Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong

More Fireworks

While we're talking about fireworks and how much I love them, I remembered something that I wanted to share. Back in 1999 going into 2000, I worked on one of the many Millennium specials that were on TV that year. Specifically, I worked on the CBS version that was broadcast with President Clinton from the Lincoln Memorial. I was in Washington DC (one of my favorite cities) for two weeks for this show. I was the Tape Associate Director and spent most of my time in editing getting all the tape playbacks together.

One of the highlights was a 26 minute film produced by Steven Spielberg. It was called "The Unfinished Journey" and it was about America's life, cultural and historical. If I recall, it was in 5 sections narrated by Maya Angelou, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Edward James Olmos, Sam Waterston and President Clinton himself. John Williams scored it, of course, and it was quite amazing. I have it on DVD for those that feel the need to see a copy. I remember having to ask a music question and called John Williams office and the person on the phone said "Hi, this is John." Yup, the man was answering his own phone and he couldn't have been nicer. G (this was before we were together) was in several meetings with Mr. Spielberg and he said that was really cool too.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the big climax after this movie and after the President gave his "Happy New Millennium" speech was fireworks. The fireworks were timed *EXACTLY* to go off exactly on certain beats of music. Think big bursts during the "1812 Overture" and the tympani hits. Anyway, the only way to time it all out so that the fireworks went off perfectly to the correspond with the last 20 seconds counting down to midnight was for them to have an actual countdown. On the videotape, we have 4 channels of audio. 1 and 2 are the usual music mix that you year. Unless it's mixed in, you never hear channels 3 & 4. The fireworks company had ME do their countdown for them. They gave me the exact words they needed to hear "T minus 1 minute". "T minus 45 seconds", etc. They wanted their countdown to be 1/2 a second ahead of the actual count to allow for the delay. So when the tape was playing back, we had channel 3's audio sent just to the fireworks operators and they would set off the fireworks at the exact time. It went off without a hitch and the fireworks were spectacular! So, in my own little way, I was cueing the fireworks for the Millennium. The rest of the show was completely hellish but that part was really cool at the time, if I say so myself. And it's still pretty cool to think about all these years later.

Labels: Fireworks, Lincoln Memorial, Millennium, President Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Washington DC

posted by Juls @ 12:34 AM