36:16

nice to see that we will still get videos from this season

Vander


Posted: Jul 2, 2017 11:54:27

Thank you very much for the video!


Posted: Jul 2, 2017 12:48:07   Edited by: Smoke

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your detailed report of this opening event!

I would have liked to see a little less redundancy with some of the effects used, and the smoke accumulation at low-level sometimes drowned the vibrancy of the effects, but it was an enjoyable display, nevertheless. The conclusion was also quite nice.

The reason for the sudden transition to a Westerly wind direction towards the final few minutes of the display was that rainfall was moving into the area at the time, as you specified. Due to instability present throughout most of the evening, isolated convective rainfall was still very much possible. That particular rainfall itself was associated with a small, weakening thunderstorm cluster previously forming to the North, and occasional lightning was observed in that direction by not long after 9:00 p.m. What happened was the rainfall was accompanied by a gust front (manifested as a low, elongated roll cloud) moving East, and once this moved close enough to the area, it meant that local wind flow would rapidly (and temporarily) change to Westerlies (and other locally variable wind directions). We have also seen disruptions of local wind flows in the past – one of the more dramatic cases of this was during the American display of 2012, where observers at La Ronde noticed the flag atop the Orbit ride perform a 180 (Westerlies suddenly developed) by just moments before the display had begun. Indeed, thunderstorms were nearby that evening, as well.

And many thanks for that video, Paul!

Trav.


Posted: Jul 3, 2017 20:17:52
 

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