Richard Gallagher, who is the co-founder and creative director of local creative agency, Engine Digital, tweeted me the other day. I’ve never met Richard but sometimes enjoy getting into mini-conversations on Twitter (@VIAwesome), as I’m really only committed to 140 character responses and technically… well… it’s kindof a part of my job here.

“How do you even judge fireworks?” was his question, and although it probably should have it hadn’t really occurred to me that other people might be wondering the same thing. After Richard expressed more interest, and after answering a few of his questions, I decided that I should pull back the veil of the judging process of the 2010 Celebration of Light and do a blog post for our readers.

So to start, the panel is made up of 7 Vancouverites from all different areas of town working in fields ranging from media to event production to retail directing to politics (the full list of judges is at the bottom of this post), and none of us have a background in pyrotechnics. The idea is that we’re supposed to represent the eyes and ears of all Vancouverites as a sort of “for the people, by the people” panel. Some of the more experienced judges (such as our head judge, Jill Krop) have sat on the panel for years while others (like myself) are there for the first time this year… in an official capacity anyway; everybody who watches the fireworks judges them, which is why the panel is made up of the people that it is.

We all meet up each night of the fireworks at The Boathouse restaurant where there’s a VIP wine reception and Brent Mcregor, chairman of the Vancouver Fireworks Festival Society, gives a speech thanking and welcoming that night’s sponsor. He gives a background on the fireworks then introduces us judges and wishes that night’s country the best of luck. The judges then sit at a table together and have dinner, chat about the last show, our kids, our jobs, we debate about radio versus twitter/blogs and the value (or lack thereof) of unions and just generally converse. After dinner we enjoy some cheesecake and beverages and about a half an hour before the show starts two very official looking RCMP officers come to our table and escort us across the street to quite literally the best seats in the house – front and centre on the top of the bathhouse overlooking English Bay.

This is my view every night, along with one of the scoresheets contained within my judging manual:

So back to the original question of “How do you even judge fireworks?”. Well, we judge them under 5 criteria:

1. General Concept: presentation, structure and scale of display. /20
2. Choice and variety of colours. /20
3. Originality of display – what was new and unique. /20
4. Quality of production – rhythm of fire, volume of effects & quality of of construction. /20
5. Correlation of fireworks and music: choice of music, synchronization of effects; adaptation of moods. /20

Each country has a chance of getting a score of 100, and during the show some of us take notes while some of us just take it all in. After the final note has been hit and the smoke begins to clear the RCMP escort us back to the Boathouse where we share our thoughts with each other and are lucky to have Fireworks Producer, Maude Furtado, sit in on our deliberations and tell us what’s what if we have technical questions. We mark down our personal scores, bid each other good night and promise to return in a couple of days.

That’s about it. If you’ve got any questions feel free to post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The official 2010 Celebration of Light judges are:
Jill Krop from Global TV
Councillor Raymond Louie
Roy Hennessey from Shore 104.3 FM
Dolly Wilson from London Drugs
Greg Albrecht from brand.LIVE
Maggie Langrick from the Vancouver Sun
And of course Bob Kronbauer from Vancouver Is Awesome