What’s going on?

There’s a lot of ways to do something in photography, so let’s begin by listing what will happen.

Initially you will be in dim light or the dark before the fireworks appear.
When the first fireworks appear is when you can actually see how bright they are and how large the patterns they will create from the point of view of the camera. You hope that the timing of fireworks is such that you get a few preliminaries so that you can finetune your camera settings before the full onslaught.
You also hope that the fireworks period lasts long enough that you get a good set of shots. Or that the event occurs over several nights so you can improve your photos.
There is inevitably quite a variation in
- brightness
- proximity
- spread of each fireworks blossom
- overlap between each blossom
- rate / number of blossoms per second.

What should you get / set?