My first 1.3g show!

We all got there around 6pm, the fireworks were planned for the very end of the graduation ceremony after the national anthem was sung. The light sucks in that picture, but the ceremony was in the football stadium and we shot from a soccer field on the other side. There were still kids running around at soccer practice while we were setting up for a while, which was a little inconvenient.

EFI actually shot three shows in a row here, different schools use the stadium for their graduation each night, and this was the biggest of the three shows. We had around 200 shells, lots of 3" plus a few 2.5" and 2", as well as 5-shell quickmatch chains of 1.75" 1.4g shells, which were kind of fun. There were also two 1.3g cakes, four 4" mines, some 3" comets and 2" and smaller candles. So not a big setup, but a lot better than my graduation, which had zero fireworks! Maybe if it did, it wouldn't have been so boring...

The fire marshall came to do a short inspection, and even brought a dalmatian, which was very cute and appropriate. We all talked about our own graduations and he signed the paperwork and went on his way.

The body of the show was done in four rows of racks, on the left were the cakes, mines, candles and comets. We had five people on the crew, the lead Mark, plus three others guys that have been with EFI for a while, and myself.

 

Here is Mark fusing up the finale, all quickmatched together with delays tied in it so it doesn't just fire all at once.

Once it was dark and everything was ready, we lit our fusees. One red white and blue shell was fired during the national anthem, then once it was over, we lit a V of candles followed by comets, then started on the shells. One guy started on his row, with the other two doing a few on their rows to keep the pace up. Once the first row was finished I started on mine so we had three rows going at once, sort of alternating, but mainly just trying to avoid dead air. Mark periodically fired something from his section to add some variety or if there was a pause. Being that close to the 4" mines was pretty awesome when they went off!

I wasn't really expecting to shoot on this show, so getting to hand fire about 40 shells was pretty exciting. I may have gotten a lot over-eager a couple times in getting to the next fuse because the 1.75" shells were chained, but still had quick visco leaders, so once or twice I turned back when not all the 1.75" had lifted. It was also a little tricky to keep track of when the shell I lit actually lifted because the rows on either side were firing as well, but as long as you pay attention you can tell so you don't turn back before it lifts. I was a little nervous before we started, but once I got going things were pretty easy and I felt excited and reasonably comfortable, though cautious and wary of course. I finished my row and we had one more still firing, so I got a little more chance to look up and see what we were actually doing. There was a nice mix of effects in the 3" shells and the chains of 1.75" looked good below them. Once the last of the body rows was finished, we lit a set piece with "2007" on it, which was a nice surprise for the audience. As soon as that started the finale was lit. With all the shells angled and quickmatched, it filled a lot of sky and looked great, though it went faster than Mark intended. The crowd certainly didn't mind!

I was a bit busy lighting things, so no action pictures or video...you'll have to settle for a picture of smoky racks when we were done... I was glad we kept a good pace, I was worried on a small show like this it would one shell every 4-5 seconds, but we kept the shooting pretty quick and steady, there were often multiple shells breaking at once or at least in the air, so things never got boring and there was very little dead air.

After letting things cool we checked the racks, took them apart, and started reloading the truck. A couple of the guys work in the warehouse and complained about the shooters that were lazy and didn't load the trucks well, or sometimes didn't even break down the racks (!), so we were careful to load the truck very well... Next we raked up as much debris as we could and checked the area for duds. We found one half of a 1.75" double break that didn't go, but nothing else. A shell or two were left in the tubes as well, I think they were both 1.75" that didn't go because they got pulled out of the quickmatch one way or another. Overall though, everything worked great, except for a couple surprise salutes that weren't supposed to be in there and one flowerpot that didn't damage the tube. This time I only had a 25 minute drive instead of two and half ours like the last shoot I did, so that was nice. The guys going back to the warehouse had about two hours, so I got lucky this time!

Overall I had a great time. The work was fun and the crew were all cool guys. I was just telling somebody the other day I wanted to get in a couple hand fire shows while I can, because everything will probably be efire before too long, out of a combination of regulation and safety, which isn't unreasonable. But while efire has many advantages (safety, timing), it can't compare to the experience of hand fire. I got some info on upcoming shoots and hopefully I'll be back at it soon!