Newbie - Critique My Show For This Year?

[ZacharyB93]

Greetings to everyone from the Midwest! I am new to the forum, and don't have a lot of extensive experience with fireworks, (especially anything beyond consumer grade), and am very excited to be here to learn what I can from each of you!

That being said, I am posting this tonight because I am in need of a more expert/professional opinion. The church I attend is located in a very small town, (450-500 people), and about four years ago, we started having a get-together on the 4th for our members, their family, and those in the community who didn't have any plans, or anywhere to go. The primary focus was food, but then someone suggested we start doing some fireworks. At first, there wasn't really any structure, people just brought a few with them, and we'd light 'em up. But in the past two years, more and more people have started coming to our church to see the show. We don't advertise it as a professional show, but folks that can't afford a lot typically bring their kids and have a great time, and we enjoy doing it for the community.

This year, we've decided to try to bring a little more structure to the show. Our budget is around the $1,500 mark, and we are going to try to put on approximately a thirty minute show. Again, this is amateur on every level, so there are no firing systems, musical choreography, etc, and the, "fanciest", we will get is fusing a 50 shell mortar rack for the finale, to run behind two Trophy Wife 480 shot cakes that will also be fused together.

In short, I am uploading a pdf file of the spreadsheet I've put together for the show, and would like everyone's opinion on the overall quality of the show for the money. Our priorities are value first, then diversity in effects. We need good duration for the money, but are also willing to upgrade a little here and there to have a good variety, and not be shooting the same thing over and over. Please feel free to offer any constructive criticism you have on our show, and any suggestions on how we can improve on pricing, show quality, staging, etc.

LEGEND:
SHOTS = Number of shots
DUR = Duration of cake, start to finish
POS = Position in staging. Example: Inside Job is in position #9, so it will be the 9th cake we light
AMT = How many of that particular firework is in the show
CON = This determines if the cakes are connected. Example: We will have 2 Trophy Wife cakes. In the CON column, the answer is YES. This means the two cakes will be connected.

Thanks again!

[Engineer Cat]

Welcome to the forum Zach. There's a lot of good cakes in that list. But before diving to deep into what you got here, I'm immediately thinking about..... Why 30 mins?...... Shooting one cake after the other is pretty boring, at least to most of us here. 30 mins is overkill. If I could I would stick to 15 mins max but I usually only do 7 mins shows and they cost around $1,300. Most pro shows these days for town events are only 15 to 20 mins long so I would choose that timing for the Church event. Sounds like your plan for the Trophy wife and 50 shells going up together will work nice. You should put other cakes on top of each other that work well together to cut that time down.

200gr cakes under 500gr cakes always works well cause it fills multi levels of sky and keeps the action going.

[ZacharyB93]

I'm immediately thinking about..... Why 30 mins?......


That's a great question...and I honestly don't have a great answer. I think the 30 mins was just something we came up with because we thought that was kind of the average, and also because the last big show that was put on locally, (Wappapello Lake 2022), was a huge bust this year. This was supposed to be a professional display, there was around 1,200 people who had come out to see it, people showed up hours early in order to get good seating, and the show was right at 10 minutes. Everyone booed, and it was very disappointing. So I think that probably scarred us, and we just didn't want to have people come out, and not get a good-length show. But toning it back to 20 minutes does sound like a good idea. What we may do is just scale back to 25 minutes this coming year, and see how people like that, and then continue to trim it back going forward until we find that perfect length.

[Birdman]

One thing I've learned is that every audience and even every person in the audience is going to have a different opinion, so I suggest you do what you think is best and then adjust for next show after gathering feedback. Generally though, I would suggest avoiding having the whole show be mostly single cakes. Consumer cakes, especially 200g cakes, can get a bit mundane after awhile. I would recommend doing more fused sequences in between some of the bigger cakes, creating some highs and lows and then ending in the big finale. I would also recommend adding a false finale before the main finale. Something big enough to make your audience believe it is the finale but not big enough to compete with the actual finale. This is pretty standard in most shows. Like Eng Cat suggested, when composing your fused sequences try and pair cakes that work well together. Pair low breaks with high breaks or using multiples of the same 200g cakes where you start with one cake and then that sequences grows until it ends with multiple cakes firing. That could then be followed by a single 500g multi-effect or fan cake. Again, the idea is to create highs and lows and keep the audience guessing. Almost everyone is waiting for the finale at a fireworks show so I suggest teasing them along the way to build anticipation. Hopefully without getting too graphic, approach it as one would lovemaking. You want to be Don Juan not just some John....That's my two cents.

[Engineer Cat]

Hopefully without getting too graphic, approach it as one would lovemaking. You want to be Don Juan not just some John....That's my two cents.

You want her to see fireworks, just not boring fireworks. :D

[ZacharyB93]

Great advice! We do have plans for fusing some of the cakes together, but I was planning on fusing multiple of the same cake together...However it does make more sense to fuse a 200g to a 500g instead of fusing multiple 200g's together...Thanks! This is exactly the kind's of advice I was hoping to get!

[Engineer Cat]

Great advice! We do have plans for fusing some of the cakes together, but I was planning on fusing multiple of the same cake together...However it does make more sense to fuse a 200g to a 500g instead of fusing multiple 200g's together...Thanks! This is exactly the kind's of advice I was hoping to get!

If you don't already have knowledge about securing 200g, 500g and proper rack construction you should do some research on that so you can make sure everything is secure and safe on your shoot site. You can find all that information here. And if you can't because there is a lot of info here, feel free to ask and you'll get answers.

[displayfireworks1]

To Zachery893

Thanks everyone on the forums for answering his questions and giving advice. I'll add a few comments in by video. I wish all new post included this much information when asking questions.
.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfE5-Vm_dwY

[BMoore]

You are getting some great advice. One thing you may want to focus on is organizing an opener, a body and finale. The idea is to grab everyone’s attention with the opener, then slow it down for the body (bulk of the show) and then hit them with a finale. In my option 50 shells over 1min 15 seconds is not nearly intense enough. When I budget my shows at least 60% is devoted to the finale. Last year for example 50% of my total product was fired in the last 45 seconds. The finale is what everyone remembers. Timing wise I try for 15-20 minutes. 30 minutes is too long unless extremely well choreographed. A quality 5-10 minute show beats a boring 30 minute show any day.

[ZacharyB93]

Great advice!! Thank you!!

[ZacharyB93]

Thank you sir for your time! I am currently looking at firing systems, and I'm going to post a new thread asking about those

[PG2159]

What is your primary purchasing plan? I remember going to a local store and spending some 300$ for what seemed like a bag of fire works and thinking to myself there has to be a better way to do this. Insert wholesale purchases. Look into it. If your budget is $1300 theres a good possibility you can find wholesalers in your region willing to play ball with you. Dave has advertising agreements with some companies here who take care of pyrotalk members. I sent out several emails to companies I was willing to drive to and lucked out with a great contact at a local wholesaler. The other option is keep and eye out for group buys in your region and hop in on a wholesale purchase. The markup of retail fireworks in pretty crazy, so make sure you educate yourself that aspect of the purchasing as well.

[Sassy Hatter OZFL]

I personally have had great success with "long fuse" shows, the main problem being achieving "perfect" timing and the ability to safely stop/pause the show without running thru cakes looking for a cake to kick. Buy your fuse with about 25% more than what you need of each type. video/time record the batches of fuse(its why you bought extra) and then using a sharpie mark out/time stamp the fuse accordingly, and using quick fuse/BM/sticky attach your cakes to the main fuse at the desired time stamp (sharpie mark). for safety, i would do "5 minute runs", so in case a cake caught fire, rack burst etc. I would have a pause to work with.

[Otherone65]

I agree with a lot of the others about maybe shortening it up a bit to have a little more "wow" factor throughout your show, but it's a once a year event that you want people to enjoy. The crowd at my shows wants to see a little longer show for that reason. I know early on I sometimes tried to drag the show out too long for the amount of fireworks I had. As long as you don't have too much dark sky or too much repetition the crowd will stay attentive. I agree with keeping a decent amount of product for your fake finale and real finale to leave everyone buzzing at the end. I'm currently working on my show for this year and will likely have 40-50% of my product going off between the last 2 songs. Most importantly enjoy it and do what seems right for your situation. Hopefully people like it and donate money to keep growing it.