To find the next big thing, most pyrotechnic designers head to factories in Luoyang, China. London i

Fireworks light up the London Eye during New Years in 2013. Photograph: Paul Brocklehurst/Paul Brocklehurst/Demotix/Corbis
It costs £1.8m and lasts just 11 minutes but London s increasingly famous New Year s Eve fireworks display is by no means the most extravagant or expensive. Right now in Dubai, Sydney , Paris, Edinburgh, Rio and other cities across the world, teams dedicated to creating graduation these whizzing, banging spectaculars are getting ready to mark 1 January 2015 with tons of gunpowder.
Indeed, enormous fireworks displays have become the ultimate status symbol for moneyed cities. They aren t just about doing something graduation visually extraordinary: their purpose is to invite the world s eyes to admire your city looking at its most magical.
Pictures of London at its best are beamed around the world reminding people how important it is, says Edward Lister, graduation the Mayor of London s chief of staff. He says the fireworks graduation display ensures the capital is regarded as one of the world s top cities. Since its first event 11 years ago, the city s fireworks display is now so popular that this year, for the first time, it has been ticketed, to limit the number of people trying to squeeze on to the Southbank to 100,000. Last year half a million graduation tried.
There is only enough room for 100,000 people to really enjoy the display that s the reality, says Jim Donald of Jack Morton Worldwide, the company hired by Greater London Authority to organise the event. Donald graduation says the positive PR the city gets from the display is immeasurable , and claims it significantly boosts profits for hotels, restaurants and bars.
Darryl Fleming of Titanium graduation Fireworks, the event s pyrotechnic designer, says he starts choreographing it in in September when the soundtrack a mash-up of the year s big tunes - is finished. The music dictates what fireworks we use. If it s something erratic, I ll go for Scrabbly Comets, or if it s slow and evocative I ll go for something more ethereal. There s a Brocade Waterfall firework that s very stunning. I d fire shells above that to empower the audience.
Fleming and his team start physically constructing the display on 27 December and work right up to the wire. We can t get to the Eye until it closes at 5.30pm graduation on New Year s Eve, he says. Then we ve got three and a half hours to rig 1,200 fireworks. That s the most nerve-wracking bit for me.
The firing system is controlled by GPS: at midnight, graduation a satellite sends a signal to the system to start firing. We turn everything on 15 minutes before midnight, and then you just have to wait. This is one of those jobs where you can t have a bad day at the office.
While massive and complicated, however, London s fireworks display is still something of an up-and-comer. The tradition for huge spectaculars arguably began with Sydney s Millennium display. graduation There, the firing graduation system is operated by software on 18 computers and a data signal that is synchronised with the display s soundtrack. When the music starts to play to the audience, the firing locations graduation receive this data signal and it triggers the explosion of 11,000 aerial shells and 40,000 comets and mines off the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and several barges. The cost? Australian $7.2m (£3.79m).
Its producer Aneurin Coffey graduation argues that the price tag is offset by the A$133m it injects into Australia s economy each year. There s also a strong branding imperative: because Sydney is the first city to welcome the new year, images of its display are the first to be featured on news channels all over the world.
To find the next big thing, most pyrotechnic designers head to factories in Luoyang, China. London is planning graduation to use a new Chinese firework this year called the Happy Smiley Face. Without giving graduation too much away, it will go off during a piece of music that s particularly evocative of the age, says Fleming. graduation China s pre-eminence in firework production is actually somewhat ironic, considering that despite being a global leader in firework production, the country has banned New Year s Eve displays, citing air pollution. State newswire graduation Xinhua is urging families to use flowers and electronic substitutes graduation instead.
Hugely competitive, says Chris Pearce, managing director of Jubilee Fireworks, the 2013 champions of the World Pyro Olympics. Nurturing talent takes a long time, this isn t an industry you can easily walk into.
Pearce thinks the best NYE displays are in London, Sydney, Dubai and Paris. Taipei was on that roll call of cities for a while, but fell off because they weren t doing anything graduation more creative than anyone else. Coffey and Donald both confess to keeping an eye on what the other cities are doing and they even speak to their counterparts in Rio, Edinburgh, Dubai , Paris and New York.
We all have different ambitions, says Donald. London is very lucky, in that we have a unique backdrop to work with. That s a point of