While up in WA for Christmas with the family I made a stop at Steve's place and picked up a few nice items for the Renn Fayre show. Cue sheet isn't quite finalized, but most of these items are 200g cakes that will be used to complement 500g items firing at the same time...
I meant to get a case of Wild West and forgot about it while I was there! 40 minutes of driving back I remembered and called Steve, but he didn't have that many. They were supposed to be part of the finale and I could have found something to substitute, but didn't want to add another 1.5 hours to my 5+ hour trip, so I'll figure out something else for that part.
I got everything in pairs except for two 200g Great Grizzly cakes, Royal Dragon and Night Probe. These will be fired tonight for New Years so I can light something, but also to test out how a 200g cake will look from the distance the Renn Fayre show will be shot at. Science! Hopefully I'll get video and maybe of some bigger New Years fireworks if I end up going. I could be helping on a professional show, but the lady of the house doesn't want me leave her every holiday!
I meant to get a case of Wild West and forgot about it while I was there! 40 minutes of driving back I remembered and called Steve, but he didn't have that many. They were supposed to be part of the finale and I could have found something to substitute, but didn't want to add another 1.5 hours to my 5+ hour trip, so I'll figure out something else for that part.
I got everything in pairs except for two 200g Great Grizzly cakes, Royal Dragon and Night Probe. These will be fired tonight for New Years so I can light something, but also to test out how a 200g cake will look from the distance the Renn Fayre show will be shot at. Science! Hopefully I'll get video and maybe of some bigger New Years fireworks if I end up going. I could be helping on a professional show, but the lady of the house doesn't want me leave her every holiday!
It's not just Merriam-Webster's Word of 2007, it's also how I feel!
A while back I posted about my plan to get my school to switch to Wolverine for the fireworks show at my school's end of the year party. I talked to Rod about it this summer and he offered to let me plan the show if I got it. So I planned the show in great detail, waiting for the organizers to be chosen so I could ask them to switch (rather backwards, but I had fun and spent way too much time on it). They were appointed a few weeks ago and last week I finally gave them a little presentation. The show we currently get is rather unimpressive, and I promised them a much better show.
The budget is fairly small and the location isn't huge either, so I've planned a show using primarily 1.4G fireworks, plus some 1.3G mines in the opener and finale and 1.3G cakes and shells in the finale. It will also be shot to the music of the appropriately named band Explosions In The Sky, who I've always thought made awesome music that was perfect for fireworks.
This is my last year of college, so I'm treating the show as a goodbye to the school and contributing a significant quantity of fireworks along with my time to make it a great show. I have a cue sheet in Excel I might try to post in some form eventually, but it uses a lot of Wolverine brand 1.4G (no surprise there) plus some of the Golden Bear and United Pyro product they carry. That will be supplemented with a bunch of World Class product I'm working on getting my hands on and a bunch of miscellaneous items from Steve. I'll work up a count eventually, but the show will be fired from five main positions, with mostly 500g but some 200g, at least three cakes firing at the same time at all times and usually more. The finale should have around ten 500g big break cakes and two cases of 200g, plus 1.3G mines, cakes and shells. It should be a great show and a great way for me to celebrate graduating!
A while back I posted about my plan to get my school to switch to Wolverine for the fireworks show at my school's end of the year party. I talked to Rod about it this summer and he offered to let me plan the show if I got it. So I planned the show in great detail, waiting for the organizers to be chosen so I could ask them to switch (rather backwards, but I had fun and spent way too much time on it). They were appointed a few weeks ago and last week I finally gave them a little presentation. The show we currently get is rather unimpressive, and I promised them a much better show.
The budget is fairly small and the location isn't huge either, so I've planned a show using primarily 1.4G fireworks, plus some 1.3G mines in the opener and finale and 1.3G cakes and shells in the finale. It will also be shot to the music of the appropriately named band Explosions In The Sky, who I've always thought made awesome music that was perfect for fireworks.
This is my last year of college, so I'm treating the show as a goodbye to the school and contributing a significant quantity of fireworks along with my time to make it a great show. I have a cue sheet in Excel I might try to post in some form eventually, but it uses a lot of Wolverine brand 1.4G (no surprise there) plus some of the Golden Bear and United Pyro product they carry. That will be supplemented with a bunch of World Class product I'm working on getting my hands on and a bunch of miscellaneous items from Steve. I'll work up a count eventually, but the show will be fired from five main positions, with mostly 500g but some 200g, at least three cakes firing at the same time at all times and usually more. The finale should have around ten 500g big break cakes and two cases of 200g, plus 1.3G mines, cakes and shells. It should be a great show and a great way for me to celebrate graduating!
It's that time again, now with bonus girls!
drunk girls lighting fireworks...inside! - Title says it all, but they managed to carry them (!?) outside before they went off.
Fountain in the kitchen - No boys visible encouraging this one, rare for stupid fireworks videos.
More sparkler bombs - But this time a girl shows how to do it... There are other videos with her doing similar things, which makes me doubt that it's just her, but you never know...
Speaking of girls and fireworks, I've found this thread on PyroU to be pretty interesting. As long as they aren't the ones in the videos above, I think more women in fireworks in a great thing!
More indoor fountains - Back to guys being stupid now. And why do people think it's cool to put lame music in their videos? Please stop!
What does this do? - Only one way to find out...really close!
drunk girls lighting fireworks...inside! - Title says it all, but they managed to carry them (!?) outside before they went off.
Fountain in the kitchen - No boys visible encouraging this one, rare for stupid fireworks videos.
More sparkler bombs - But this time a girl shows how to do it... There are other videos with her doing similar things, which makes me doubt that it's just her, but you never know...
Speaking of girls and fireworks, I've found this thread on PyroU to be pretty interesting. As long as they aren't the ones in the videos above, I think more women in fireworks in a great thing!
More indoor fountains - Back to guys being stupid now. And why do people think it's cool to put lame music in their videos? Please stop!
What does this do? - Only one way to find out...really close!
Rockets really aren't that complicated - That kid seems a little young even for a sparkler, but at least she is being supervised. Skip to 1:25 for the action.
Hopefully I'll have some exciting news to announce in a few days, but we'll see. I don't have any 1.3G shoots coming up because I'm occupied during New Years and don't know of anything else, but I'll try and find something fun to do once winter break starts...
PyroU member shrapnel posted this in his gallery, but it was too cool not to spread around a little bit. After shooting a couple Night Vision at the last WA group shoot I became a big fan of the color and overall quality of this 200g z-cake and used it with some 200g cakes breaking above. Shrapnel has done a bit better than that in this video, with ten Night Vision spread out and 40 Super Magnum shells breaking above. It looks amazing and now I'm considering getting a few more than two for my next show... [Link to original gallery here]
With a name like Bubba, this should come as no surprise... I know that was in insensitive joke, but it was very tempting, so my apologies. I wish there were more details here as I have a hard time believing 1.4G fireworks are solely to blame. There is nothing on the source of the fire, but those burns don't sound like they came from being close to a few boxes of 1.75" shells cooking off. I wonder if the christmas trees or that stand itself caught fire and caused the fatal burns rather than the (impossible) mass explosion the article seems to imply. I wouldn't be surprised if the fireworks had very little to do with this actually, and started going off from a fire that had already started.MANNING, S.C. - A 68-year-old man who was burned in an explosion at a fireworks stand has died from his injuries.
Clarendon County Coroner Hayes Samuels says Alton "Bubba" Bozeman of Manning died Friday morning at the James M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital of Augusta, Ga.
It's been a while since I've posted a clip of the moment, but it was never intended to be a regularly scheduled event...
Anyway, I wasn't the only one doing a show the day after Thanksgiving. Larry over at EFI emailed PML about the show they did in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a similar lighting celebration.
The show was quite large and lasted nine minutes. There are a number of spectacular shells in here, especially the shell of shells starting at 5:15 and the two big shells starting at 5:40.
Watch the video!
Anyway, I wasn't the only one doing a show the day after Thanksgiving. Larry over at EFI emailed PML about the show they did in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for a similar lighting celebration.
The show was quite large and lasted nine minutes. There are a number of spectacular shells in here, especially the shell of shells starting at 5:15 and the two big shells starting at 5:40.
Watch the video!
The day after Thanksgiving I did another shoot with Wolverine in Sumner, WA for their annual bridge lighting celebration. They have done it for many years, but this was the first time with fireworks. The fireworks weren't the main focus, so they wanted a short 5-6 minute show as soon as the lights went on and with the budget that meant we could keep up a good pace. Too often people want a show twice as long as their budget can really support, and it gets boring, which was happily not the case here.
Left - The bridge before dark, it had lights strung all along it and actually looked pretty nice once it was lit up.
We fired from two positions, one close to the bridge and a second further back in line with the first one. On the right is the closer position. The show had a fairly even mix of 1.4G and 1.3G (maybe a bit more on the 1.3G side). The largest shells were 2.5" plus some 3" and 4" mines, the rest were cakes and 1.75" 1.3G shells. There were six or seven 1.3G cakes such as whistling serpents, salutes, crossettes, and some various shell effects. The show also had a lot of salutes! Most of the 2.5" shells were salutes, plus one of the big salute cakes and three dozen little 25 shot Oriental Thunder salute cakes. Wolverine has a lot of those getting old in the magazines and wants to use them up...
Left - Overview of the larger second position. This one had a few 1.4G cakes, most of the 1.3G cakes and shells.
Left - Closer view of the second position with shells and cakes behind them. We fired the little Oriental Thunder salute cakes in groups of 12, which made a lot of noise and was kind of fun. One of Wolverine's Dreamweaver cakes was in this show, which has a really cool effect.
My brother and his girlfriend came down to watch the show and hang out. We didn't have a lot of warning when we were actually starting, so we were chatting off to the side when things started and I had to run off to grab my camera. This also meant I didn't have time to get my ear plugs, which would have been nice... With all the salutes several car alarms went off as soon as the show started, which is always a little funny. I'm not a big salute fan so I felt there were too many, but I know a lot of people (including much of the general public watching) likes them. It wasn't as carefully designed as the last few Wolverine shows I've helped on, but it was still pretty good and I'm sure the crowd enjoyed it, especially the stuff at the closer position, which must have looked huge from where they were watching!
Clip 1 - 1.3G crossette cake and 1.4G Falling Water Chutes in the distance at the other position. Forgive the narration, I was chatting with my brother most of the show as we watched...
We fired from two positions, one close to the bridge and a second further back in line with the first one. On the right is the closer position. The show had a fairly even mix of 1.4G and 1.3G (maybe a bit more on the 1.3G side). The largest shells were 2.5" plus some 3" and 4" mines, the rest were cakes and 1.75" 1.3G shells. There were six or seven 1.3G cakes such as whistling serpents, salutes, crossettes, and some various shell effects. The show also had a lot of salutes! Most of the 2.5" shells were salutes, plus one of the big salute cakes and three dozen little 25 shot Oriental Thunder salute cakes. Wolverine has a lot of those getting old in the magazines and wants to use them up...
Left - Closer view of the second position with shells and cakes behind them. We fired the little Oriental Thunder salute cakes in groups of 12, which made a lot of noise and was kind of fun. One of Wolverine's Dreamweaver cakes was in this show, which has a really cool effect.
My brother and his girlfriend came down to watch the show and hang out. We didn't have a lot of warning when we were actually starting, so we were chatting off to the side when things started and I had to run off to grab my camera. This also meant I didn't have time to get my ear plugs, which would have been nice... With all the salutes several car alarms went off as soon as the show started, which is always a little funny. I'm not a big salute fan so I felt there were too many, but I know a lot of people (including much of the general public watching) likes them. It wasn't as carefully designed as the last few Wolverine shows I've helped on, but it was still pretty good and I'm sure the crowd enjoyed it, especially the stuff at the closer position, which must have looked huge from where they were watching!
Clip 1 - 1.3G crossette cake and 1.4G Falling Water Chutes in the distance at the other position. Forgive the narration, I was chatting with my brother most of the show as we watched...
Clip 2 - Twelve Oriental Thunders at each position. They have a nice mix of colors going up!
Clip 3 - 1.3G Dreamweaver cake plus some salutes. Also a few 1.4G Blue Pearl with Gold Strobe cakes visible at the end.
Clip 4 - Various stuff...the nice tails are from some little 1.3G cakes that look like 1.4G 200g. The breaks are nothing much, but the tails are great.
Clip 5 - Various 1.3G shells and a whistling serpent cake. This was pretty close to the finale (a salute cake) which I didn't get on video.
So, that was the show. Short, loud and sweet! It gets dark nice and early, so we started shooting at 5pm and were done with cleanup just after 6pm, which was great. Wolverine is doing a show on New Years but I'm busy then, so I don't know what my next shoot will be...but hopefully I don't have to wait too long!
Looks like Spectacular Fireworks in New Milford, PA has tried to pull a fast one on us over at PyroU. One person from the store registered to post about their business. Totally fine as long as they disclose it, which they did. But then they created two new accounts where they posted about how great the store was, spamming the forum and lying to us. Against forum rules and dishonest... If you want to post on PyroU about your store, that is fine, but he honest about it. There are plenty of retailers on the site that do just that, offer good deals to members, and get some good business. But not Spectacular Fireworks in New Milford, PA, that just wasn't enough for them...
Sort of reminds me of Krazy Kaplans in La Porte, IN...
Tsk tsk.
UPDATE - Somebody who works for the store posted saying it was a single employee, not the owner, manager, or anyone else. They have apologized and said the employee will be reprimanded, so as far as I'm concerned, they are in the clear. The posts are on the second page of the thread linked above.
What is it? Click here to find out. Interesting in a kind of gruesome way, but you can find a lot worse on the net.
Anyway, I've got a shoot on Friday, so I'll actually have some more original content, it feels like it's been a while...
Also hopefully some exciting news will be announced before too long, but we shall see.
Anyway, I've got a shoot on Friday, so I'll actually have some more original content, it feels like it's been a while...
Also hopefully some exciting news will be announced before too long, but we shall see.
In what seems to be the new standard for Las Vegas, the New Frontier Hotel and Casino was imploded last night with a fireworks show. After the fireworks they did the same cool countdown thing as the Stardust, but with the fun addition of a plunger at the end. This whole fireworks and implosions thing seems like the cool new thing in Vegas, and I approve!
Article (kinda lame) here, with video at the bottom.
Lots more Vegas implosions here.
Article (kinda lame) here, with video at the bottom.
Lots more Vegas implosions here.
...it's just old...
I don't know how long it has been available, but I just found out (through a PyroU post) that there is a free 2007 version of Bob Weaver's great
Fireworks A-Z Buyer's Guide. I have an older version I paid for several years back and while a lot is now available online for free with PyroU, PyroReview and so on, it is still a great resource. The free one is a good starting place, but the paid one has many more items (list on the page), including ones I would definitely want info on.
So anyway, heads up for anyone that didn't know (or maybe I'm the last one)...
I don't know how long it has been available, but I just found out (through a PyroU post) that there is a free 2007 version of Bob Weaver's great
Fireworks A-Z Buyer's Guide. I have an older version I paid for several years back and while a lot is now available online for free with PyroU, PyroReview and so on, it is still a great resource. The free one is a good starting place, but the paid one has many more items (list on the page), including ones I would definitely want info on.
So anyway, heads up for anyone that didn't know (or maybe I'm the last one)...
