`High-def' fireworks good for TV, terrain

A lack of rain in Southern California and elsewhere is turning into a smoldering concern this Fourth of July season, as officials worry fireworks may ignite dry brush in drought-stricken areas.

But Jim Souza sees opportunity.

Souza, who heads Rialto-based Pyro Spectaculars Inc., has developed something he has dubbed "high-definition fireworks," which he hopes will address increasing safety concerns over pyrotechnic safety.

The HD shells are designed to perform at a lower altitude and are packed more compactly, so there is less fallout from shell materials. The fireworks will make their local debut Wednesday at three locations, including the area's largest show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

The idea came to Souza three years ago while he was watching a broadcast of the Macy's New York fireworks show on a high-definition, widescreen television. He noticed the display was unable to adequately capture the scope of his company's fireworks, resulting in a lot of empty black space and a camera angle that was "all over the place."

"When I looked at the TV broadcast I said that something had to change," said Souza, whose family has been in the fireworks business for five generations and has built one of the industry's biggest companies. "They didn't look good."

Souza wanted to develop fireworks that would match the quality and more horizontal format of high-definition televisions.

So in 2005 Souza flew to China to meet with the suppliers that manufacture his fireworks. In all, Pyro Spectaculars spent a year developing the fireworks. The new product debuted last Fourth of July at Macy's New York event, the country's largest fireworks show.

"It was phenomenal -- nothing like it," said Julie L. Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Assn., who watched the New York show live. "I thought it was definitely one of the most spectacular shows I've ever seen."

Paul Souza, Jim Souza's son and a show producer for Pyro Spectaculars, said the new fireworks should be easy to detect, even to the untrained eye. In addition to bursting lower to the ground, the fireworks are packed with smaller stars, the industry term for the pellets that produce an explosion's streak across the sky. The result is fuller bursts with more density and deeper colors.

"It's a lot of smaller, tiny points of light as opposed to half as many bigger points of light," he said. "There's some extra wow factor."