Sky painters: How two Thomasian alumni mastered the art of pyrotechnics

FIREWORKS BURST across a small laptop screen. In a classroom at the Beato Angelico Building, two teenagers sat side by side, watching the patterns rise and fall, dance and evanesce. This was how they spent most of their time.

They do not know it yet, but years later, they will be the artists behind every pyro-musical show displayed at the University.

Don Miguel Villarosa has always had an obsession with fireworks. He taught himself how to design fireworks shows by binge-watching tutorial videos and pyro-musical shows on YouTube, then a new video streaming website. But he felt that he was alone in his interest — or so he thought.

One day, Villarosa was in a classroom watching fireworks videos. He was majoring in Advertising Arts at the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD). A blockmate, John Oliver Zeng, who was a seat away from Villarosa, looked over. He approached Villarosa.

“Mahilig ka rin ba sa fireworks? (Do you also like fireworks?)” Zeng asked, surprised.

Villarosa, equally surprised, nodded and adjusted his laptop so that Zeng could see.

Because their seats in the classroom were alphabetically arranged, a girl sat between them. Eventually, Villarosa and Zeng’s conversations about fireworks went on and on every day, so much so that all their talk about gunpowder and fire and the art of creating beauty out of them became unbearable for the girl.

“Let’s switch. You two talk,” the girl said one day.

Since then, they have pursued and mastered their lifelong passion: painting the night skies with fire.

Setting the stage

It was a usual work day for Zeng. As students trickled into the campus and milled around, his crew worked at the UST Grandstand like ants working in quiet coordination. It was the morning of last year’s Paskuhan, and they still had work to do. Zeng is a quiet man, and was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, grey khaki pants and a cap with a long towel cascading underneath to protect himself from the heat.

He is the technical director of pyro-musical shows at the University and has been for 13 years. His job is to ensure that everything is in place.

The fireworks are usually set up in what is probably the least visited spot in the University: the roof of the grandstand. To reach it, one needs to climb the side of the structure from a balcony three stories high, through a set of steel bars jutting out from the wall. The steps, overlooking the field, resemble a rock-climbing course — except there are no harnesses nor foams, and one misstep meant a potentially fatal fall.

From the balcony, Zeng clutched onto a step, put his foot on the railing and lifted up himself. He then climbed the wall with ease and, when he reached the roof, exchanged smiles with his crew of nine.

They had been there since the day before, transporting the explosives up the deck through a basket brought up and down by a pulley. That day, they were adding the finishing touches to their show. Rows of yellow tubes sat in metal racks and overlooked the dormitories of P. Noval Street. These are called mortars, and they work much like cannons.

When a firework is ignited, the gunpowder below the mortar will launch an explosive shell into the sky, like a cannonball. The shells, made of clay, contain different powdered chemicals and metals inside them; when they explode in the sky, the chemicals burn, creating blinding colors.

Zeng oversaw his crew connecting copper wires from the mortars to rectangular metal boxes called junction boxes. When Zeng presses the start button from his laptop, a central controller will alert the boxes, which will then send electrical signals to the mortars and commence the show.

Designing a show

“Ako, hindi ako umaakyat doon — takot ako doon eh (I don’t go up there, I am afraid of it),” Don Miguel Villarosa told The Flame days before the Paskuhan.

Villarosa is the official show designer of the University’s pyro-musical shows and has also been for 13 years. But unlike Zeng, who needs to make sure that the pyrotechnics are in their perfect places on the day of ignition (and needs, sometimes, to climb dizzying heights), his work starts months before.

That day, Villarosa was wearing a short-sleeved polo with a psychedelic print showing penguins playing golf on pastel rainbows. He also wore gold rings on both hands.

He opened his laptop — a dual-screen one that had, on its upper screen, the Main Building overwhelmed with fireworks — and ran an application called “Finale 3D,” where he designs and simulates all shows. From the homepage, he scanned a long list of files.

“Wala pa kaming tulog (We haven’t had enough sleep),” he said.

The days between December to January are the busiest for people in their trade, he explained. Last New Year’s Eve, the duo had six shows going off all at once at 12 a.m.; in this year’s Chinese Lunar New Year, they lit up the Binondo-Intramuros Bridge and Rockwell Center.

He opened a file named “UST PASKUHAN 2024 Pyromusical.” On the screen is a detailed 3-D rendering of the grandstand (complete with the Paskuhan Christmas tree), the Buenaventura Garcia Paredes, O.P. Building (BGPOP) and the Beato Angelico Building set against a black sky.

“This show is our most technical yet,” Villarosa said, then pressed play.

As fireworks flew and burst on the screen in sync with pop songs, Villarosa pointed to single jets of light that flew from the Grandstand.

“It’s our first time this year to hit every beat of the songs with those single shots called comets,” he said.

When Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” played, comets flew for every word in the chorus.

“Papatayin nila ako ‘pag nag-set-up sila, kasi ang hirap nito talaga,” he said, grinning briefly to his colleague, who was one of Zeng’s team members.

Villarosa also designs his own fireworks. According to him, manufacturers in China do not produce customized fireworks with complex color combinations unless you buy them in bulk. The costs were too high and the production too impractical.

Villarosa and Zeng, on the other hand, work under Dragon Fireworks, Inc., one of the largest local manufacturers in the Philippines. Villarosa has the freedom to play with whatever combination or shape he can imagine — he just needs to send his designs over to the factory in San Rafael, Bulacan, for them to become real. Each firework in every show made by the two is tailor-made.

Much like a painter, Villarosa likes to fall into a trance when designing their shows. He said he designed the Paskuhan show for 24 hours straight without sleep: “Sa harap na ko ng laptop ko kumain (I even ate in front of my laptop),” he said.

He opened a new project, an empty one that had an endless expanse of grass. He hovered his cursor down to the long list of effects on the second screen — most of them curiously named after flora and fauna: chrysanthemum, peony, pistil, willow, fish — and clicked on one.

Red flashes flew from a spot in the side. One gets a sense of the endless possibilities a designer has, but Villarosa described the simulator as a “dead canvas.” Their art does not come alive until it explodes in the sky and stuns its spectators.

Zeng makes sure that, in rain or shine, their art does come alive. He corrects the angles of the fireworks and makes sure that no shot will hit any building or fall to the crowd.

“We check and balance. Everything goes through Oliver. Parang ‘yun ‘yung paraan namin kung paano kami natuto (It’s the way we learned things),” Villarosa said.

‘Emoting’ a song

Designing a pyro-musical show is a matter of storytelling. There was a term Villarosa kept mentioning: “emoting.”

“Every time we have a show, our goal is to ‘emote’ any song that is given to us through fireworks,” he said.

Emoting in the firework maker’s vocabulary is the art of choosing to ignite the right fireworks at the right time.

“There are shows out there where everything just explodes. When you design a show, it’s not enough to think, Ah, maganda ‘to, from the designer’s point of view. You need to put yourself in the audience’s place. ‘Pag ako ang audience, magagandahan ba ako dito? Maaantig ba ‘yung puso ko? (If I were the audience, would I be impressed? Would I be touched?)”

In 2013, when they competed in the Pyronale, an international fireworks competition held in Berlin, Germany, they used the Filipino song “Tanging Yaman” in their eclectic soundtrack. (They also threw into the mix a rondalla rendition of tinikling music, to which green comets spewed laterally on each beat, resembling bamboo poles opening and closing).

During that segment, the fireworks danced with so much grace that time seemed to slow down. Villarosa was surprised to see some spectators wiping their eyes. He realized that fireworks can deeply move anyone if the designer makes the right decisions and hits the right spots.

Their show won the gold trophy and the people’s choice trophy in the competition.

“Some designers do not care about emotional impact,” Villarosa said.

“ ‘Basta maganda, marami, putok lang nang putok.’ Hindi kami ganu’n.”

(‘As long as the fireworks look good, are many and explode nonstop.’ We are not like that.)

Initial sparks

Painting the sky with color and light has always been a calling for Villarosa since he was a young boy. 

“Sobrang fascinated ako sa fireworks bata pa lang. ‘Di ako bumibili ng pagkain dahil ‘yung pambaon ko sa school ipangbibili ko ng fireworks,” he recalled.

(I have been so fascinated by fireworks since I was a child. I didn’t buy food using my school allowance because I would buy fireworks with it.)

On some days, he and his personal driver would secretly ride off to Bulacan and buy firecrackers.

In 2005, Villarosa entered college. His thesis, titled “Total Fireworks Campaign of Dragon Fireworks for Wedding Services,” was completed with the help of Zeng, who connected Villarosa with Dragon Fireworks. Zeng’s family business provided charcoal for fireworks factories in Bulacan: pyrotechnics also surrounded Zeng during his boyhood.

In 2009, just after graduation, Villarosa and Zeng teamed up for their first project under Dragon Fireworks. A year later, they helmed the first pyro-musical show in UST for the University’s Quincentennial celebrations. Before, an orchestra from the UST Conservatory of Music would play music during fireworks displays, but they were not synchronized.

They went big in their show for their alma mater: fireworks flew not only from the grandstand but also from the University’s Main Building, the Santísimo Rosario Parish and the Arch of the Centuries. Since then, no Paskuhan or Baccalaureate Mass has been complete without a pyro-musical show made by the duo.

At present, Dragon Fireworks holds five international awards under their leadership.

“Siguro nakatulong ang pagiging artist namin ni Oliver, kasi nga CFAD alumni kami (Maybe it helped that me and Oliver were artists, since we both came from CFAD),” Villarosa said. 

“Our paint is the fire, and the sky is our canvas.”

Unextinguished

Despite his awards, Villarosa still considers the moment he got his family’s full support as his greatest achievement.

Nearing his 21st birthday, Villarosa and his family were gathered in a restaurant after Sunday mass. His father asked him what type of car he would like to be gifted for his début. 

“Ayaw ko ng kotse,’ (I don’t want a car)” Villarosa told him.

“Puwede bang ‘yung pangbili ng kotse hihiramin ko na lang at ipangbili ko nalang ng firing system? (Can I just buy a firing system with the money for the car?)”

The firing system he referred to was the automated system responsible for setting off the fireworks.

Villarosa’s father initially planned for his son to work in their family business, which focused on providing raw materials for San Miguel Corporation. Hearing his son’s contrasting ambitions, he was not having any of it. He believed that the fireworks business was an industry that “had no money.”

“Sobrang galit niya (He was so angry),” Villarosa recalled.

His father’s voice grew so loud that diners looked at them.

“Sinabi niya na kung itutuloy ko raw ‘yung fireworks, idi-disown niya ako (He told me that if I pursued the fireworks career, he would disown me).”

His mother and uncle remained supportive of his dreams, with the latter telling Villarosa’s father that people would become more successful if you gave them the freedom to do what they wanted.

For a time, Villarosa did work for their family’s business, but he held onto his passion by secretly handling projects with Dragon Fireworks.

One night, in October 2010, he and Dragon Fireworks were competing in the First Asian Sky Wizardry Competition at Enchanted Kingdom, in Laguna — one of their first competitions as a duo.

On that same evening, Villarosa’s parents were all set to watch American singer David Foster’s concert at Araneta Coliseum, in Quezon City; they had bought front-row tickets.

“Nagulat ako (I was surprised) — they cancelled,” Villarosa said.

“Pumunta sila sa Enchanted Kingdom at nanood sila (They went to Enchanted Kingdom and watched).”

He recalled seeing them arrive at the venue long before the show began. Once the display commenced, his mother, ever supportive from the start, stood beside his father.

“Pagka–start ng unang putok iyak ako nang iyak, dahil do’n ko na-appreciate tatay ko (When the first shot flew I cried and cried, because that was when I appreciated my father).”

It was a moment of realization for Villarosa: to him, it felt as if a bridge was built between him and his father, who once thought his ambition to be impossible. His father died in 2022.

“Sana proud siya sa narating ko at mararating pa (I hope he is proud of what I have and have yet to achieve),” Villarosa said.

Unending fire

After 15 years of doing their job, what do they find most difficult about it?

“Kami ni Oliver every year, iniisip namin, Anong gagawin nating iba? Ano ‘yung bago? Ano ‘yung dapat kakaiba? Ito ‘yung pinakamahirap.”

(Every year, Oliver and I ask, ‘What should we make that is different? What’s new? What is something unique? That’s the most difficult part.)

When asked if there is a reason for this, Villarosa said, “Hindi, gusto lang namin na every show mas hihigitan ‘yung huli (No, we just want every show to be better than the last).”

There is a brief silence that falls when a show ends, a hush before the audience erupts into joyous claps. When the Paskuhan display ended, Villarosa stood amid the crowd, let his video camera roll and soaked in the moment. The sky painters’ vision came to life just as they had imagined it.

“Euphoria comes in right after,” he said of the moment.

“Lalo na pag nagsisigawan ‘yung crowd (Especially when the crowd is shouting).”

He was elated and proud of the outcome of the 2024 Paskuhan pyro-musical show.

“Every time we do a show, ‘pag nagre-react silang sobrang happy sila, it’s fulfilling, lalo na sa trabaho namin (Every time we do a show when they give their reaction where they are so happy, it is fulfilling, especially for our jobs).”

When asked how they plan to rest after the Paskuhan show, Villarosa laughed.

“Walang pahinga (There is no rest),” he said, laughing as he folded his tripod.

“We still have Christmas shows and New Year countdowns — tinitira pa namin (we’re still finishing them).”

The people were dissipating now, but the afterglow of the fireworks stayed with them.

“There’s no stopping for me and Oliver,” Villarosa once said.

“Siguro katandaan, pero masyado pa kaming bata. Kaya pa.” (Maybe old age, but we’re still too young. We can still do this.) F