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This summer, one of our Bolivian clients, Leonardo Mauricio Zelaya Salinas, along with the Fireworks Group Bolivia, planned, designed and executed the pyrotechnic ceremonies for the 2018 South American Games, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia. We were lucky enough to spot the post on facebook and give this display the proper attention it deserves!

The South American Games are a regional multi-sport event featuring participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The first games were held in La Paz, Bolivia in 1978. Since then, they have been held every four years. The competitions are similar to what you would see in the Olympic Games, encompassing various sports from disciplines such as aquatics, cycling, football, gymnastics, roller sports, volleyball, and others. This year Columbia placed first, followed by Brazil, and Venezuela in third.

Leo was generous enough to provide some insight on the equipment he used for these displays, as well as some video footage. The upper video is a video of the ceremonies themselves, and the lower video is a short documentary they produced chronicling their journey to make these shows a reality.

In May, one of our European dealers, Stephan Stotz, along with Allan Madsen and Mahd Fireworks participated in the annual Sternencup, or StarsCup. StarsCup is a German fireworks competition hosted by SternenGalerie. Every year pyrotechnicians from SternenGalerie form into 5 small teams of 6 to 8 people each to create a 5 minute pyromusical. Each team is given the same budget and timeframe to design the show. Teams compete for both the Jury Award, and the Audience Choice Award. this year the Jurys Award was won by Team Dänemark!

Sternengalerie is one of the biggest wedding fireworks companies in Europe, with over 400 weddings shot each year. Most of these events take place in Germany, but they also shoot in France, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark. Around 70% of these shows are shot using COBRA!

We were also lucky enough to have Allan Madsen from Mahd Fireworks send us another video of a show they put on in Bohmte, Germany for Götter Dämmerung. Götter Dämmerung is an event held annually in Germany, hosted by Explosive Arts. Each year they invite a display company from another country to perform with them. This year they chose Allan Madsen and Mahd Fireworks and boy they did not disappoint!

We wanted to take a moment to highlight some incredible shows by one of our longstanding clients, El Volcan. El Volcan designs and puts on many shows across Mexico and Latin America. Their shows often feature large, elaborate set pieces, tightly timed ground effects, unique parabolic comets, and exquisite layering.

The first video is a short pyro musical set to, "Bohemian Rhapsody". This is a 360 video!

The second video contains a few excerpts from a show put on in Jocotepec Jalisco. Check out the set pieces!

The third video really showcases El Volcans beautiful comet work and layering.

The fourth video includes some really neat chases.

Red Bull Crashed Ice is a world tour of a winter extreme sporting event, ice cross downhill, which involves downhill skating in an urban environment on a track with steep turns and high vertical drops. It is similar to ski cross and snowboard cross, except with ice skates on an ice track.

This year Rick Simpson, of Aerial Fireworks, was given the opportunity to provide the pyrotechnics for the event.

Rick used 9 18Ms and an 18R2 to fire this event, which was split into 4 segments. There was a kick off, final four contestant introductions, finish line award presentation, and a 4 minute designed finale display. The 4 minute display was fully scripted, while the other events were step fired manually.

We reached out to Rick to share his thoughts on the event, this is what he had to say:

What an amazing event! Aerial Fireworks got the opportunity to provide the pyro and fireworks for the Red Bull Crashed Ice 2018 World Championships. I am so proud of our amazing crews and volunteers who made this possible with 3 days notice. We have the best in the business!

Cobra has definitely become our system of choice, we have also recently added numerous 18R2, 36Ms, 18Ms, and audio boxes to give us 5 systems capable of shooting over 1000 cues. Thank you to Scott Smith and all the gang at Cobra. As a fireworks company shooting over 100 shows per year, we rely heavily on our firing systems and chose Cobra to replace our existing Pyrosure, Firelinx, FireOne and Pyromate systems for their reliability, durability, and simplicity. We have fired numerous shows in minus 39 degrees celsius (-36 F) and are pleased to report 100 % firing results.