What Show Design Tropes Make You Cringe?

[lowend]

Where the horns drop their horns and scatter/"fly" away.

[Tim K]

Fist pumping overall, but especially after a solo that may be good, but is hardly spectacular. The same holds true with rifle tosses. While fist pumping for solos goes back quite a few years, I can't ever remember seeing any of the iconic rile lines 27th, Phantom, Cavies of the late 70's/early 80's doing it. 

Anything that hat smacks of I'm young, cool, trendy, hip, or whatever you want to call it. Of course they are, they're kids. We don't have to see it on the field. 

While this may not design and but is often part of the unofficial show, how about a bit more courtesy when one corps is leaving the field and the next corps is setting up? That can be dangerous and it tends to be something that occurs more at the top of the pecking order than the bottom. We know the field is yours, we know you are powerful, we know you're competitive, and we love you, but kill your competition with scores, not while they're exiting the field.

[mjoakes]

There's a foot or knee twist that everyone seems to be doing. It's not just a Bluecoats thing. Watching video of the last few years of finals during December holidays, I remember thinking that small move must be a requirement or something. Like presenting the colors used to be.

The prance + smile of a guard member. Really respect what they do. But after a great toss and spin, that obligatory smile to the crowd makes me feel like I am at a circus.

[mjoakes]

Not sure I am honoring "trope," but here is another element that has become pretty cliche. And of course, cliche for me, anyway: the whole corp starting or finishing lying down. Okay, so Santa Clara V did it pretty well last year. 

[hammondbrass]

55 minutes ago, 2muchcoffeeman said:

Well, what makes you cringe, and what is cliche, can be two different things.

Cringe: Overdone drum-major salutes.

Cliche: Batteries that flex their muscles, fire guns, wipe away sweat, etc. after a rip. The Bridgemen beat you all to it, and could back it up, so just don't.

Trope and cliche were the interchangeable words here, although there is a difference. http://www.pcwrede.com/cliches-and-tropes/

Cringe was the verb I used, but feel free use whatever synonym you want.

 

[DrumManTx]

1 hour ago, wolfgang said:

Arrangements, whether pop, jazz, or symphonic, that take a couple bars of the original and are filled in with dissonant fluff, with the obbligatory 16th note park and blow technical passage.

If it was good enough to put in your show, it's probably good enough to use a larger portion of it. Just play the tune, man.

Bouncing off that, when corps list 20 pieces of music, and most of them are not even seemingly present or they only use like 10 seconds of them.

I was sooooo excited to hear Blue Devils use Mishima last year, and then they ended up using just a small quote in the pit and maybe a soloist at the beginning of the closer.  Was also incredibly excited to hear Carolina Crown use Equilibrium in their closer and they used probably around a minute of just some of the technical passages and went back into Medea right as it was getting to the stuff I liked...

[Fran Haring]

Not sure this is in the "trope" or "cringe" category, and might be a story for another thread....

But the whole "ballad in the middle of the show" thing.  Tune-ballad-tune. 

I actually found it a refreshing change of pace to hear Phantom do two ballads last season. Whether it worked or not... well...  LOL

I would love to hear a corps do a no-ballad show.  (By that, I don't mean just loud-loud-loud.) If that's been done recently, someone here can refresh my memory.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Fran Haring

[ouooga]

Rock outs. I've seen a lot of corps "rock out" while they're playing a jazzy piece, but only a few corps can really pull it off well. 

[corpsband]

24 minutes ago, DrumManTx said:

Bouncing off that, when corps list 20 pieces of music, and most of them are not even seemingly present or they only use like 10 seconds of them.

I was sooooo excited to hear Blue Devils use Mishima last year, and then they ended up using just a small quote in the pit and maybe a soloist at the beginning of the closer.  Was also incredibly excited to hear Carolina Crown use Equilibrium in their closer and they used probably around a minute of just some of the technical passages and went back into Medea right as it was getting to the stuff I liked...

Not sure I'd ever say BD's and Crown arranging styles are similar.  (even your example 1 minute vs 10 secs) .  While I too was excited to hear more of Equilibrium , the fact that they played it when they did (a full minute near the end of the show) was probably a limiting factor.  Nobody wants to load up on 2.5 mins of super technical stuff near the end of a program -- just not smart.  

I do agree that the number of pieces listed for some corps is just crazy (and must be crazy expensive).  There's absolutely no way to give any of them justice (never mind just a single one).   Most often it's pure fluff.  They can sit in critique and say "Yes we only played to 2 measures of XXXXX but it's so critical to conceptual development (as if quoting 10 pieces for 2 measures each somehow bolsters a concept).   You literally need heavy machinery to shovel away the giant bs & fluff sandwich.

[Hrothgar15]

31 minutes ago, corpsband said:

I do agree that the number of pieces listed for some corps is just crazy (and must be crazy expensive).  There's absolutely no way to give any of them justice (never mind just a single one).   Most often it's pure fluff.  They can sit in critique and say "Yes we only played to 2 measures of XXXXX but it's so critical to conceptual development (as if quoting 10 pieces for 2 measures each somehow bolsters a concept).   You literally need heavy machinery to shovel away the giant bs & fluff sandwich.

I find BD to be the biggest offenders here (pretty much every year since 2009, with 2014 somewhat an exception).