Winnipeg-based company wins international fireworks competition

With thunderous eruptions and explosions of light over the Vancouver skyline, an unwitting observer may have mistakenly thought the city was under attack.

In reality, it was the pyrotechnical handiwork of a Fort-Rouge-based company. Archangel Fireworks, located at 104 Pembina Highway, won this year’s Celebration of Lights competition, held July 23 in Vancouver.

It was the Winnipeg company’s second win in as many years at the international pyro-musical fireworks competition. Archangel’s winning entry featured a Godzilla-like display of lights.

“What we attempted to do with this year’s show is tell the story of an attack by a monster and the battle between humanity and this monster, humanity’s eventual overcoming (the monster) and the celebration,” said show creator Sean Procter.

The show, entitled Attack, was the result of 18 months of planning and included nearly 1,200 shells shot into the air in what amounted to the most tightly-contested affair the festival has seen over its 18-year history.

The festival featured teams from Canada (Archangel), the U.S. and China. Each country put on a 25-minute performance. In the end, it came down to a tie-breaker between Canada and China to determine the eventual winner.

“This year’s judging was anguishing. We were faced with three unique types of excellence, all completely different from each other. The deliberations went on for hours,” said head judge Tiko Kerr.

The seven judges who scored the competition based their values on five criteria — general concept, colour, originality, quality of production, and correlation of music.

After tallying up each country’s final score, the result was a tie.

Normally, each judge would place a single vote for one of the countries that are tied to determine a winner.

However, the seventh judge became ill on the last night of competition and was unable to attend. That created a three-three split with the final decision being left up to Kerr.

“In the final analysis the country that swayed my decision presented, in my mind, a new kind of fireworks experience never seen before,” Kerr said.

“This was not mere pyrotechnics to songs strung together. We feel it is the beginning of a brave and imaginative new experience in fireworks, where a tale is told in fantastic exploding abstractions.”

For Procter, owner Kelly Guille and the rest of the Archangel crew, it was a rewarding win that required attention to detail, particularly to the musical element of the show.

In putting together the piece, Procter used sample tracks from old monster movies he watched growing up such as Godzilla and King Kong, which featured music from Akira Ifukube, a Japanese composer known for his use of heavy brass and dark, ominous tones.

“Music is just as important as the fireworks. The show we did in comparison to our competitors was probably lighter on the fireworks, but I think we used them to a more dramatic effect. It was more about how we used the fireworks as to just having stuff go off in the air, it all had purpose,” Procter said.

“They say something about jazz music where it is not about the notes, it is about the space between the notes and that is a bit of the philosophy behind how we designed the show.”

Procter says they don’t know yet if the company will be invited back to compete for a third time in the Celebration of Light competition, but the win will surely open doors for future international competitions.