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Crowd Reactions to shows


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14 minutes ago, corpsband said:

Performing Art  -> Audience.

As long as the audience is constantly engaged they will reliably react at the end of the performance.  We see this in every performing art.  Listen to the most somber concert.  Watch the saddest play.  If the audience is moved by the performers and the performance,  they will applaud at the end.

There are a variety of mediums where the live audience is not important.  Drum corps should never become one of them.

Does that mean "the audience" gets a vote?  Absolutely not.  But the judges (as they love to remind us) are part of the audience.  If a show does not engage,  there is no effect.  IMO if a GE judge fails to be a well-informed, neutral proxy for the audience she/he has failed.

I personally think some who judge GE become too concerned with the "components" of effect and lose sight of the sheets intent  Does this show "work"?  Do the content and the performer combine to engage and retain the attention of the audience?

On the short list for "post of the year."  Especially the bolded sentence.

And I don't even owe you any money.  :tongue:

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25 minutes ago, Fran Haring said:

On the short list for "post of the year."  Especially the bolded sentence.

And I don't even owe you any money.  :tongue:

 Sounds good.. but GE judges do not factor into their point allotments " the audience ". First off, the GE captions do factor in demand, and to some degree, performance execution. As such GE judges both now, and in the past, allot GE points based upon how the show was received by them.

 We know this, because there are many years where a Corps show did not favorably connect well with an audience compared to others in their mix, but scored better in GE than the others. Case in point... 2012 Blue Devils. ' Not particularly well received show by audiences that season... compared to others in their mix. But that tepid response on the part of audiences from coast to coast was disregarded for the most part. The GE judges were impressed with its show, its demand, its performance, etc to determine its tItle worthiness.  BD won the overall GE captions in all 3 shows, Quarters, Semi's, & Finals. The audience had little to nothing at all to do with the  DCI winning title for BD in 2012. And this is just one of dozens of examples that could be cited both recently as well as BITD.

Edited by BRASSO
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7 hours ago, Fran Haring said:

All of them, and I'll toss in the 1995 Scouts.

And Bridgemen at DCI Finals... in particular 1976 (the crowd reaction after the "faint"... wow)... 1979 (when the South "won" the Civil War)...  and 1980.

I taught Bridgemen when the south won ( a young punk, thought I knew it all instructor, lol )  and it was like an earthquake rumbling the stadium at the end BUT I will say like in many cases even today , what we see and believe to be consistent  positive receptions of a program often is not shared show after show throughout the tour. An audience reaction can and does vary, sometimes night to night and what appears to be a majority liking something or not on a given night can be very different the very next night. Often, like in the Bridgemen the years you speak of, it took a good part of the year and of course getting better and developing the show to get reaction it did at the end.

Finals night as you did say was quite special for that corps as it is for many by the end. At least that's the hope.

Edited by GUARDLING
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20 minutes ago, GUARDLING said:

I taught Bridgemen when the south won ( a young punk, thought I knew it all instructor, lol )  and it was like an earthquake rumbling the stadium at the end BUT I will say like in many cases even today , what we see and believe to be consistent  positive receptions of a program often is not shared show after show throughout the tour. An audience reaction can and does vary, sometimes night to night and what appears to be a majority liking something or not on a given night can be very different the very next night. Often, like in the Bridgemen the years you speak of, it took a good part of the year and of course getting better and developing the show to get reaction it did at the end.

Finals night as you did say was quite special for that corps as it is for many by the end. At least that's the hope.

Well said.

My years with DCA's Sunrisers... and Guardling, as you know we were a pretty #### good corps those years... we had shows like Providence, RI, where we got a rock-star reception every year... for whatever reason, the crowd loved us there.

Then there were places like Lewisburg, PA, where no matter how good we were that night, the crowd sat there and stared at us. :tongue:  After a few years of that we were like, whatever... it's Lewisburg... LOL

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1 minute ago, Fran Haring said:

Well said.

My years with DCA's Sunrisers... and Guardling, as you know we were a pretty #### good corps those years... we had shows like Providence, RI, where we got a rock-star reception every year... for whatever reason, the crowd loved us there.

Then there were places like Lewisburg, PA, where no matter how good we were that night, the crowd sat there and stared at us. :tongue:  After a few years of that we were like, whatever... it's Lewisburg... LOL

Yup , youre right. I remember back in 2011 everyone assumed Madison was getting a great reception especially for the NY state of mind that so many loved. I sat with a staff person from Madison in Allentown who received them very well and we laughed how that was a bit different just nights, before wherever it was..lol It's a very good reason why to judge an audience can be extremely inconsistent although not impossible for some corps in certain years.

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3 minutes ago, GUARDLING said:

Yup , youre right. I remember back in 2011 everyone assumed Madison was getting a great reception especially for the NY state of mind that so many loved. I sat with a staff person from Madison in Allentown who received them very well and we laughed how that was a bit different just nights, before wherever it was..lol It's a very good reason why to judge an audience can be extremely inconsistent although not impossible for some corps in certain years.

I think Lewisburg was a Buccaneer crowd... and some of those PA folks didn't cotton to us New Yorkers... LOL

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That 1995 Scouts show... I was the PA guy at the Giants Stadium gig that summer, field level, right off the 50-yard line.

Normally as any corps is wrapping up its show, I have the mike in hand, ready to go for the closing announcement, thinking about what I'm going to say.

Except that night in NJ. 

When the Scouts finished after that huge power push in Malaga, I just stood there, jaw almost literally on the ground, absolutely stunned at what I just saw and heard. Not kidding here. Completely blown away.  It look me several seconds to realize I had to get back to work.  LOL.

 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, Lance said:

i'm not the type to get up and hoot and holler for anything at a sports venue

i usually wish they'd sit down and shut up so i could hear and see what i was paying to watch

That's why you clap *after* the hits...and do the ear cupping thing so you can hear the corps when people decide to clap during them. :)

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 Inconsistent audiences as expressed here give judges the rationale that supports the long history, still prevalent today, of totally disregarding audiences when it comes to the judges assigning points in their assigned captions.

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