The Epic Fireworks Blog

The 2010 Edinburgh International Festival Fireworks Concert will this year celebrate “Music from the Movies”, it was announced by Festival Director Jonathan Mills this morning at the launch of the EIF programme taking place in August and early September.

The festival opens on 13th August with John Adams’s El Niño. The Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert, the grand finale of all the festivals, takes place on 5th September under Edinburgh Castle. It’s watched by thousands throughout the city.

Futher details and EIF previews coming later.

More on the Festival Fireworks Concert and Edinburgh International Festival

Oriental Fireworks, although a fairly new name in the UK fireworks industry has already established itself as a producer of high quality display barrages. This is well illustrated by the success of the small 25 shot barrage King Cobra. This sensational small barrage could not have been more popular and was one of our best sellers of last year.

This new single ignition barrage by Oriental Fireworks has a lot of noise and is perfect for lovers of loud fireworks. 100 shots of screaming spinning tails rise up to loud reports (bangs) that will definately make an impression at your fireworks display, whatever the occasion.

Heres the review:

Oriental Fireworks has a lot of noise to make and they do it well with the Jet Screamers 100 shot barrage. This is an insane and terrific noise maker. Screaming jets of spinning tails rise into the air and explode with very loud reports. If you want to make a lot of noise and get noticed this is definitely the way to do it. Perfect for daytime events or anyone who likes to make a racket. This is our favourite new noisy firework and we are sure it will be yours too.

So there you have it, not a lot to say about this one except loud loud loud!!!

Yes kids, believe it or not young people had to work for their entertainment in the olden days.

Above you can see a group of rosy cheeked youngsters out collecting firewood for their bonfire. In those days the bonfire was just as important as the fireworks and it was a matter of pride to ensure that your street/village/club had a bigger bonfire than your local rivals. It was not uncommon for young wags (wag meaning something different in those days, not the wife or girlfriend of a footballer) to sneak out to light the bonfire of their “enemies” the night before bonfire night, leaving them with a pile of ashes rather than a big pile of wood.

Such acts often met similar retaliation and this could mean that no-one had a bonfire come the big night. Such is the nature of man.

We must only hope that these barrels did not contain anything flammable. Can you imagine a group of kids doing something like this nowadays? No, you can’t, because health and safety would have a fit, saying such things as:

“Climbing on top of a pile of wood, terribly unsafe.”

“Those barrels could slip and fall at any time.”

“This is an outrage.”

and other such mutterings.

However surely these are rights of passage for a young lad and made them appreciate their hard work  when they see the flames licking up from their bonfire heap and think “I made that”. This is something that is sadly lacking in todays culture. The kids would much rather sit and play their new computer game “bonfire builder 4: The finding of the pallet”

Now this is definately not the safest lad in the village.

It was common in the good old days for everyone to get rid of all their old crap during the bonfire season. Anything that could burn would be thrown onto the pile. Busted old sofas, the obligatory smelly urine stained mattress (when not occupying a skip), broken doors, piles of old tyres (as seen in the photograph above) that would billow out thick black toxic smoke for days. Nothing was banned from being thrown on a fire, after all, our fire had to be bigger than theirs. Nowadays of course, you cannot burn a piece of wood if it has a dot of paint on it as this will pollute our clean air.

We are all for clean air laws and would not condone burning anything that did not comply. But it did feel natural to launch practically any household item onto a fire, it was like a Spring cleaning, in Autumn and positively enforceed community participation.

And this is what is missing today; Community participation. The image above shows people dancing gaily (that meant something different in the olden days too) sharing each others company and coming together in a spirit of community. This was back in the days when people knew their neighbours forenames and surnames and spoke to each other more than just the morning nod as everyone jumps into their cars. Times were when a man felt like he belonged to street or town or village and did not just live there.

The bonfire was an integral part of this belonging, and like bonfire festivals and events that still go on around the world is a vital part of bringing people together. After all, many people still call it Bonfire Night.

What do you call the 5th of November?

a)Bonfire Night

b)Guy Fawkes Night

c)Fireworks Night

Leave us a comment and let us know.

We all love fireworks right? Of course we do, or we would not be human. And we all love lego right? Sure we do, maybe not as much as when we were younger but still, lego is awesome. So, what happens when you attach your love of fireworks to your love of lego?

You guessed it, its the Epic Fireworks Lego Lovers Fireworks and Lego Photo Gallery.

Daredevils around the world have dreamed of attaching rockets to their bikes, these lego chaps have done it!

never ever ever hold a firework in your hand, even if you are made of lego.

This is a really cool lego picture of a young lego couple sitting on the lego grass, watching the lego fireworks for the 4th of July fireworks display – made of lego.

How awesome is this? very, thats how awesome, very. Lego building there own rockets!

This lego crew have sailed the seven seas carparks to buy fireworks at Sheltons.

Much respect to the builder of this incredible piece of lego art. This must have taken ages to make but it looks brilliant.

Star Wars. Enough said.

This young lad is probably closer than 25Metres from the fireworks here. I wonder if he is wearing safety goggles? He seems to be adjusting something on his face. Parents! keep an eye on your kids at fireworks displays!

This is a great shot of the crowd enjoying the fireworks, it looks like they are standing very close to the action but in all likelihood they are quite a distance from it, the silhouetted figures are a nice effect and make for a really nice photo.

Dancing near the fireworks. This is strongly not recommended.

GI Joe (Action Man for the UK) is standing way too close to the fireworks. However he is a brave soldier, and being made of plastic means that no-one can really get hurt.

OK, this guy is definately made of plastic and as such is also guaranteed to walk away without a scratch. This lego chap should still not be holding a firework as we all know that it is very dangerous. Fireworks Safety is important people!

Even Mickey is getting in on the action “look at me kids! I’m playing with fireworks!” Probably not the best message to send out there Mickey. I hope there was some kind of disclaimer after the show warning people not to attempt this themselves….Speaking of which…Do not attempt to do any of this yourselves people. All the pictures featured here showed trained professionals/plastic toys/muppets who don’t know any better. You do know better so never fool with fireworks.

For literally thousands of cool fireworks photos check out Epic Fireworks Flickr pages

Awesome pair of wings on this guy. Yes, this is another in our series of brilliant sparkler art. Very cool how the trails of the sparks fall to the earth. funky photo.

Send us your sparkler art and if we like it we could even feature right here on the Epic Fireworks blog. The best fireworks blog in the world!

OK, firstly the answer is no no no. It is never a good idea to microwave fireworks of any size. We strongly dissaprove of microwaving explosives and this should not be attempted by anyone. The men in this video are trained experienced professionals…microwavers.

The large firework the guys decided to microwave was of course the Fiery Eye Catherine Wheel which is a beautiful display wheel that spins majestically sending lovely sparks and colours all around. When you put it in a microwave the results are shown above.

It does bear mentioning here that although the title of this video refers to “large” fireworks, this firework is anything but large. For a proper choice of large fireworks check the Epic Fireworks website, large fireworks is what we do.

Once again Epic Fireworks does not suggest anyone tries this themselves, leave it to the crazy Americans on the video. Thank you.

Marvel Fireworks have done it again. Just when you thought you could not pack any more weird and wonderful sound effects into a SIB (single ignition barrage) the amazing Skullcrusher pushes the boundaries even further. The hummers in this one are really unique, we have never heard a sound quite like it from a firework (or anywhere else for that matter) before.

Heres the review:

Marvel Fireworks makes another hit with this amazing 200 shot single ignition barrage. With a duration of just 45 seconds this has a high intensity and after a steady start it really builds up the pace. Crazy and unique hummers and brilliant whistles make this a very unusual barrage and definitely one for noise lovers. Coloured pearls lead onto large swirling silver tails and this accompanies bursting red waves and red and green stars with silver glitter. This is a great fast paced and busy barrage and the sound effects make it a winner every time.

Superb photograph from the opening ceremony of  The Burj Khalfa on 04/01/2010. This is now the tallest building in the world.

Half a mile tall – 168 floors. The design is said to be inspired by the shape of a desert flower. It cost 1.5 billion dollars and took 6 years to complete, bargain.

Heres the video of the opening ceremony which launched more than 10,000 individual fireworks and also feature some cool light show using the 868 stroboscopic lights that are built into the tower and some pretty funky beams on the ground.

And on a completely different note, but jsut to give you an idea of the size of the thing here is a cool video of 2 daredevils base jumping from the building. Awesome.

After the tremendous turnout for the event, some bright spark in Newcastle decided to light the fireworks in broad daylight, tantamount to a crime. Apart from that fiasco the whole event was a real success. Thankfully these turned out to be just the warm up fireworks and the real thing came later, along with a trapeze artist on a heliopshere (just like the Romans would have used).

Over 12 thousand hand selected volunteers were involved in lighting the 500 beacons along the 84 mile-long Wall National Path Trail from Segedunum Roman fort at Wallsend in North Tyneside through Northumberland to Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria.

The fireworks were spectacular said many of the spectators and although they feared at several points for the safety of the girl stuck on the bottom of the heliosphere, a good day and night was had by all.

The 4,000 large crowd which gathered at Wallsend witnessed a startling performance by the German Theatre group Apu which climaxed with four winged angels standing atop the site’s observation tower as the first of the beacons was lit, all filmed from above by a camera crew in a helicopter (and you thought there was a recession on) this was all topped off with what can only be described as a fireworks display. As it was a fireworks display.  Of course it would be irresponsible for us here to fail to mention that with 500 large fiery beacons marking the Romans wall that there was more than one “Roman Candle” being lit that night (and the award for the worst joke of the day goes to…).

The event, which captured national attention, was used to bring more awareness of the World Heritage site that marked the Roman Empires most Northerly point. It is worth mentioning here that although the Romans were able to capture most of Europe with ease, they were unable to take Scotland finding the Scottish methods of fighting (using broken buckfast bottles) to scary for them, the wall was built to keep the invading barbarian hordes from the North from invading their empire.

Related article by Moregeous: http://moregeous.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/illuminating-hadrians-wall-blog-carlisle/