MagicBobert

I don't think I really have to defend this idea, considering that it's played out that way in almost every facet of the entertainment industry. Hollywood churns out buckets of sequels and cookie cutter action flicks, and nearly everything on the Billboard Top 40 sounds identical. ("Gettin crunk in the club" -- check, copy pasta beat in Sony ACID -- check...) Am I saying that fresh and new designs won't happen and won't win. Absolutely not. Let me make that abundantly clear with bold type. What I'm saying is that fewer designers will be willing to take the risk. When you try something risky, you go for the gold or fade into obscurity. You can sit and list risky movies that did well, or innovative songs that topped the charts, but for each example you have of something risky that did well there are countless others that failed miserably and have never seen the light of day.

Yep. We like to pretend it doesn't happen, but it does to some extent. There's really nothing we can do about it other than have a fresh slate of judges every time. As an engineer by training, I'm only interested in problems I can solve. This is, at this point, an unsolvable problem. Next! Yes, it is! The problem is that in other performing arts, you rarely have as much audience predisposition as you do in this activity. We'd like to all pretend we're impartial observers, but we're not. We like to root for the home team. That's fine (really!), but it would be irresponsible of us to claim that we're impartial enough to evaluate the value of the performances on the field. We should politely recuse ourselves. Compare this to other performing arts and you'll see the difference. Under most circumstances, you don't go into movies or live theater predisposed to what you're about to see. Drum corps is a competitive performing art, one in which the audience can feel a connection to their "home team", making the dynamic much more like that of a sporting event than a movie or musical. In effect, the Entertainment Effect caption would be like asking for the fans in the stadium to give away some free runs to a team in the world series. The question then becomes, which team can pack more of its fans into the stadium. Fair point. With the advent of things like the Fan Network, I think there might be more of a "multiple viewings" audience than might be obvious. That's largely how I base my opinions on depth of design. With the Fan Network, I can see not only multiple viewings of the same performance, but I can watch the progression of a show over the summer. That really gives me a lot of insight (as a fan) into which shows had me excited in June but feeling flat by August vs. shows where I'm still unraveling all the juicy goodness during Finals week. Yes, it can! It can also being completely unappealing, which was exactly my point. It's not to say that riskier show designs would completely disappear, but I think fewer show designers would be willing to take that risk when it's pretty easy to build something that will have mostly favorable reviews. That's what risk is all about, right? Go for the glory of something completely new and fresh, or be labeled as obscure and inaccessible by people that don't understand you. It's not all unicorns and rainbows.

Sorry if that was unclear. I'm not saying that there was an automatic penalty before five or so years ago. I'm saying that the Entertainment Effect caption would create an automatic penalty for risky designs because they're not mainstream. I think "what changed" is that designs got dramatically deeper. Take, for example, BD shows over the last few years (regardless of whether you liked them). They really are designed like an onion. On first viewing, you're only gonna get the first layer. Sadly, a lot of fans think that's it and never watch it again. Even to this day, when I watch BD 2010 I find something new or hear something different that I'd never caught before. That's the sign of a deep design. My intellectually curious mind eats that up, but I understand that a lot of fans don't like that. I'd argue that when you go back 5, 10, or 20 years, you don't see the same level of design depth. Pretty much everything is obvious and put right in front of you. By the third viewing, you've got all there is to "get" in the show. The first attempt to design in depth was using narration to tell a more complex story, but it was a 10 ton hammer that most people didn't like. A few corps have recently figured out to do this without talking and I think it's working really well. I'm not trying to say that a shallow or deep design is better, in fact I'm sure a lot of people on this board probably hate deep designs. But I think it's an interesting trend and one that's bringing a lot of creativity to the activity. Let's not kill that off before we see where it takes us. Uh, you just proved my point? Academy Awards are given out by trained professionals who know what to look for, and reward creativity, talent, and flawless execution. Movie audiences are fickle, untrained, and can have their opinions influenced by the amount of butter in their popcorn. The Entertainment Effect caption would effectively give movie audiences substantial control over Academy Awards, which is think is a moronic idea. They can still claim "top box office revenues", akin to the Fan Network fans choice award. Uh, ok, sure why not. Revenue from shows is such a minuscule part of any corps operating budget that I can't see this making any real change in anything.

#1 and #2 are fine. The Entertainment Effect caption is pretty misguided, IMHO. I understand the point, but it fails to take into account a significant factor in crowd response: geographic location. I've found it to be pretty universal that crowd response is inversely proportional to the show site's distance from a corps' hometown. West coast corps are popular out west, midwest corps are popular in the midwest, and east coast corps are popular out east. There's nothing wrong with it; they have local supporters, it makes sense. The bigger problem comes with the fact that finals is located in the same geographic location from now until sometime in 2152, or whenever that ridiculous long term deal expires. Fans of corps near finals can more easily fill up the stadium, putting corps on both coasts at a competitive disadvantage going into finals. If the audience plays a part in the adjudication process, it just doesn't put everybody on the same level playing field. Another thing that worries me about having an "audience appeal" style caption is that it will seriously discourage potentially risky show designs. The quality, depth, and intricacy of design in this activity have jumped to a whole new level over the last 5 years, largely because there wasn't an automatic penalty for exploring some challenging and non-traditional concepts. Some turned out "eh", but others turned out great. By putting a hefty 10 points in the audience's pocket, show designers might not try riskier ideas because the penalty for diverging from the mainstream is simply too high. We'll see the same cookie cutter shows year after year, with nothing new or fresh. Creativity in the activity will stagnate much in the same way as it does in other entertainment forms like music and movies. To draw a parallel with movies, why would a corps design staff risk a fresh and interesting (but untested) story when they can just churn out another "Power Chords XIV: Return of the 11.5 Minute Open Fifth" franchise sequel for a guaranteed 10 points in Entertainment Effect at finals?

I really appreciate the depth and thought you put into the analysis, Kevin. Great stuff, thanks!

Lots of people like Nickelback, but that doesn't make them artistically noteworthy in the long run. If there's anything history has taught us, it's that true visionaries are rarely ever understood or popular in their time. They think too far ahead to be accepted by a large majority of their peers. This is true in the arts, science, and many disciplines, even our own drum corps activity. Few would have predicted after finals in 1993 that Star's show would have become the fan favorite that it has in the intervening 17 years. Am I saying the Blue Devils 2010 show is one of these? Not necessarily. Only time will tell. But I think it would be rather foolhardy to ignore the fact that hindsight is always 20/20, and none of us have that yet. Personally, I think the past 3 years the Devils have shown that they're pushing the depth of design to levels never seen before in the activity. At the beginning of the summer, I absolutely hated the musical book. But every time I saw the show it grew on me a little more, and by this point I must admit it's one of my favorite shows of the decade. The complexity of the production they put onto the field makes me feel like I'm unraveling another layer of the mysterious story woven by a masterful artist and executed flawlessly by some of the most talented performers in the world. This happens again and again, every time I watch it, which I find incredibly intellectually stimulating. I struggle to find this in other corps as of late, where it feels like I've hit the "bottom of the design hole" (so to speak) after only 3 or 4 viewings. It's the Nickelback of drum corps. Eleven and a half minutes of power chords. Is this what the audience-at-large wants? Right now, no, probably not. Is this where the activity is going? Only time will tell. But at least in the short term, a large panel of highly trained adjudicators likes what they see, and I would tend to agree with them. The folks in Concord are taking a radically fresh approach to the activity, and whether it lasts or not, I certainly appreciate the tenacity and bravery to look at things in a different way. You may now resume your "We don't need no stinkin' design, play loud on G bugles because I'm goin' deaf!" discussions and commentary.

Finals blooing on the other hand...

YES. This was absolutely fantastic. I remember someone suggesting this last year and thinking it was a brilliant idea. Glad to see DCI listening! It was absolutely incredible, thank you SO MUCH!

Amen to that. Booing is never appropriate. Ever. End of discussion. You can justify it however you want by saying you're booing the design staff, but I still think you're a classless hack if you do it. Stay classy midwest fans.

He was referring to Open Class. On the webcast they mistakenly said that BDB went undefeated as well, but they lost once to the Vanguard Cadets in SoCal.

Great insight, thanks!

No problem! It was quite confusing the first time I read through them.

The dictionary definition really isn't appropriate. "Perfect" in the drum corps sense inherently means "perfect where the judges were looking". You cannot watch everyone on the field at the same time, and even if you saw something it doesn't mean the judge did. Also, spreads. You can complain all you want about numbers management, but at the end of the day if the 2nd place group gets a 19.8 and the top group is 0.2 better, the judge has no choice but to give them a 20.0. It would actually be more dishonest (IMHO) to give them a 19.9 because they are spooked by some dictionary definition of the word perfect than to attempt to be as objective as possible with their numbers and give them the full spread they deserve.

Plus is the base tier + live webcasts. Since there are no more live webcasts, it's kind of a pointless subscription level now. The top 2 get mailed discs and access to finals night VOD, so that still makes sense.

Well, you gotta be able to load the homepage to load the flash player before you can start the Brightcove stream. The stream probably won't be the problem for the people that can get it to load, but getting the page to initially load might be a problem. Hopefully DCI has stepped up its IT efforts! Streaming the encore would be awesome!