My First Pyromusical

We all start somewhere. Honestly, I wasn’t going to write this article because I was embarrassed by how this show turned out. I am a perfectionist, and this show definitely isn’t what I wanted it to be. Everyone there had a lot of fun and really enjoyed it, which is important, but your audience doesn’t typically understand when things go wrong with what you’ve designed, but the show designer does!

I decided to share this experience anyway because it’s such a major learning opportunity for myself and others. I realized that everyone is going to experience these things when starting out. I will share what I learned from this show and maybe help others prepare for the same potential issues. I will start with the problems I faced, then at the end of this article, we will discuss the lessons learned.

My Site, Setup, and Equipment

The shoot site is our private lake. I had only one position, which was two 8×8′ floating docks attached together for a 16′ x 8′ floating dock. I used an existing 8’x8′ dock, and built another to attach them together. This allowed me to use 4 sheets of OSB plywood and assemble the fireworks on each board prior to loading on the docks.

I used 4 Ignite i18 modules using all 72 cues. I used 10 5-cue breakout boards and also used some parallel splicing when I ran out. There was a total of about 100 individual fireworks.

I also sprinkled in about 30 1.4 Pro single shot comets and mines, I built three simple pegboard and 2×4 racks for these. For the 1.4 consumer jumbo candle barrages, I built a larger version of the pegboard rack that was screwed to the doc end.

Setting Expectations

I didn’t expect this show to be massive or an award-winning pyromusical by any means. I am a realist. I did this for my passion, to learn, and to have a great time with family and friends. However, I am a perfectionist as well, so I definitely wanted it to be awesome and as perfect as possible to what I envisioned. It was a lot of fun, but definitely was not what I envisioned.

So, What Went Wrong?

Fireworks Selection and Cake Durations

The very first thing I did wrong was the fireworks selected and where in the show I used them.

Most of the fireworks were 1.4 consumer cakes. While that’s not a problem in and of itself, the problem was that I relied too heavily on the videos of these products and the durations I saw in the videos. I already knew cakes could vary in their durations. I just didn’t realize how much variance there would actually be. I viewed several videos of the same cake and used averages of what I saw. I used a stopwatch and watched each of these videos at least 10 times to be sure I was correct.

Incorrect cake durations can be show killers if you rely on them in your show. Most all of the cakes ended early. These durations were so much shorter than just fusing variations. We’re talking 10-30 seconds here. Sometimes even HALF of the advertised duration. Also, the manufacturers can change a cake’s performance and effect over the years but the videos you’re watching may not be updated to reflect these changes. Bottom line… It’s a gamble.

Calculating Lift Times/Pre-fire

For the most part, the lift times I used for cakes were spot on. I was able to confidently rely on when a cake would start. However, just like with cakes, canister shells can differ from what you see in the videos. It’s commonly known among pyros that a standard 1.75″ canister shell will have a lift time of about 2 seconds.

I used the Snake Tails canister shells in this show. If you view the YouTube video about 100 times with a stopwatch like I did, you can see that the lift time is actually 2.5 seconds on average. The odd part is that when I tested the canister shells I got, they were 2 seconds. So as with cakes, be careful about shell lift times as well.

Fusing Roman Candle Barrages

This was, by far, the biggest failure in the show. Not only did I rely on these candles way too much, I failed to fuse them in a way that ensured they ignited. I literally just pointed the MJG shroud opening at the bundle of fuses (at the side of the fuse). Turns out, MJG Initiators don’t burn long or hot enough to reliably ignite a fuse from the side. All of the MJG fired, but 11 of 12 candles in the show misfired. There was a LOT of black sky as a result.

I would have had better luck pointing the igniter directly at the end of the fuse, and possibly fraying the end to expose more of the black powder. I didn’t do this because I didn’t want the longer pre-fire time of lighting that initial fuse and waiting for it to reach all the others. I wanted to ignite the bundle of fuses together in order to cut down on the time it took to reach the first lift charge.

I should also note, one of my cakes also did not fire because that cake was also a configuration of roman candles! It was called The Big Griff.

When you open the top of this cake, you will see what looks like 4-5 rows of slices. The first few rows are just roman candles fused together with quick-fuse. To ignite this cake, I put the MJG does into the first tube with the main fuse. So, not only did the MJG not light the fuse inside the tube, it didn’t light the lift charge it was directly pointing at which is what I was aiming for. I didn’t inspect inside the tube, so I am unsure of there was anything in the way.

Cakes Sometimes Catch Fire

I wouldn’t necessarily classify this as something going horribly wrong. It’s just something I feel needs to be managed better. Cake fires are a common occurrence with certain cakes. Pretty sure anyone who’s lit off more than a dozen cakes in their lives has seen this multiple times.

My show is on a lake, so cake fires present a new set of challenges to overcome. I cannot just get a hose and put them out right away. They need to just burn until the show is over. Or, I have to stop the show if something seems amiss. To mitigate this issue, it’s a good idea to separate cakes away from each other enough to reduce fire spreading. In my case, I have a limited space on the barge so separation is pretty difficult. When cakes are together, I place 4 layers of heavy-duty tin foil in-between them to remove the paper-to-paper contact so fire doesn’t spread quickly and adjacent cakes have time to be fired normally in the show before it spreads and fires them for me.

The problem to take away from this, is that I used cakes with too many small caliber shells. I purchased the 3 pack of 100 shot 500 gram cakes below. These cakes all caught fire, and were the only ones to catch fire. Therefore, it is my belief, that the paper tubes for these cakes are too thin for the heat generated by the rapid firing of these small aerials and they catch fire more easily.

What Went Well?

Not all is doom and gloom. Here’s a list of things that went well!

• Everyone was safe and had a great time! This is always the most important to me. I see smiles, gasps, oohs and ahhhs, and after the show, everyone is genuinely happy from the experience.
• I did test some of the new 1.4 pro items to make sure there was space and the angles I planned to use would work well.
• I also tested anchoring the dock in the lake prior to show day. The first attempt was a total fail. We used kayaks to tow the dock out and I had cinder blocks on each corner to anchor the dock. Try that in a kayak and you’ll see… it’s not easy! So, we devised a plan to use marine rope (500′) to anchor the docs to the bottom of the lake on the back corners near the shallower parts of the lake, then we had several hundred feet of the rope to pull to shore where the main audience would be. We used that rope to align the dock as well as anchor it to the shore. Worked great!
• Adding foil in-between the cakes undoubtedly saved the adjacent cakes from burning up and lighting prematurely. That went very much according to plan!
• If I wouldn’t have (ehem…) failed at wiring up those jumbo candles, we would have had a 100% fire rate thanks to the flawless performance of the Ignite Firing System. So even though the show had many things not go off, it was of no fault of the equipment. This gives me high confidence in the next show!

The Lessons Learned

Know Your Product

This lesson applies to both the cake duration and list time/prefire time issues. This doesn’t just apply to 1.4 consumer. It applies to all fireworks. If you’re going to rely on the firework for your show and it’s not just filler that you don’t care if it is a different color, shape, size, or duration… You should test the firework prior to adding it to your show. You absolutely cannot rely on product videos or even their labels for that matter. Some fireworks advertise a duration of 50 seconds and last 30! Products also differ in behavior and effect from year-to-year, batch-to-batch! Certain brands are worse than others but that’s for another time. From now on, if I am adding a new product to a show, I will make sure I have an extra to test out. This is where buying by the case can be useful. I may not need all 4 or 6 cakes for the show, but I will have extra to test and use in a future show!

Redundancy Is Your Friend

I chose to use consumer barrage candles. I knew going into it that the fusing situation wasn’t optimal. I had no redundancy. I will probably avoid them altogether now. There are a few 1.4 Pro options, but not many. It’s possible there’s a place for them in a future show. If I do add them again, I will ensure to ensure they fire! Quick fuse and some tape comes to mind. I will have to experiment. Comment if you have experience in this area!

Have Plenty of Backups

I had allocated only two 1.4 Pro 16 shot cakes and two canister shells as backups in the event there was black sky. Well, this show went so bad… It wasn’t enough. I shot all 4 in the first song. Next time, I will probably dedicate a whole 20 shot rack of shells and some cakes as backups. If they are not needed as backups, I will shoot them all in the finale.

Avoid and Prepare For Fires

I am going to avoid high shot count consumer cakes. In the end, they don’t offer much for a pyromusical when you’re trying to be precise. Some high shot cakes like zipper fans will always be needed. In addition, any cake can catch fire. So I will also be paying closer attention to separation for these types of cakes in addition to the precautions I already take.

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Watch The Show!

The video below is the design concept with spliced product videos along with the actual show in the bottom right synced with the design concept to show how it actually turned out. Let me know in the comments if you can spot where I used my “backup” cakes and shells.

Keep learning!
– The Novice Pyro