St Louis Group Show

Months ago I got an invitation to design and shoot the group 1.4G show at the 2010 PyroU St Louis Shoot. For those not familiar with the event, it is an annual fireworks event organized by Pyro Universe members and sponsored by the Missouri Pyrotechnics Association. The event also raised money for P.A.W. Stoppers, which helps support police K-9 units.

[Note: This is a long post, video is posted at the bottom if you want to skip the boring stuff.]

I'll post more about the event as whole soon, but in the interest of getting this up and sent around quickly, I'll just post about the group show for now.

Anyway, I was first invited to do the show back in March as a result of previous shows I've posted on PyroU, primarily my Renn Fayre Fireworks shows. The way the show works is that fireworks wholesalers donate product to this show (that I choose from their inventory) and then I put together a show however I want for the rest of the PyroU members and the public that shows up. The group show is the final (and largest) 1.4G (all fireworks available to consumers without a license) show of the night, so being invited to do it was a big honor for me. For the last few months I pored over lists from Hales, Red Rhino, Spirit of 76, and Liberty, huge thanks to all of them for their donations! Individual PyroU members also provided a few items, so thanks to them as well! While working out product I selected music and as I had a better idea of what fireworks I had to work with I began scripting the show.

(Right - E-matching cakes, there was a lot of this to do!)

Rod from Wolverine West generously offered to provide the firing system for the show, and then offered to come with me to help out! His help was absolutely essential and the show wouldn't have happened without him. We arrived the night before the event officially started and I tried to recruit a few people at the bar where we met up to help set up the show.

We got to the site at 9am on Friday the 24th and began taking inventory of the fireworks as they arrived. I was schedule to shoot my show on Saturday, so the goal this day was to cue and ematch everything, then the next day we would just have to get it in the field and plug it in. This meant that not only did each item have to be labeled with the rail and cue numbers (I brought pre-made stickers, which greatly sped up that process), but we had to remove the fuse, punch a larger hole in the tubes, then insert and tape in an ematch (electrical igniter for non-pyros) into each item. My show consisted of 519 cues, so this was a lot of work. Further complicating things, in order to have more control over the show, around 200 of those cues were from multi-shot cakes that I broke apart into individuals tubes, so I had to take them apart and know what they did shot-for-shot to avoid mixing up my effects.

(Left - Mounting individual tubes from broken apart cakes into racks.)

I had a great crew of volunteers helping me, most of whom I had never met until that day or the night before. I'm not going to try and name everyone because I'll forget people, but everyone did a great job. We had to pack up at 7pm so that the shows for the night could start, by the end of our setup time we had every item cued and ematched except for a single case of cakes to be broken apart.

That night we had lots of great product demos, a surprise 1.3G show, and the Blind Pyro competition (sort of like Iron Chef with fireworks). I will write more about this in a separate post...

We arrived the next morning and finished up breaking cakes apart and prepping tubes, then loaded racks with shells and tubes and attached the individual tubes to open-faced racks (picture above). At this point (around noon) I went out to figure out where I would be setting up, which turned out to be my first mistake. I should have done this first thing in the morning as much of the space had already been claimed by other guys setting up their shows and when we ran our cable to the space that was available, we discovered it wasn't long enough! We got the cable issue worked out, but it cost us some time and I ended up being set back a little further than I would have liked with some large trees limiting how much horizontal space I had to one side.

(Right - Rod connects firing modules at one of the nine positions.)

Once the location issues were worked out we marked each of the nine positions and brought all the product out to the field. The setup ended up being only 250ft across rather than the originally intended 300ft because we were limited on one side by the trees and I didn't want to move too far from the crowd on the other side. In retrospect I should have expanded further to that side anyway, ideally I would have established my setup area sooner and used at least 350ft.

I temporarily lost nearly all my helpers to the fireworks raffle, but had pretty much everything in position and plugged in by around 6pm. From there we did a continuity test to confirm that every item is plugged in correctly. On any show there will be mistakes, but out of 519 cues, we only had around three bad ones, an impressive job for any show. With mistakes fixed we sat back to watch the other shows and wait until it was my turn.

After a few very nice 1.4G shows it was finally my turn. The opening went perfectly and while a couple items ran faster than I was expecting, it was going pretty well until about two and half minutes in. As the next big musical cue came, rather than four 500g cakes and ten 1.75" shells, there was only one cake and four shells! As the show went on, it became clear that items were only firing from the two far right positions and not the other seven. We were wondering what was going on and thinking that the cable connecting the modules may have been damaged because there were several small fires from earlier shows. There wasn't any point in stopping it, so we just let it run through the whole script and soundtrack with only about 20% of the fireworks there were supposed to be going off. This meant that at times there were only one or two items going when there should have been four or more, or at other times there was black sky because a different positions was supposed to be firing at that time.

I was predictably distraught seeing months of planning and two full days of setup fall apart in front of a large crowd. Luckily the 1.4G finale was all ready to go as soon as my show ended, so I figured it would be a good distraction from my own show. This year the finale was all crackle and it did the job quite well, filling the sky with so much crackle it appear to be boiling sparks. During the 1.3G shows that followed, Rod and I discussed what could have gone wrong. When the last 1.3G show was delayed due to technical errors, Rod wanted to go back out to the field and try to figure out what was wrong. After a bit of experimenting, we discovered that module 5 had failed, preventing the next 15 modules from receiving signals. Because modules 1-4 had fired and 5 wasn't working, we plugged directly into module 6 and firing a single cue as a test. When that worked we figured we were back on track, so we set the firing panel to run the rest of the script from the internal memory, meaning it had the right firing cues but it no longer had the music.

At this point I was just happy that we were going to be able to get everything in the sky, even if it wasn't all at the right time or to the music. To connect to module 6 we were about 30ft from it, so once everything started firing again we were right under much of it. From there everything ran as it was supposed to and I was happy to have debris raining on me because it meant the show was working. Being right under it on one end meant I didn't have a great view, but I could at least tell that things were going when they were supposed to. The finale, which I expected to go long because of the large number of cakes used, even ended right on cue, which was a nice surprise.

Any pyro that has worked with efire knows that sometimes things like this happen, so the PyroU audience was just glad to see we got it up eventually too and a few guys said it still looked pretty good. The general public probably just thought the first time was just a small and poorly done show and the second time was a totally different show. After it was over and we went to pick up the equipment and check for any remaining live product we found only four or five cues that failed to fire, which is lower than I expected for a show of this size. If that module hadn't failed, it would have been almost perfect!

Video

I'll save a more detailed critique of the show for later. For now, the video can be found here, thanks to PyroU member WildWilli. The first 2:28 goes as planned, then you can see a large portion of the show suddenly go dark. The rest of the music plays out with the "abbreviated" show and the mini-finale and crackle finale are worth seeing starting at 8:40. The second time around for my show starts at 10:26 and is a little more exciting, though it is shot to random music the DJ put on.

Renn Fayre Fireworks

Renn Fayre Fireworks

This post is intended as a central location to link all my Renn Fayre Fireworks show posts together to bring my google search ranking back up and make it easy for somebody to find reports, pictures, and videos of all the Renn Fayre shows I've done at Reed College.

(p.s. I know the formatting sucks, but blogger isn't very good at formatting images with text and I'm too lazy to fix it...)

Renn Fayre 2015 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2014 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2013 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2012 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2011 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2010 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2009 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2008 Fireworks

Renn Fayre 2010 Fireworks

[Note: This post was originally on my Vox blog, which is no longer online. This is mainly just copied and pasted without much regard for preserving links or formatting.]

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...

++++++++++++++++++

Video: Direct link 119MB .wmv

Back to main Renn Fayre Fireworks page.

Renn Fayre 2009 Fireworks

[Note: This post was originally on my Vox blog, which is no longer online. This is mainly just copied and pasted without much regard for preserving links or formatting.]

I've been posting about it pretty much since the smoke cleared from the Renn Fayre 2008 fireworks, and on Saturday May 2nd, I finally shot the 2009 show. It didn't quite live up to my high hopes because of weather-related problems, a couple scripting issues, and the fact that it wasn't the dramatic change of last year, but looking back at it, I'm fairly happy overall and the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

Short background for the various people reading this: Renn Fayre is the end of classes party at Reed College in Portland, OR. I graduated last year, and got them to put me in charge of the show, working with Wolverine West Fireworks. This year I came back as an alum to do it again and hope to keep doing it every year they'll have me back.















[This is a very long post, so if you just want the video, skip to the bottom. I've spent so much time working on this show that there is a lot to get out, even if I don't expect anyone else to read this or care. The next section will be setup, then a bit on music, then a breakdown of the show by sections.]

Setup

The basic show was pretty similar to last year. It was e-fired to music (more on the the music later) on the same field, with five positions spaced 40' apart. Last year included a few small 1.3G (professional class for non-pyros reading this) items, but this year was entirely 1.4G, meaning every firework in the show could be purchased at a fireworks stand in Washington (but not Oregon!). I'm continually impressed by the quality of 1.4G, even after everything I've shot. At the right distance and with a well designed show, good 1.4G looks just as good as some of the professional products.
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.

Back to main Renn Fayre Fireworks page.

Renn Fayre 2008 Fireworks

[Note: This post was originally on my Vox blog, which is no longer online. This is mainly just copied and pasted without much regard for preserving links or formatting.]

After almost a year of planning, my big Renn Fayre show finally happened on Saturday May 3rd. Past years have been pretty much terrible (and those clips are some of the highlights) so the bar was set pretty low. Of course I wanted to do the best possible show regardless of what we've had in past years. With the small site, almost everything used was 1.4G, there were a few bigger 1.3G cakes I wanted to get that didn't happen because they weren't in stock. I also had ten 3" mines scripted for two points (first parts of opener and finale) that didn't get approved. The 1.3G that did get in was a few small cakes that look like 200g but have decent reports on them, I used six angled more for their nice white tails than the reports. We also had 80 1.75" 1.3G shells in the finale. The cue sheet can be found here (.pdf).

We were supposed to have the rugby field to set up starting at 11:30pm, but due to a miscommunication the field was double-booked with softball games scheduled until 4pm. Luckily we were able to shuffle things around to get that open sooner and in the mean time we e-matched all the product and marked each item with the rail and cue numbers (left).





















It was pretty awesome seeing cake after cake come out of the truck, there were 80+ 500g cakes and 120+ 200g cakes, as well as the shells, strobes and candles.

(Right - Unloading product at the edge of the field)















The weather was pretty iffy for a while, things alternated between sunny with a few clouds to fully overcast with light rain. We started working around noon and it rained on and off until 3-4pm, which made me nervous for the conditions at showtime. Luckily the weather cleared up and we had no rain, perfect temperatures, and a nice wind blowing the smoke off to the side once the show started.

(Far right - A nice pile of fireworks at one of the five main positions!)



















(Left - Overview of the site with most of the positions visible.)


















We had a good size crew and things were pretty organized with product e-matched and cued before placing things on the field, but the large quantity of product and a few inevitable mixups meant that we were still working at 7pm when I took my leave to finally join the party myself.

(Right - Lots of wires, luckily we could place nearly everything close to the modules and only use the ematch leads, so there was very little additional wire needed.)
















(Left - The center position finished.)














(Right - Shell racks with 1.4G and 1.3G shells)















200g cakes were glued to plywood, the ground was solid enough that all the 500g could just be set on the ground because they have much wider bases so there was no risk of tipping.

I didn't get a very good picture of the overall site, so here is a quick video tour of the area:
Rf2k8sitetour
Ok, on to the actual show. This was the first show I've put together to music. I love the band Explosions in the Sky (not just for the name) and have long felt they made great music for fireworks. The music is intense without being angry or depressing, because it is all instrumental people could invent their own meaning. Here are the songs and sections I used:

Greet Death 0:33 - 2:32, Catastrophe and the Cure 0:00 - 2:20, Fire Breath After a Coma 3:17 - 4:28, Catastrophe and the Cure 5:44 - 7:30, Have You Passed Through This Night? 3:57 - 5:02, A Song For Our Fathers 3:04 - 4:32, Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean 2:30 - 3:24, It's Natural to be Afraid 9:17 - 11:35, A Poor Man's Memory 4:24 - 5:53.

I could hear the music well where I was, but I'm not sure if people in the back could hear everything, the crowd was pretty deep and the slope of the seating area may have been an issue. In the future maybe speakers can be placed in other areas as well.

Section 1 (Each section is one song clip) - The opening was fantastic and I could tell people were excited and impressed right away. The timing worked very well with the lights going out and the strobes starting about ten seconds later. This gave everyone time to focus and build tension before things got going. The Rainbow Crunch came in at just the right time and the next group of cakes as the music picked up a few seconds later made the whole section pretty much a finale right from the start. Individual effects got a bit covered up (a theme throughout the show) but it still looked great and ended pretty much with the music.

Section 2 - I forgot to angle the Blue Tie cakes, but it wasn't really a problem. The Chosen One came in at just the right time as the music picked up. America's Celebration and Pure Seduction had huge breaks and I got the pacing to work out pretty well so things slowed down with the music and picked up again at the end. So What Are You Looking At? had fantastic colors and while a couple of them went past the music, it still worked very well.

Section 3 - One of the few slow sections of the show. Both Flying Fish With Zoom Power and Swimming Pearls were big crowd pleasers, with effects most people probably hadn't seen. Those Swimming Pearls shots really travel!

Section 4 - This section was a lot of random stuff and was pretty chaotic. The timing worked well in the first bit but most of the cakes had mixed effects so the whole thing looked pretty messy. People were surprisingly excited by the whistling effects in Screaming Meemie.

Section 5 - H2O was a perfect cake here, another of a small number of parts with only a single cake type firing so the effect could be seen very clearly. The Gimmie Shimmy cakes in the second half were great and filled the sky with gold and glitter.

Section 6 - People liked the pace and effect of the Domination z-cakes a lot, Killer Scorpion looked pretty good too. The next bit with Rumble Tumble and Tail Gator was a bit of a crackle puke and the candle effects weren't very visible with everything else going on. Storm Cadence had great mines for a 200g and the XO1 shells slowed things down a little at the end.

Section 7 - Tatt was ok but the main body of this section was One Bad Mother. This was supposed to be another slow section before things picked up for the false finale, but wasn't really all that slow. The willows on One Bad Mother were huge and the crackle really spread.

Section 8 - False finale. Five 1-2 Punch with four Night Vision started this with a ton of color and it looked great. Snap Crackle Boom with Zoot Suit was ok, but the combo of three Yin Yang and three So What Are You Looking At? added another very distinct effect to the show with the big gold to strobe mines and lots of color above. The willow false finale was huge, with 15 200g Golden Willows and three 500g Big Package. Next time I might try to avoid so many willow cakes that also have color because it covered up the willows a little more than I liked.

Section 9 - Finale! I could tell a lot of people were surprised that the show wasn't quite over, that was exactly what I was going for. The slow build of the music with three Blue Pearl with Gold Strobe cakes helped ratchet up the tension until the music finally exploded (pardon the pun). I spent a lot of time playing with the finale to make it huge but still controlled, with a few visible changes in shape and effect. A few of the effects were a little more covered than I had hoped (like the spinners in Wild West) but it was a huge finale that seemed to go forever and ended almost on cue, with only a couple stray shots.

So that was the show. I'd never done anything this large or complex before and the huge audience made it even more stressful. After the first two sections things seemed to all be going as planned and I was able to relax a little more and actually enjoy the show. It was a lot of work but I loved doing it, I'm glad I was able to do something special for my last year and college and give something back to the school.

I want to thank the Renn Fayre czars, Paul, Rod, and Bruce for all helping make this happen!

[Update: Video here (direct link)]

Back to main Renn Fayre Fireworks page.

RPS on a new blog host

So Vox is shutting down at the end of the month, meaning my blog which I've been posting on since 2006 is going to disappear. That kind of sucks! They offer an export utility to TypePad, which costs $9 a month and that just isn't going to happen. So I'm moving over here and we'll see how it goes.

I'm hoping to copy over some of the important posts (mainly my Renn Fayre shows) but everything else will no longer be online. I'm going to see if I can create my own offline backup, but it won't be generally available.