ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The skies will be filled with fireworks Thursday night over downtown Rochester as part of Independence Day celebrations.

News10NBC’s Antonina Tortorello went behind the scenes to find out how the fireworks company putting on the city’s display does it.

What may just look like a bunch of tubes actually is is the grand finale for the July 4 fireworks show in the city of Rochester. A company called Young Explosives, which has been doing this since 1976, is making it all happen. This year the show’s leader is David Sylvester. In his 27 years of pyrotechnical experience, he says a lot has changed.

“We used to shoot the fireworks mostly by hand with a road flare, which is a safe way to do it but not the most practical way to do it. Now we have everything done electronically,” Sylvester said.

He says for this show he needs more help than normal. Eight people are involved in setting it all up.

“We get here at noon and we won’t be done till well after midnight — so it’s a lot of hands, a lot of effort, but that’s what it takes to put on a show of this size,” Sylvester said.

Each member goes through training and tests to ensure their safety. While you can legally buy “sparkling devices” and set them off yourself, what they do has a lot more bang.

“These are commercial designed fireworks. Every firework is made to be handled by a professional. You must have a NYS certification to be a leader on a show to ensure the fireworks are being handled properly and launched properly. And as long as we get a permit with the city and the state approves a leader to be on here, then we can put on a professional display,” Sylvester explained.

He says they don’t give out the exact number of fireworks they’ll use, but it’s between 1,000 and 2,000. As for the length of the show, the industry has found a sweet spot between 20 and 22 minutes.

“We find that if we’re much shorter than 20 minutes, if were near the 15 minute mark people feel like they came out and didn’t really get a good show. Conversely if we go past that 25 minutes to half an hour people are getting a little antsy; they’re waiting for the grand finale and it’s dragging on,” Sylvester said.

And there’s a lot of preparation involved. They put the electric around the shells and then they will be placed into these tubes and the electric connected to that is also connected to a firing module. Then in the back they have a master panel and a button will be pushed and then they will explode and make magic in the sky for your forth of July celebrations.

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