My first outdoor show:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150354372963660

(Sorry if you don't like FB - video's too rubbish to put on YT)

Comments and feedback welcome.

Setup:

1x ILDA, not sure of the power, but pretty cheap so not much. Pointed through a fence, past the main firing area and then onto the trees.
1x Rave brand STL light. Just does random flower-type patterns - pointed into the audience set to STL, on a switch.
2x Twinkle lights (also rave brand), pointed at the pyro / smoke / trees

Excuse sob story:

The show was on an island, so we took the truck over on the ferry the day before. We were staying in a house there, which gave us the unprecedented oportunity to sit down together and plan out the fireworks and lasers in exquisite detail. I even had a chance to go down the night before and point the gear around and see what it looked like.

We had timelines (on paper), and ideas and sequences. And at least one part of the laser show was syncronized almost exactly with one of the songs and timed to the pyro.

The ILDA was borrowed and the software that came with it is rubbish, so I ended up doing the whole thing with DMX (lightfactory).

We ended up a bit rushed for time, and I didn't get all the effects / playlists done that I wanted, but I had enough to fill in any gap with interesting shapes and patterns. I also didn't get exactly the layout that I wanted and the angle of the ILDA ended up a bit low.

So the show started OK and we did the countdown and the first few pyros, and then the crowd started screaming and we couldn't hear the music properly (it was at the other end of the field), so we completely lost track of the sequence of music and the whole thing just degenerated into pandamonium. The whole plan fell by the wayside and I completely missed the start of the song I had spent over an hour programming to be in perfect sync...

It also didn't help that they were having issues with the firing system which meant about half of it ended up being fired manually and all in random order (whichever ones he could reach).

The audience had a good time though, and at the end of the day, isn't that the main thing? Oh - I I've learnt a whole truckload about outdoor shows and the abilities of the gear. (And making sure you've got enough extension leads)