I know this post is a month late, but I'm finally getting it up! Part of the delay has been getting the video, which I still don't have, but should soon. I wasn't able to edit it on my computer so it has been outsourced to a friend... [Video link at bottom of post]
Renn Fayre is the annual end of the year party at my alma mater, Reed College. The party celebrates the end of classes and is kicked up with the seniors turning in the final drafts of their year-long research project, the senior thesis. I took over the show my senior year and this is the third year that I have designed the show (Renn Fayre 2008 fireworks and Renn Fayre 2009 fireworks) and I hope to come back and do it every year as a way to give back to my school in a fun and unique way.
Left - Pulling product from the truck to be cued and ematched.
The basics of the show were pretty similar to the last two years, setting up five positions across 200' on the rugby field and efiring to music. The big difference this year was that the show was under Homeland Fireworks rather than Wolverine West like last year. This wasn't actually that different in practice because Homeland bought 1.4G product from Wolverine as well as my contributions that came from Wolverine and my own purchases. Rod from Wolverine was actually there for the shoot because he was helping with the audio system.
Right - Laying out product and plugging in ematches.
One welcome change from last year was the weather. Rather than monsoons and lighting, we got a tiny bit of drizzle for a few minutes and nothing more. They sky looked gray and threatened rain almost all day, but thankfully it never came down.
Last year was all 1.4G product, but this year included a few large 1.3G cakes in the finale. Bruce from Homeland wanted to add some 1.3G product so it would count towards the pyro licenses for a few guys on the crew and I was happy to have it as I was a little worried about the finale having enough power. I always plan segments and effects carefully and buy my own product with those goals, then find myself scrambling a little to have enough product for a good finale. I did try to plan a little bit for that by purchasing a case each of 200g BP Wild West and BP Super Stallion as low level filler and ended up buying another case of GB New Dimension at the last minute to get more big breaks in the finale. Next year I should try and set aside some finale stuff early on before using up all my resources on the body of the show.
Two minor issues we ran into were a slight shortage of ematches and a few items not making it onto the truck. We were maybe two dozen ematches short, so I took out some of the shells and 200g filler cakes in the finale, hoping they would be the least noticeable. A few items didn't make it onto the truck, but luckily most of those were able to be filled by items where I had a full case in the truck with only half scripted, so I could move some things around. One moment towards the end of the show ended up unfilled so there was a bit of black sky, but the rest worked out well enough.
I try to use less conventional music in my shows and continued that tradition here. The last two years I used Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros, this year I used another post-rock band because I can't think of anything else and it seemed to fit! The theme of Renn Fayre for 2010 was "The Final Frontier" and I had recently discovered a band called Exxasens (myspace, website) that makes very cool space-inspired music. They are pretty obscure (I think it is really just one guy in Spain) but the music seemed to fit the theme very well and sounds great. For something a little different, I also used the Carl Sagan remix "Glorious Dawn". Unfortunately the audio equipment we had for this show didn't have enough power for various reasons, so it couldn't be heard very well for much of the show. This was a bummer, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
First song: Exxasens - Spiders On The Moon
This song includes audio samples from rocket launches and the famous Apollo 13 quote as well as having some cool tempo changes and some pretty heavy moments at the end. Overall this year I wasn't trying to time things as precisely with shells (no mines this year), but tried to at least keep the cake pacing matching the music as best I could. Overall timing this year was so-so, good at some points but often a second or two behind.
This section had two American Orbiter girandolas timed to lift at the end of the countdown for a nice surprise and unique effect. I was a little worried about using girandolas and won't be doing it again, because one driver didn't ignite, sending a girandola sideways into a tree rather than up into the air, luckily I had angled them away from the crowd during setup or it could have caused a serious problem. The opening willow breaks in The Big Guns looked fantastic and the whistles in F-19 were popular, but the finale of that cake didn't happen when I wanted and was slightly different from what I'd seen before, which was a little disappointing. Later on there were issues with cakes igniting and a noticeable spot where only one of two Pyro Picasso fired. Pow Bam and Spicy Hot both had impressively large breaks and were highlights of this section.
Second song: Exxasens - Sky In Red
This song has a cool opening that I thought would be great for the z-cakes followed by some tempo variation and a dramatic end that seemed perfect for a big willow/brocade section. Kaleidoscope Z started a tiny bit late but looked awesome, followed by Fire in the Hole, which was very solid. Razzle Dazzle had very nice gold, blue and glitter, though the finale on the cake looked smaller than I remember. The big willow section following that worked almost perfectly. Winda Reach For the Sky broke huge and was complimented nicely by WW 3" Brocade Willows, as well as some smaller hard breaking cakes at a lower level. I decided to use Reach For the Sky this year to add a little color for variety and am pretty happy with how it came out, although only two of three cakes fired. The song ended with WW H2O, which looked great but started and ended a little early, so the music playing out to dark sky went on longer than intended.
Third song: Exxasens - Signals From Outer Space (you can find the song on the myspace page)
This might be my favorite song from the show, I just love the opening pick scrape followed by the cool jittery guitars about 40sec into the song. Firehawk Cyber Fantasy didn't break as large as I was expecting but still looked pretty cool and the three BP Hot Wire right after that looked awesome and were probably my favorite item in the show. That was followed by three WC Not In My Yard, though only two fired. I think it actually looked better that way and gave time to appreciate the individual breaks, so that is a lesson I'll try and hold onto. UP PPS-8 was a lot slower than the videos I've seen but still looked pretty good and the six angled WW Blue Tie with Brocade Mine crossed nicely (I forgot the angle the ones I used last year). The finale of this song ended up looking a bit messy using several different items to try and keep the pace up, but the five BP Clipper at the end looked very nice and ended right on cue.
Fourth song: Symphony of Science - Glorious Dawn
I used this song as a change of pace and kind of a joke, most Reedies are nerdy enough that I figured they would have heard it at some point since I didn't expect many people to recognize any of the songs by Exxasens. I had a hard time choreographing this song because the verses and chorus are too short for most cakes, so it ended up looking pretty messy. Basically I just wanted the WW Flying Fish with Zoom Power to start and end the song and some UP Killer in the Mist to fire at the chorus and the rest was just filler. I opened with two Flying Fish but only one ignited, though people still seemed to enjoy it. Five 200g UP Atom Smasher was overkill, it made it hard to really notice the color change effect, which was the whole point of using them. After that only one WW Snap Crackle Boom fired and I ended up with some black sky next because I forgot to fill a gap created by some cakes not getting into the truck. Luckily both Flying Fish at the end fired and the timing worked as I had hoped, with nothing during the last line of the song so people could hear it.
Fifth song - Exxasens - Polaris
For the other songs I used almost the full track, here I just used an edited bit as a finale song because it had a nice sudden change and was very intense. Things started more or less on cue and looked awesome for the first part, I think the low level filler helped a lot. After most of the low level filler ended it was mainly just the big breaking cakes and the pace was a bit slower than I wanted. One of the 1.3G cakes was falling leaves, which looked cool but didn't make a huge impression as part of a finale. The comet cakes on the other hand looked awesome and got a big reaction from the crowd, so they helped the finale quite a bit. You never get an all cake finale to end perfectly on cue, but overall it ended well enough.
So that was the show, hopefully I'll have a video up soon. I want to follow up with some lessons learned and other things of that nature, but I'll have to save it for when I've got more time...
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Video: Direct link 119MB .wmv
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