Hi everyone,

Please post your comments/reviews for the British display here!

Trav.

I was anxiously excited to see Pyrotex's debut display in Montreal as I was a witness to all of their Philippines Int'l Pyromusical Competition performances having attended their shows live from 2016 to '19. (I live in Manila). The displays they had here were all huge and powerful which warranted them sure wins of the championship trophies in three consecutive years (2016-18, silver award in 2019) however the shows themselves were not "Too different" or unique to each other design-wise. So it's interesting for me to see what surprises they can pull off and how different or "unique" it will be compared to the ones I saw live.
To my shock I heard the audiotaped English narration describing "The Decades" which was followed by "the swinging 60s..." in the opening. alas - It is the exact same narration as I heard it 3 years ago in their 2019 Philippine Pyromusical Contest display which literally had the theme "The Decades". Some 60% or 70% of the music tracks were also the same.
And then my "fear" was realised. In both fireworks effects and ground sequences and the numbers "sky writing" - it is as if I watched their 2019 Philippines performance again with a mix of sequences from previous years like in 2018 or '17.
Well if you are an audience watching this show for the first time you might feel it as unique and different to the others and it has that "WOW" element brought by two distinct, giant finales which I think is Pyrotex's signature at this point. (But again, the brocade and crackling crosette finales were basically the same as the one I saw in 2019, with slightly different musics). Also the lack of 10-12" shells on ramp 1 according to Paul's report (to which I assume the largest caliber in their show being 8" - the same as the limit in the Philippines) - made the show all too familiar.

Now to the actual show, I found that their non-PIPC (the Pyro Contest I mentioned above) segments/musics are well done. They have sequences of flame projector like mines and some nautical salutes which were in synch with the notes of a song (which I know is hard to do). In some parts they had decent single shot sequences but I found them hard to remember specially because immediately after those I see the same patterns of fans and mountains which were similar to the Philippines displays. It felt the each song depended too much on single shot ground effects and were still synching note by note in parts of the songs which they don't need to, like where Roman candle or cake should have taken over to maintain balance in the display. It made the show too "mechanical" and this is for me what gave this show that "unique" feel that first timers felt. Their cakes were also mostly in fans so coupled with the same fanned single shot sequences it all looked repetitive throughout the show. The effects are OK but nothing special when compared to the effects of the previous four entrants. with the exception of one stutata burst that I remember and obviously cylinder shells, the effects both aerial and ground looked the same as the ones they have used in the Philippines.

Overall it's a great, huge but not exceptional performance from Pyrotex from my standpoint but probably for many in Montreal who saw their their debut display the first time (judging from the buzz that I was able to check on social media) - this Display is their Gold Jupiter this year. It's interesting how Pyrotex's style of really big, high quantity fireworks show approach will be judged in Montreal. Afterall this is what worked for them in the Philippines even with the presence of more artistic and better choreographed shows which is why they won 3-peat from 2016-18 and also were the crowd favorites here. We'll find out in just three days.

Melvin 😄

Pyrotex Fireworx, the 104th entrant in the history of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition, did a spectacular debut tonight with its 32-minute extravaganza, on a perfect summer night (thank the wind!) and in front of the largest audience so far this year at La Ronde. There is a time for criticism – and my review will surely reflect this – but there is also a time for being transported and mesmerized, to appreciate a state of excitement which goes beyond standard entertainment, to welcome the elation and ecstasies when they happen in our life, no matter the items listed in a grid of evaluation. That was the state of my mind during and immediately after this excellent show. I was speechless. I felt the need to absorb what I had just experienced, like licking the plate of a flavourful dish until the last bit of food, and the last drop of sauce, even when I know they don’t fulfill all the recommendations of the food guides.

Entitled “60 years of unforgettable music,” the show included many ingredients of the Jupiter award recipes. The light theme, the soundtrack made of such famous songs, the razor-style synchronization often oriented towards details with flashes, gerbs, and fountains, the effective masclets and various shapes are ingredients which remind me Göteborgs Fyrverkery Fabrik’s “Memories of a DJ” (Sweden 2010, Silver Jupiter), Pyroemotions & Pyrodigit’s “Jukebox Memories” (Italy 2013, Gold Jupiter), and Jubilee Fireworks’s “Vive la différence” (UK 2015, Gold Jupiter).

The pyromusical design was extremely well crafted with many details. All were not very effective. For instance, the vertical shot of stars to create the “60,” “70,”, “80,” “00,” and “90” didn’t work as well as the “10”, the “NOW” letters (on Faded) and the hearts (on Total Eclipse of the Heart). On the Love Me Like You Do lyrics “Only you can set my heart on fire, on fire,” short duration but very noticeable flame effects appeared. And what about the masclets hanging from a number of supports along the third ramp? Following the serene ending of the previous song, they exploded at the dramatic beginning of Sandstorm. The audience became very vocal at that point! Furthermore, this was a show with multiple finale-style moments, with the sky filled of kamuros when the tempo of Coldplay’s Fix You increased, packed with chrysanthemum towards the end of Andrea Bocelli’s Time To Say Goodbye (a faux finale), and covered again with crackling crossettes and comets on Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die. The video I took does not reflect how LOUD that finale actually was! Generally speaking, the fireworks appeared “to dance with the musics” throughout the display. However, they remained abundant during some serene musical segments, so a couple of “quiet” parts would have added variations in the rhythm of the performance.

On the technical side, fireworks were installed on all five firing ramps, the third ramp being enhanced with 11 poles allowing horizontal shots. The size of the arsenal, with reportedly 12,342 pieces, was impressive and it contributed to the many “finales” described above. But as Mylène Salvas wrote in her blog, so many products come with a higher level of risk of errors. Indeed, there were a couple of firing mistakes, similar to those in the Italian display, where some positions do not come into life, or where some pieces do not produce the same effect or the same colour than the other components of the same sequence. Moreover, it would have been possible to bring more action closer to the audience by a more regular or effective use of the fifth ramp, as well as more nautical products. The only pieces of that category were nautical flares launched during the penultimate segment on God Save the Queen.

I had not seen other Pyrotex Fireworx shows before, either in person or on video. I feel, from what I heard, that it is known for its minimal use of shells. Also, it was reported that no shell larger than 8 inches was going to be exhibited due to some international transportation issues. Certainly, it would have been a good thing to have a couple of them. However, there were various kinds of shells in all parts of that display. Maybe not as many as some people (and viewers in remote locations) had hoped for, but from my point of view at La Ronde, I did not really notice it, probably because lower parts fully captured my attention. In contrast, there were a huge number of cakes, many being lined up on the access platforms to the third ramp. Fortunately the wind was strong enough to move the smoke away in a timely fashion, otherwise we could have lost the show in a cluster of smoke. I appreciated the effective use of pieces whose stars extinguish very quickly, as well as comets which accelerate their speed. I would have liked to see more of the cylindrical shells like the few displayed in the Fix You segment. There was a richness of colours, highlighted by many colour-changing pieces, including barrages of mines with two changes of colours, some being synchronized on the “turn around” lyrics of Total Eclipse of the Heart. The brightness of the material was also augmented by its quantity. During the actual finale, the environment surrounding me looked as clear as in day time! A couple of times, I turned back to view the audience and it looked to vibrate in unison.

The 12-segment soundtrack emphasized the light theme of the show, entirely made of popular songs. I would qualify this soundtrack as a standard one, without a very elaborated editing process. Beyond a 15-second introduction, the narrative – only in English, a French-language version would have been appreciated – was kept short and it only highlighted the change of decades.

Overall, that was an excellent display. It suffered of some weaknesses, but that had also been the case of the previous entrants too. Despite all its strengths, the Hungarian show had some long transitions between its segments causing “empty” moments and its soundtrack moved away from the theme of their national music culture; without these two minor issues, Nuvu would remain on the top of my ranking). Despite its boldness, the pyromusical design of the Canadian display was sometimes hard to follow, the connection between the soundtrack and the legendary and mythical stories was not always obvious, and the complexity of the technical design wasn't constant throughout the show, I believe. The Italian display was stronger in some of these aspects and certainly excellent for those who prefer a more “conservative” style than the Hungarian and Canadian shows, but I perceived the firing patterns to be more repetitive and, generally speaking, it didn’t transport me as much as the British show.

So, my personal ranking :

1. Pyrotex Fireworx (England)
2. Nuvu (Hungary)
3. Feux d’artifice Orion (Canada)
4. Lieto S.R.L. (Italy)
5. Mirnovec Pirotehnika (Croatia)
6. Sirius Pyrotechnics (Mexico)

Some general comments about the 36th edition of the competition and my Jupiter predictions will follow soon in the corresponding thread of the forum. I also have to spend a little more time on some extra content (stay tuned!).

Fred

My report is here: http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=1947

it's the polar opposite of Fred's. The audience clearly loved this display, but it was not to my taste at all as it was very unbalanced with little interplay between the levels and a dearth of shells except for the finales.

Stellar Summer conditions were present for this highly anticipated entrant. Indeed, wind speeds were fairly breezy from the SSE before and during display time, allowing the smoke to drift reasonably quickly clear to the right of the on-site audience. At the same time, with high humidity developing by late-afternoon, the display temperature sustained 24-25 C under largely overcast skies.

This was a very strong performance by the British team. Being the second show to adopt a historical journey of music this year, it was unclear the extent to which this display would structure this approach. After seeing the Hungarian team’s attempt at a similar thematic framework and, thus, conceptual design, I began trying to imagine what this display could look like. Shortly after its narration, it was with great delight to quickly see that England would be devising their show in a similar manner to Italy 2013’s (I have found myself using that particular display a lot this year as a reference). Structurally well organized, this display had many fantastic and brilliant sequences that captivated the audience numerous times, creating many moments of gasping and surprise. Evidently, the soundtrack was well chosen and permitted for some good transitions in rhythm and pace from one segment to the next, and from one decade to the other (especially changing over from the 1980s to 2000s). One of my personal favorites was the rapidly dancing gerbs and fans of cakes that brilliantly moved with signature components of “Sandstorm”. That being said, I am pretty sure that “Sandstorm” itself was (narrowly) a 90s’ release, not a 2000s’, and so I was confused and surprised when seeing it represent the 2000s section.

The negatives are not overly significant. However, the most dominant aspect for me was the lack of thematic complexity. While I enjoyed the display, it seemed that its structure was much less effective than, say, Italy 2013’s, or similarly-oriented shows in the past. As compared to the Italian show of 2013, for instance, England’s this year involved an exploration of three extra decades (1990s, 2000s and 2010s). It was quite welcoming to see what appeared to be a potentially more promising musical journey, but it was instead somewhat disappointing when coming to the realization that so few songs were expected to be used. Notably, it seemed like the songs would have benefitted from more editing, as using full-length soundtrack often removes diversity from a display substantially. This, unfortunately, left little room for additional songs to be incorporated into what was realistically a complex conceptual design. I grew increasingly concerned when discovering that the representation of each desired decade would be limited and would, thus, be governed by a more simplified and subtle approach, including for the introductions of decades. Correspondingly, using more songs per decade would have potentially created an even more glamorous display that would probably feature a plethora of intra-decadal transitions and an increasingly overwhelming demonstration of power and creativity. For these reasons, I was previously hoping for much more diversification.

On a more personal level, I especially enjoyed the first 14 minutes of the show (as I am generally not a fan of post-2000 soundtrack), but it was a nice and fairly unexpected twist to see the display return to the 90s during its final seven and a half minutes – at first, I wondered why the 90s was seemingly skipped, muttering to myself that this must be intentional! After all, omitting 90s music from this kind of show would be random and folly! Thus, choosing to leave the 90s for last, in my mind, was a testament to “saving the best for last”, as well as a choice decade to conclude any given display where appropriate! Still, I felt like going back to the 90s in this way interrupted the chronological aspect of the journey, even though it was a nice surprise. The final song used for the actual finale also seemed out of place from the timeline, and so a fuller representation of the 1990s was missing relative to the other decades.

To other extents, while the narration was, indeed, short to introduce each decade, it still lasted long enough to create an anti-climax following the countdown. This was already dampening the mood for me, though the opening segment came forth quite magnificently. Much like previous displays, some segments could have had additional pyrotechnics, especially along low-level, to really illustrate their essence with a higher degree of precision. A larger interplay of effects further would have helped to cleverly fill up some subtle voids from top to bottom. Finally, I would have appreciated a larger shell count in this display, since there were many moments where they were appropriate. Such a conceptual framework invited numerous occasions for rapid bursts of (colorful) shells. In this respect, the technical design and scope of the show was more conservative.

The faux and real conclusions were excellent, even though the real finale should have been longer (being eclipsed by the practically 100-second faux finale). More colors would have further been welcomed for their décor and brilliance, but both finales had an interesting design!

Overall, a truly mesmerizing delivery from the British team with respect to its sequences, but the show just needed a stronger technical design to go along with a such theme, in my opinion. Still, the show is likely to be among the top three.

Trav.

Further to my report, I had noted in the interview that Mark Kelsall named Graham Wilkinson as something of a mentor. Well Graham competed in Montreal for the UK company Pyro2000 back in 2011

In the report on that display I wrote many of the same criticisms as I did on the Pyrotex show
"An enjoyable display and one with a few quirks that I’d not seen before, mainly the segments where there were no shells fired. " ... "the range of shells used rather limited" ... "for most of the display we had either one thing or the other, rarely both, except in the finale when all levels were exploited simultaneously." http://montreal-fireworks.com/ReportBlog/?p=393

So I believe this is the signature style of these designers. I thought this was an interesting observation.

"I thought this was an interesting observation"

It is actually, in the end the design and the show conception is a big part of the display. And I join you in the criticism about the display being quite unbalanced when it comes to the ratio of lower effects and shells.

Still the show had many other strong points and I wouldnt be surpresied at all if they get the gold. To me, in terms of design the show lacked some aspects to be considered perfect but the overall excitment in the audience was quite obvious and somehow it was deserved. The show worked well because they have a nice formula not very risky and quite plain, but it works like a magic trick.

The soundtrack was very appealing, very mainstream yet not too obvious or tacky, going through different genres and feelings. The opening narration was absolutly unnecessary to me and the finale edit was quite anticlimatic and awkward, the James Bond piece worked well giving some tension but the tension decreased when Live and Let die verses started. Still I feel the soundtrack was loved by the audience.

The use of some " unusual fireworks" was very well recieved too. The big flames and the ground salutes, some use of the cakes and the eye catching "faux" finales through the display made it look like the display was really big and innovative, but from my point of view it isnt the case.


Despite my criticism the show really worked and I think they showed a personal style. This year competition was good but far from being outstanding, we had several good shows but they all had weak aspects to consider and the Pyrotex show was the only one giving me a winner "vibe". But at the same time I'm writing this I also feel we witnessed the Andersens tale of the Emperor's New Clothes.