© Nick Alloway
The glorious visual spectacle of a firework display was a central inspiration for our new BRAVIA 4K television advert, but a truly great display takes a lot of work. We wanted to talk to those who put on displays for a living to find out just how much detail goes into each and every one, and so we got in touch with Titanium Fireworks, the team behind some of the biggest displays imaginable including the London 2012 Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, no less.
Around about this time every year, Titanium Fireworks find themselves in the midst of planning for one of their most important annual events - the London New Year’s Eve display. “On something like that, we have a crew of about 36 guys working for six days after Christmas and over New Year delivering that display,” says Darryl Fleming, company director and creative director of Titanium Fireworks, responsible for some of the biggest displays in the UK. This will be the sixth year that Darryl has been involved in the display for London’s New Year celebrations, but it never gets any less stressful.
He’s responsible for around 10,000 fireworks that shoot from up to 150 different locations, including from barges lined up on the Thames, several positions along the Embankment and the London Eye. If the fireworks aren’t ready on time, the show simply can’t go ahead. “With a live broadcast on BBC One and 13 million people watching it live...turning round to the client and saying ‘can I have another couple of hours before I hand my work in?’ just isn’t an option. Our deadlines are finite; there’s no negotiation.”
Masters of their craft
Darryl and his team have been working on this year’s New Year’s Eve display since mid-September, and their work won’t be done until the very last firework goes off over Big Ben early on New Year’s Day.
“Up to the event I’m normally OK, but the worst bit for me is the last few hours just before. We try and make sure that we are finished well in advance of the event itself, but one of the unique challenges we have with London’s New Year’s Eve is that so much of the event and the display itself can’t be rigged until the very last minute, [including] the London Eye. We’re not allowed access to the Eye to put any fireworks on it until about 6pm on December 31st, and so having such a crucial part of the show still being built with only two hours to go until midnight is very, very stressful.”
© Titanium Fireworks
© Nick Alloway
Every Titanium Fireworks display takes several months of planning from start-to-finish. Firstly the music has to be chosen, which “very much dictates the pace, volume and intensity of the fireworks”. Then Darryl goes about designing the show itself, which can take anywhere from four or five days to a month. “For me, it’s a bit like writing a book,” he enthuses. “Sometimes you have your mojo and you can sit down for 12 hours solid and churn out pages and pages of prose, and then other times you feel you’re not quite there. I don’t like to force the creative process, and sometimes I have to take a day off or spend a few hours away and then go back to it.”
Celebration of detail
Once complete, the team then start facing the more logistical problems. Each firework is individually picked, numbered, sequenced and boxed up, and then it’s all transported to the event - one box at a time. “All the stakes are raised by the fact that we’re actually handling explosives. It’s not like you can unload a truckload of fireworks onto a barge and load them into the holders. The whole process is very carefully planned so that it’s literally one box at a time.”
Once each firework is rigged up and the final checks are made, the crew finally get to take a breather, enjoy the show and breathe in the atmosphere of the night. “As soon as the show is finished, all that work and pressure is just released and there’s a lot of relief, and then you can soak up the appreciation of the audience. [With the New Year’s Eve displays], when you’ve got a quarter of a million people along the Embankment clapping, cheering, hugging each other and saying ‘Happy New Year’, you feel like you’ve done a good day’s work. The euphoria afterwards is very addictive.”
Behind the Scenes with Titanium Fireworks at the Forth Road Bridge 50th Anniversary from Titanium Fireworks on Vimeo.
Although it’s surely hard to top the feeling of watching your own hard work illuminating the skies of central London, Darryl’s favourite show to date actually took place 436 miles away, for the 50th anniversary of the Forth Road Bridge in South Queensferry, Scotland. “It was certainly the largest display that’s ever been fired in the country since the Millennium. The sheer scale and size of it was something to behold, and that was a very special project to be involved with. When the kilometre-long waterfall erupted from the bottom of the bridge, gently cascading down the river, it just sent a massive tingle down my spine.”
Titanium Fireworks truly are masters of their craft. They spend months fine-tuning their displays in order to deliver an incredible entertainment experience, and we think every single detail should be properly appreciated. This kind of attention to detail is shared by the engineers of our new 4K BRAVIA televisions, which is exactly why we wanted to bring the two together - each firework brought to life by Sony’s 4K technology.
