• Its 10 to 2 atlanta in the 6th. The braves may just win this one!! #

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The girls came to the game on August 1st (we were watching my nephews, so Amy brought all 5 kids down) to see the game and the fireworks show after the game. Its a good way to kill a friday night if you’re looking for something to do during the summer, whether or not the braves are winning. Anyway, they got down to the park in time for the opening pitch and they got to see the braves get hammer by the brewers. Always a fun night when the home team looses.

It doesn’t matter to the little ones though, they have more fun being at the park (and running the base in SkyField) then actually watching the game. They stayed for the show afterwards and got to see one of the better shoots this season. the show ran for just under 7 minutes to a retro (70’s) theme and had all the favorites when it comes to pyro. You can check out the video below. Boy, I can’t wait for this season to be over!!

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Well, baseball kicked off last month (the beginning of April) and by this point we were supposed to have had three Friday Night Fireworks shows…. So far, we’ve had two. The April 4th show was rained out (game called before it even started) but the other two have been superb shows so far.

Each show has a theme to it (chosen several months ago by the Braves) and it choreographed to the music so that its prettier than a dance. The shows are taking us about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to layout and wire, but we’re still done with plenty of time to spare and so far, we’ve had two 100% shows (which is pretty damned good).

This past week Gruntled came by with a couple of his friends and they were able to see the setup before we shot. I don’t think they realized what it took to put on a show like this. Most people are amazed when they see the final product (especially after seeing what it looks like setup).

Anywho, I found some video of the 4/18 show (it was latin themed) on myspace… so here….

Braves Friday Night Fireworks

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I’m not a huge college (or even pro for that matter) football fan, yet for the past several years I’ve found myself sitting high above the crowd at the Georgia Dome for the Peach (come Chick-Fli-A) bowl on New Years Eve. Its one of the “perks” of doing pyro in the Atlanta area. Indoor pyro is a totally different beast than a larger outdoor show. Often times the work is harder on the indoor than the outdoor show for a couple of reasons I won’t go in to but I’ve decided I rather prefer outdoor displays to indoor stuff.

Last year’s game was ok as Georgia was playing in the bowl game. This year was cool as I could sit there and yell go Tigers and it didn’t matter who had possession of the ball. Not to mention it but the sea of Orange that encircled the dome was amazing as well (both Auburn and Clemson have orange as their color). It was actually a good game as well and a packed house (I looked around the dome from my perch at the top and was unable to find more than a dozen empty seats at kickoff!). Going by the stats, Auburn deserved to win. They had possession longer, they threw for more yards and had more first downs than Clemson, but Clemson wasn’t going to give up with out a fight.

The game ended regulation play at 17 -17 and for the first time in the bowl’s 40 year history, it went in to over time. Clemson took the lead on field goal but Auburn answered back with a TD to win the game. It ended up being a rather exciting match and both teams were pretty evenly paired up. Its hard to not get drawn in to the excitement of the game in that atmosphere.

Anywho, my job through out the game was to sit in the upper observation booth on the Auburn (home team) endzone and fire off four shots whenever a team scored. Pretty easy and a little boring. Not to mention that I had been sitting up there since about 4:30pm that afternoon and had spent all but maybe two hours of my day up there. New Years came and went with a flourish as we heard the rockets going off outside the dome, we were too concerned with breaking down the gear (we had to pull our cables out of a mess of fiber optic cables) so we could head home. By the time my head hit the pillow at 3am, I had been going for about 21 hours solid. In the pyro business, we’re often the first in and the last out at an event. All in all it was fun but one year, I’d like to be asleep in my bed before the new year rolls in.

How’d you spend your new years eve??

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Some of my more avid readers (do I have any?) know by now that I do contract work for Melrose Pyrotechnics and a couple of other Professional Fireworks Companies (melrose is by far one of the best). I handle the Friday Night Fireworks for the Atlanta Braves games and shoot some other shows for them when they need me too. Usually the 4th of July is a busy time for me and this year was no different. Except that, since the Braves were out of town this year, I was asked to take my Crew down to shoot a barge show at Daytona Beach.

Under the best possible circumstances, this would not have been an issue. Even under some of the possible circumstances, this wouldn’t be any worse than a normal 4th of July show, and it was looking like that was going to be the case again this year, until I lock the keys in the truck.

Let me explain. I drove down to Coco Beach on Monday, July 2nd (after a half day of work) and got to the hotel at about 10pm. Met Corey there and checked in, went to sleep. Woke up around 7am to drive an hour (one way) to pick up our equipment truck. We get the truck, stop by lowes to pick up 25 bags of playground sand, and head to the port (which, by the way, is a royal pain in the ass to get in to). finally get to the barge around 11:30am.

We pull up and are greeted by something that resembles a rusting pile of metal floating on salt water. The barge was 120′x45′x7′. Compared to the other barge in port (that was for the Coco Beach show less than two miles from port) ours was tiny. It would be like comparing an H2 to a Mini Cooper (with our barge being the Cooper). Needless to say, we probably should not have been out at sea on the barge we were on.

Set up went ok on Tuesday, the rain held off and we had everything set by 4pm (which is good for a show of this size). I get a call that because we have to leave so early in the morning, they want to drop the product off that evening so it is already in port when we get there in the morning. Thats cool, so Jason, Joey and Corey head back to the hotel to clean up, while I catch some Z’s in the truck waiting on Marty to drop off the product. He comes and goes and just after him and I move all the product to my truck, the Three Amigos come back (except that Joey couldn’t get in to port because he had an unauthorized passenger with him…).

I get the keys to the truck from Corey (along with my car keys), move the truck to a parking space and write a note for the dash with my contact info. Mind you, I lay the keys down on the seat of the truck before i slip the note on the dash, turn and lock the truck door and close it. Before it clicked shut, I realized that the keys were inside. By this point, my face looks like Brad Pitts in Ocean’s 12 when he realizes that Catherine Zeta-jones took his cell phone.

So, we call Ryder Customer Support (who are very helpful by the way) and they dispatch someone to come unlock the truck. An hour later, he shows up (after a huge hassle at the gate to the port) and tries for the next two hours (in a pouring rain) to unlock the truck. After trying unsuccessfully with the fat slim jim he has, he calls in his buddy thomas (which is another hassle) with a smaller slim jim and has it open in three tries. Get the keys, head to the hotel to shower, grab a bite at waho (waffle house), and hit the walmart to stock up for Wednesday.

After a brief sleep (6 hours) we head back to the port, load our product on the barge, find out we have to have the fire chief of Port Canaveral inspect the barge and the permits (even though we’re shooting the show in daytona…) and we’re finally underway.

Mind you, moving 7 miles an hour, for 77 miles, is an 11 hour trip (one way). Captain Brian, the tug captain, was surprised that we were going to be on the barge and not the tug, and he warned us that if things got rough, he might not be able to help us much…

Out side of rough seas (4 foot maybe) on the trip up (I was sick several times) preventing us from working a steady pace, the weather on the trip up was fairly good. It wasn’t until we were finishing up as we sat held off the pier at Daytona Beach that things got rough. about 20 minutes before the show, a fairly good size wave (10 to 12 feet) came up over the front of the barge, destroyed the shelter we were supposed to use to shoot from and wiped out half the display. At that point I called the show, and the next day, news reports would report it as everything from the product was ruined to the display was washed in to the sea.

Captain Brian tried his best to get us off the barge, however, as it was not a “rescue” the Coast Guard would not come out and the tug could not get close enough to the barge to get us off safely, so we had to ride back to Port Canaveral on the barge, with nothing but clear plastic tarps to protect us from the wind and rain. It was a long night.

We get close to port about 8am and the port authority is weary about letting us in to port with the mortars still loaded, until we impress upon them that they’re safer loaded than having the product laying out on the deck. We finally pull in to port around 10:30 am. Twenty Six hours after we left, with out having fired a single shot. We still have to unload the show, which, other than the lightning storms around us, is fairly routine.

The crew worked hard and I’m proud of the way we handled the whole process, it could have been a whole lot worse (of course, it could have been tons better). Had we been on the bigger barge, we might have had a show…

More Photos from the 4th

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