Meet The 2024 Artists: Frank Terzino (Pro Competitor)

2024 Pro Display Competitor

Frank Terzino

Newton, North Carolina
CEO & Show Producer of PyroStar Entertainment

As a pyro from the east coast, Frank’s looking forward to competing on a wide open Missouri stage. He’s heading to Sky Wars with the same determination that started his company PyroStar Entertainment: to produce a fantastic show.

Frank’s Pyro Story

Frank’s childhood passion for pyro bloomed into a determination, and soon a career, to produce excellent shows following a particularly disappointing experience when his daughter’s first opportunity to see a professional fireworks show was rained out. 

“I was like, well, I’ll just put the damn show on myself. So, like any good father, I called a company and I started my apprenticeship to get my pyrotechnic license.” 

His original goal with his license was just to shoot one really big, incredible show for his daughter. After a year or so apprenticing for a couple big companies, Frank felt he noticed a lack of effort and creativity in the shows they produced. He and his wife Tori figured, maybe, “we could just do it better.”

Prior to establishing PyroStar Entertainment, Frank was a personal trainer and owned a gym. He got his ATF license in late 2019 right before the pandemic hit. His gym was shut down, so he and Tori invested heavily in their new company. “We thought it was bad timing, but actually turned out to be really good timing.” Who knew a pandemic would bring so much opportunity for a brand-new fireworks display company?

The very first show they booked set the tone for their pyrotechnic style. The show, originally billed for a nearby town’s 4th of July event, was inevitably postponed due to COVID and instead became a Halloween display. Frank talked them down from a 20-minute show to a shorter run time with tighter choreography to better fit their budget. To this day it was “one of the best shows” they’ve done, and set a precedent for how they’d run their future productions.

Now, the team at PyroStar offers more than just pyromusical displays. “We actually tour with a demolition derby, which is pretty awesome.” Frank loves race cars and monster trucks, so when PyroStar scored a fireworks show for The Tour of Destruction, he jumped at the opportunity to enhance that relationship. “We go from Florida to Virginia with them,” enjoying the demolition derby action in between their firework shoots.

They’ve even gotten to collaborate with YouTube sensation Mr. Beast. Although he can’t share much because of an NDA, there is one video Frank is allowed to share where they “basically got to fill a house with fireworks and burn the house to the ground.” Check out the first couple minutes of the video here; it was a lot of work for 90 seconds of Mr. Beast fame!

What to expect from Frank’s 2024 show

Frank and Tori had the soundtrack for the show done months in advance. “It was [Tori’s] idea. And of course, I fought around it. I spent about 30 days listening to every song. And eventually I came back, like, ‘you were right.’ It’s going to be pretty awesome, I think… we were rocking out to it.” 

“Our design plan for the show is to keep things simple and clean, and bring the biggest finale the Sky Wars crowd has ever seen!”

Internally, he and his crew are dubbing the show “The Catalina Wine Mixer.” He’s been dropping hints about the choreography on the PyroStar Facebook page.

Frank’s big-stage display experience

Frank and Tori have only attended Sky Wars once in 2021. He mentioned in his 2024 Competitor interview with our organizers how excited he is to get to shoot in a wide open Missouri field.

“You guys have so much room to shoot stuff! We only have size for 5-inch shells. In North Carolina, everything we do is in this tiny field. Like, I’ve shot a pyromusical in a 50-foot wide display field.”

Derby demolitions and Mr. Beast collabs aside, most of PyroStar’s pyromusical opportunities are for holidays, namely Halloween and Christmas. They’ve presented a small pyromusical at Lake Hickory Haunts, a “Disney-level quality” haunted house in North Carolina, for the past few years. They also put on Christmas Kaboom, aka “The World’s Biggest Christmas Fireworks Show” annually since 2022 at the Hickory Motor Speedway in Newton.

Frank says not only is he looking forward to amping up the creativity for a non-holiday show, he’s excited to “go horizontal” because the displays they shoot are typically “so narrow.” Even single shot comets and mines are a rare luxury for pyros in North Carolina!

Favorite pyro show to date:

Frank and Tori’s son was their “miracle baby number two,” born in 2019. “The doctors gave us, like, a 1% chance of ever having another child again. And my wife got pregnant, so we used our 4th of July fireworks show to make the baby announcement.” Their family’s reaction was priceless, as seen in the video below recorded by Frank’s sister.

“I have watched that video like a million times… even still today, that was probably the best pyro moment I’ve ever had,” Frank says.

Frank’s pyro inspiration and style:

Frank says it’s his family–especially his wife Tori, who “has high standards”– he’s looking to impress when he considers his audience. He admits to not being the best communicator, so pyrotechnic choreography is often his way of showing appreciation for the people he loves. He describes planning the soundtrack and choreography as similar to writing “a love letter” to Tori and their kids.

Frank admits he actively avoids watching a lot of fireworks videos because he wants to avoid replication of pyromusical trends that he thinks have been overdone. “It just seeps into your subconscious… it kind of messes with your creativity.” That said, he’s definitely seen lots of things that inspired him.

Ask The Pros: Questions from the Fans

Don Ayres: How do you get in the mindset of expressing yourself instead of doing what you think everyone will love the most?

“I see where [this question is] coming from, because you’d want to express yourself, but our company name has ‘entertainment.’ We’re there to entertain people. Like… I’d have Metallica and Megadeth playing if I was going to express myself freely. But [not everyone] wants to necessarily listen to that, so you have to take that into consideration, too.”

Frank says their goal is ultimately to express themselves while putting something out that everyone will like at the same time. “I told my wife… if everyone in the crowd loves it, but we don’t win, I’m good with that. Because I don’t think that [our show] will fit into the traditional pyromusical style. I think it will be different from what a lot of other people do.”

Jessica Bosworth: How many people will you recruit to help you?

“Four.” Just kidding! Frank predicts they’ll bring out six or seven people for on-site setup, in addition to six or seven folks helping them prepare before the journey to Missouri. He says the PyroStar crew has gotten very efficient (“my wife and I can rig up a 500-cue show in a couple of hours”) and are looking forward to the challenge of on-site setup at Sky Wars.

Nicole Mikrut: “When do the Pyro wives get their husband’s back?!?!?”

As part of a husband-wife duo, Frank and Tori spend a lot of time together as a pyro team. Frank does a lot of the scripting while Tori handles much of their day-to-day operations, and when matching products and physically putting their shows together, they’re rarely apart.

Sam Christensen: Not just anyone gets the opportunity to compete at Sky Wars. Winner or no, what does this mean for you in your pyro journey? 

“Validation. I have a certain sense of what we can accomplish, and I’m always so proud every time we finish a show, so it’s validation to prove that we can do a production at that scale. I mean, I think we’re the best, so we’re excited to go out there and have the opportunity to at least try to prove it to ourselves.”