It used to take a large crew all day just for setup. Had to unload all of the equipment, setup and secure everything, load pyrotechnics then reverse the whole process at the end of the night. We've changed our procedures over the last few years. This was a fairly large show for the area. Now we shoot most shows off of trailers. This show had two 24 foot trailers full of mortars already setup. All we have to do now is load the pyrotechnics and wire them to the control boxes once we get the trailers on site. Saves a ton of time.
Here's a pic of one of our trailers. Racks with mortars on the flatbed. Pyrotechnics are transported in the enclosed box to the shoot site. For the show this weekend we arrived onsite with 5 guys at 1pm and was wired, tested, and ready to shoot by 7:30 pm. We shot at 10pm and were heading home at 11:30pm. In the past when we were setting everything up on the ground this same shoot would have been a 9am to 8pm setup and we would have been breaking down and moving equipment back into box trucks until 1 or 2am.
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