222 posts tagged “pyrotechnics”

At about 11:30pm Monday night I get a text message from my uncle asking if I have any fireworks. I tell him I don't have any that aren't already reserved for Renn Fayre 2010, but suggest a quick shopping trip to to PyroU member Chris/suess' stand, Winchester Fireworks.

I helped my uncle pick out $200 in product, a couple 200g cakes and lots of small stuff like ground flowers, bees, jumping jacks etc, mainly for the day and a few things when it gets dark before the 1.3G show where he'll be on the 4th.

But the item he really wanted was wheels, and Chris didn't have any. We went to three other stands within a few blocks (go Everett!), but nobody carried a single wheel! I did purchase a box of Fiery Eye (BP) and figured I could spare one since he wanted them so bad, I still have a few left and can get more for my own show if needed. I'll try and find some more wheels for him, but he won't get them in time for this year. This is why real pyros plan ahead, 365 days a year!

I couldn't go to a fireworks stand without buying something, and figured I should have a few small items stocked up in case I need a fix and will be someplace I can use them. I got a BP Pure Fantasy fountain to test out for possible Renn Fayre use, then some Utter Chaos spin rockets, a pack of helicopters, Magic Crystals, ground flowers, pop its (more on that later...) and Twister Stix.

On the 3rd I'm setting up a barge show with Wolverine and will stop by the stands in the area. I'll bring a few of these things to play with during the day, just so I can light some fuses. I might also see if I can find some small fountains, I have a bit of a soft spot for them, and hopefully they won't cost much, even at tribal stand prices. We shall see...

Epic fail from some stupid local news people... They managed to hurt themselves with a smoke bomb shaped like a rocket... At first I thought it was a real rocket and would explode on the ground given how hard she stuck it in the ground, but it is an OH legal item, meaning it sucks!

Video here

On Friday I helped Wolverine on a small show in Ephrata, WA, a town I've never been to before out in the middle of the state.

I only took one real picture, so here it is... Left to right we have Phil, Rod and Dan setting things up.

The show was for the town's 100th anniversary, in combination with a Walk For Life cancer research fundraiser. The audience was at the track while we were setting up in the baseball fields a distance away, so while it was a fairly small show, it was almost all 1.3G unlike most other shows Wolverine does for this budget range. Rod was worried about 1.4G items getting enough height, so other than four Screaming Meemie 500g cakes, everything else was 3" shells and 1.3G cakes.

The 1.3G cakes used were all new ones that hadn't been shot in the US yet, so we didn't know the exact timing on them. As a result, Rod decided to manually efire the show so that the next item could be started when the previous one ended. They wanted a longer show, so it wasn't real exciting in terms of design. Basically it was all from one position, with single 3" shells one at a time, then a 1.3G cake, then more shells, repeating and speeding up a bit at the end with a few finale chains at the end. This is obviously different from the shows Wolverine usually does, and Rod called it a "[company name not given for tact]-style show."

Setup was done by 4pm or so, but showtime wasn't until 11:20pm, so we had a LOT of time to kill. I'm glad I brought a book! The show was originally scheduled to start at 11:45pm and have the finale go at midnight to mark the very beginning of the 100th anniversary date, but we were happy it was moved up a little. This also meant that the show could be sped up a little so it would be more exciting because we didn't have to end at an exact time. The mayor was giving a speech (that we could not hear from our location) and the lights going out at the end was supposed to be the cue to start shooting, but the light guy accidentally turned them off early and we started the show in the middle of his speech! He was apparently a good sport about it and didn't mind not having to read the whole speech.

The show was enjoyable if unremarkable. It was interesting to see the wide range of performance among the 3" shells of several different brands. I don' t know which were which, but some had larger full breaks, while others didn't look much better (and some were worse) than a good 1.4G shell. The new 1.3G cakes were all very nice, especially some of the high shot count fan cakes.

I used Rod's camera to get video, so I didn't get anything on my own camera. I might eventually get a copy from him, but it could be a while...

Next up is July 4th! I'll be helping on the Hederson Bay show again, so that should be a lot of fun. I don't know what the show is like this year, but I'll be helping drop product on the 3rd and hopefully poking around Firecracker Alley a little bit while I'm there...

Half a ton of illegal fireworks seized from Boyle Heights home

Members of the San Gabriel Valley Arson Explosives Task Force have seized more than half a ton of illegal fireworks from a residential neighborhood in Boyle Heights, averting a potentially explosive and deadly situation, authorities said.

“Given the amount of fireworks in the residence, and the densely populated area ... we could have had a detonation of all that material, and it would have destroyed a good portion of the block, or several houses,” said Alhambra Fire Department Assistant Chief John Kabala.

The investigation originated after arson investigators from the Alhambra Fire Department found dangerous fireworks and unlawful explosives being advertised for sale on Craigslist, Kabala said. The department conducts regular checks of the free classified advertising site, Kabala said.

Full story here.

Now selling fireworks that are illegal in California (a "safe and sane" state) is stupid, and advertising them on craigslist is even stupider. But that doesn't give fire officials permission to lie and exaggerate. Later in the article they compare it to a drug bust, which is accurate in the level of fearmongering and BS... I posted a comment in the article saying that the fireworks were 1.4G consumer fireworks, by definition incapable of mass explosion, but it seems to have been deleted. I'll post it again and see what happens.

The demo was fairly small (32 items on the shoot list) and there weren't that many people there, but it was still a nice little pyro adventure even if I just watched. A few other PyroU guys were there, including mindset/Tim, tjfireworks, and I even ran into Tony and Larry, which I wasn't expecting!

The selling season at the reservation has started now, but because it is still early, only about half (or less) of the stands there were actually open. I walked around a little, but didn't look too closely because I wasn't going to spend any money and didn't want to deal with pushy salespeople. I was surprised at how many random people were there shooting fireworks, most in very unsafe ways. It wasn't a good place to be if you value your life! There were salute cakes, rockets, shells, and ground salutes going on left and right, and all other items being shot every once in a while. Some were in a field next to the stands, but others were spread all over the parking lot and you had to drive through them to get to the wholesale area. One guy was even angling large salute rockets over the demo site, which was not appreciated. I can only imagine how crazy it gets closer to (or on) the 4th, and wouldn't want to be anywhere near there without a very good reason.

The demo was mostly 200g and 500g cakes, there were a few shells and no rockets or candles. I didn't feel like they chose the best items they carry to demo, but they still had some nice stuff. Of the items they shot, I particularly liked BP Firedrake (sort of a big Pyro Alert with willows at the end), PYK Gold Brocade Bash (a classic, seen it many times before), PYK Party Like a Rock Star (good colors, mines, firing pattern), Glorious Tropical Typhoon (great yellow breaks, nice finale) and BP Uncle Sam's Answer (a very solid 16 shot, I just wish it had a finale).

I didn't see it, but at one point during the demo, a salute rocket was shot at a very low angle and broke near some people on the other side of the parking lot (not sure if this was the same guy as before). After the demo there was a police car and fire truck there, but I don't know what happened. They didn't seem to be in any rush, but I think they did end up taking somebody away in an ambulance. It isn't a very safe place to be...

The finale was a big puke, which was fun, but included some rather poorly chosen SMBs...

Video of every item can be found in my PyroU gallery...

On Friday I'm helping on a Wolverine show in Ephrata, WA, so I'll hopefully have a video and report by Sunday night. The show is all 1.3G, which will be different from most Wolverine shows I've helped on. Apparently it is stretched pretty thin, so we'll see...

This year was different from previous group shoots because it was a two-day event, as well as being at a slightly different location. Steve gets big points as usual for hosting the event.

Day one was single items, starting with more demo stuff that Steve is carrying as part of his wholesale deal with Hales. He shot some stuff I saw at the last demo, but also quite a few different items. Jeff/boaty also shot a lot of product, mainly Winda.

Spirit of 76 showed up with a big truck full of fireworks to deliver the WA portion of the PyroU group buy. They have been very helpful to PyroU and great to work with.

I got video of most single items that night, so just go look at my PyroU gallery for them if you haven't already...

I was planning on spending the night instead of doing the two hour drive home to turn around and do it again the next morning, but my car was already so full that I couldn't fit another case, and I planned to buy more! I drove back and unloaded, it was much more comfortable sleeping in a bed!

The next day I got there around lunch time and we had plenty of time to hang out and BS. We had a BBQ and plenty of time to buy more stuff and build boards for the group show.

We had various smaller items to play with during the daytime and I purchased some firecrackers and several different types of whistling rockets to kill some time, which were fun.

Finally it got dark (although in the interest of finishing at a reasonable time we started too early while it wasn't really dark yet) and we got to the important stuff. We had more single items to demo, including one each of most of the full cases I purchased from 76. I was happy to see that Spicy Hot performs very close to Global Dominance, and Hot Wire was awesome. Three at once is going to look great in my next show!

For the group show people made various boards and then we just lit them in sequence. It wasn't too fancy, but it was much simpler than trying to organize a ton of loose product and fuse it all or handfire every cake individually.

My board (which took two pieces of plywood) is shown here. It started with The New Hotness + Deja Blue + Bada Bing, then to 2x Super Stallion + 9x Megabanger comet cakes + 2x Wild West, ending on Fire in the Hole + 4x Thug. I hadn't built a board in a while and didn't spend much time measuring fuse, so I just hoped everything would go.

The group show ended up looking great, with Yuri/cracker54 lighting each board. Mine worked quite well, so I was happy! The show ended on around 500 shells in a bunch of racks and only one shell didn't fire! After the show was over, just around everyone helped clean up and we hung out around the fire of spent cakes for a while and went home happy.

Here is what I came home with, I'm pretty happy!



















And just so I have a video in this post (again, all are in my gallery), here is a cake I liked from the first night:

Good times were had! The end!

(Left - A frame from the video. Getting still frames of a fireworks show out of a video rarely looks very fancy or arty, but this at least looks kinda cool.)

Direct link to 183MB file here. The video can also be found through my PyroU gallery.

Thanks so much to DM for the video! He also gave me a copy of DVD, plus a few copies to send to others, so it can be made available to students and others at Reed.

We had the setup better organized than last year, and got on the field shortly after noon to get to work, which was great. We had a good crew of eight or nine people and I can't thank them enough for the hard work of putting to show together.

Above - Blue skies for the moment, with a huge pile of fireworks ready to be laid out and hooked up.

There was light rain in the forecast for much of the day, so we did our best to be prepared. Every item was wrapped in carpet film to try and keep water out, the cakes can then fire right through the plastic.

Right - Cakes at one position wrapped.

Wrapping each item was a very valuable precaution, but took a long time. Each item was already marked with a cue and ematched, which helped speed things up, but many of the ematches were short ones that needed to have their lead wires extended to reach the rails, which also added time to the setup.

We had light drizzle on and off, but later in the afternoon the sky got much darker and we got hit with some of the hardest rain I've seen in a long time. On top of that were wind and lightning, which struck and took down a tree about 200' from where we were working. All we could do was hope that the fireworks already out survived, and that the light plastic tarp covering all the fireworks that we hadn't wrapped yet stayed on. A couple guys got in the trailer, the rest of us lowered the tent and held the corners to keep it from blowing away and exposing more fireworks, all while getting soaked from the rain coming in sideways.

Left - Heavy rain, guys hiding in the trailer and  product under the plastic sheet. Luckily we had the fire extinguishers.

The rain eventually stopped and the sky started to clear up, but we had lost a lot of time at this point. Combined with worries about how well things survived the rain, I was getting worried that we wouldn't get everything finished in time. I worked as fast as I could to get the rest of the shells and mines ready to be loaded into the racks, then had to go check the rails to see if we at least had something plugged into each cue, and found several things to fix.

By 8pm we had most of the fireworks set out, but still hadn't set up the audio or done continuity tests to make sure all the electrical systems were all connected and working. The cakes and individually cued shells and mines were almost all in place, so I ran around trying to get all the fountains for the finale buildup plugged in. I also had almost 80 shells for the last cue of the finale that still needed to be quickmatched and loaded into racks, by this point it was almost 9pm and obvious it was too late to get them loaded. We confirmed that all the modules were connected, but ran out of time before we could really check that every item was properly connected.

I was very stressed out at this point, but it was now too late to do anything about it (even to hit the beer garden for a few minutes to try and relax), so I just joined the crowd and hoped for the best.

At least the rain stopped a couple hours before showtime and I got a couple nice rainbow pictures before it got dark...

The Music

Last year, the music in the show was all from the band Explosions in the Sky. I wanted to do something different from the usual classic rock/pop that is used in most fireworks shows, and always felt their music would work well for fireworks. They are all instrumental, which I felt would help keep the fireworks as the focus, rather than worrying too much about the lyrics or meaning of the songs.

I tried to do something similar this year, making the soundtrack entirely from songs by Sigur Ros. Their music is similarly grand but also has some playfulness to it, especially on the last two albums. The lyrics are all in Icelandic or their made-up "Hopelandic," so it didn't distract from the fireworks and instruments. While I love ( ) and their other older stuff, every song but one was from their two most recent albums, Takk... and Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. I was tempted to throw in something more obscure to show the cool kids that I'm not a n00b, but songs like Dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir (or if you want to get super hardcore, Fjöll í austri fagurblá) don't really fit a fireworks show.

The final soundtrack (edited sections of each song):

1. Takk... (Takk...) 30 seconds of the atmospheric intro track to signal the start of the show.

2. Gobbledigook (Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust) Nearly the whole song, I was hoping to match mines to the start and the whole song is just a lot of fun.

3. Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust) Another fun song with some great tempo changes.

4. Hoppípolla (Takk...) My relative pop-culture isolation meant I didn't realize this song has probably been a bit overplayed (I had never seen the trailer for Slumdog Millionaire) until after I was done scripting, but the lyrics and video of the song are great for Renn Fayre. Even if you don't know it that well, it is a beautiful song and works well for a slower section (like the image above from the show).

5. Sæglópur (Takk...) A more dramatic and intense song, with some nice tempo changes.

6. Olsen Olsen (Ágætis byrjun) A late addition when I made the show longer in response to an unexpectedly large budget, a nice break from the intensity of Sæglópur.

7. Festival (Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust) The fast end of this song was used and intended to be a false finale.

8. Glósóli (Takk...) The real finale music. Like "A Poor Man's Memory" from the finale last year, this song has a slow repetitive build followed by a huge crescendo, perfect for a finale. Using this references the intro of the show, on the album this song immediately follows it, providing some form of resolution. The music video is also very cool and fits well with Renn Fayre. 

The Show

Direct link to cue sheet here: PDF file

The rain and lack of time to check everything meant that we had a 10-20% failure rate, which was unfortunate. In most cases it wasn't a huge deal, but other times it lead to some black sky, which is the nightmare of all pyros.

If you know the product you can follow along with the cue sheet and video linked below, but for the comments on each section, I will be refering to the time on the videos, not the cue sheet. I mention specific parts and items that worked well, but a lot of it is noting what didn't work, so there are lots of gory details.

1. Takk... - A nice way to get attention and all three fountains worked, with some nice silver sparks and decent height.

2. Gobbledigook - A mistake right away, the mines were supposed to be timed to match the opening guitar chords of the song, and they were all a couple seconds early. This happened on pretty much every mine in the show, which was incredibly frustrating because they were supposed to be my most accurately timed effect of the whole show. I think I screwed up when I translated the script I wrote from Excel into the fireworks script program... Just Light It (UP) is a great cake, but only two of three fired. Next up was supposed to be two 4 Tons of Fun #3 (UP), but they didn't fire, leading to a lot of black sky. As you can hear in the video, I was rather aggravated. At least the pair of shells broke right on cue (1:04) From here I was convinced everything was ruined, and had a hard time enjoying the things that did go right, so that was kind of a bummer. Razzle Dazzle (UP, starts about 1:39) was great, I wish I used more of them. Two of four Golden Willows at 2:30 didn't fire, but it still looked pretty good and the XO1 crackling willow shells at 2:38 were great. All three Killer in the Mist (UP) fired and are amazing for a 200g cake, but a High and Mighty (UP) that wasn't supposed to be here also started firing, so while everything else ended on cue (including a nice five shell volley of XO2s), that cake kept going long past the music.

3. Inní mér syngur vitleysingur - Only two of three Flying Fish with Zoom Power (WW) fired at the start of this song, but it still looked great. The mines at 4:49 were supposed to go a couple seconds later after the pause and right when the music picks up again, but it still looked fantastic and everything ended pretty much on cue.

4. Hoppípolla - The Blue Tie with Brocade Mine (WW) at the start of this section were supposed to be angled in V's, but I forgot with all my running around. Falling Water Chutes (WW) is a very elegant cake, though only two of three fired at 6:08. The timing at 6:53 worked perfectly, but the intended drama didn't quite work out when only one of three H2O (WW) fired at 7:02. 7:26 was supposed to be two PPS-8 (UP), but I couldn't get them, so this bit was a little repetitive. Almost every shell in the next part fired, and the XO1's looked great as usual. The two Gold Diggin Blonde (UP) were nice, but had a much longer duration than I had scripted, and went over the song. The three 3" Brocade Willows had nice large breaks with good hang time.

5. Sæglópur - The mines at the start of this song were early like the others, they were supposed to go on the piano chords. Three Eye of the Storm (UP) were supposed to fire at the same time, and while only two went, they still looked fantastic. Following that (0:29) was supposed to be three Red White and Bluetiful (UP), but only one fired. It is still pretty impressive by itself, so it wasn't the end of the world. Only one of two Catalyst (RR) fired at 0:50, which was disspointing because I bought two specifically for the show months ago, but it was covered up well by the 200g cakes. The mines in the next section were of course off, with one missing. Only two of three Pow Bam fired after that, but the breaks on that cake are great, so it still looked good. All three Thug fired, with the crackle getting a good response as usual. One of the Yin Yang at 2:14 stopped firing at one row and the third High and Mighty is missing because it fired earlier in the show, but the end of the song looked pretty good and ended on time.

6. Olsen Olsen - Vendetta (GG) is a pretty nice little cake, and the crackle shells at 3:23 broke right on cue, which was great. The popcorn crackle breaks in Curtain Call (BP) starting at 3:40 were absolutely massive and surprised even me (the size, not the effect!), as well as getting a big reaction from the audience. The cakes following Curtian Call were two Pro Blue and one Pro Red (Bigs), but one blue didn't fire and the other one didn't fire the last few shots.

7. Festival - Here you can see why Gimmie Shimmy (WW) is one of my favorite cakes, with great glitter, timing and firing pattern. One of my 4 Tons of Fun cakes was the wrong one (the labels are very similar), but it wasn't a problem and the Pyro Gumbo (PP) added some nice hard breaks. This was intended as a false finale, but wasn't really much bigger than some other sections earlier in the show, so I guess I didn't plan that very well and the false finale last year was probably more impressive.

8. Glósóli - The building to the finale was supposed to be an expanding triangle of fountains, while I didn't get them all set up in time, it still sort of worked. The mines went early as usual, but everything else started on cue. The breaks from BMF (Bigs) were huge and a nice addition I picked up. Three New Dimension (GB) and five Pow Bam added lots of big breaks to the end, but I feel like I didn't have enough intensity or a fast enough pace towards the end, I could have used another case of 500g and one or two more cases of 200g at the very end. If I had time to fuse in the finale barrage shells (30 WC Super Mag w/Tail and 48 UP Mega Pyro) it would have made a big difference, so it was dissapointing that they didn't make it in. I was happy to see that pretty much everything ended right on cue.



So that was the show in text form, which is always fascinating... I was stressed out from a long day of work and getting soaked, so the first few problems really frustrated me and colored my view of the whole show. Going back and watching the video, I'm a lot happier with how things turned out overall, especially given the difficult circumstances. Hopefully next year I'll have a chance to get more things right. After all, I ordered some fireworks several months ago that I plan on using for Renn Fayre 2010!

You can stop skipping the rest of this post, the video is finally here

The videos can also be found in my PyroU gallery.

Part 1 (direct link 55MB .avi)
Part 2 (direct link 50MB .avi)

Thank you to my wife for getting the video. I should also have a higher quality video (all one shot! a tripod!) in a month or so.

Update: A higher quality video of the show can be found here.

Thanks to Deweycoon on PyroU for the video! (link to file in PyroU gallery)

Pyro Bear (Golden Bear)

Not sure, but I think this is Big Troops (Golden Bear)

I think this is Global Dominance (Pyro Predator)

Hopefully he can come to more shoots and get more pictures! I'm always busy with video and don't really have a good camera to take fireworks pictures even if I knew how to do it properly...