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Channel3

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  • Your Drum Corps Experience
    The Marginaires
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  1. Crown's storytelling skill this year surpasses BD. One of the big hurdles is simply selecting a story that works in this medium. After all, drum corps a largely non-verbal medium performed in a large scale stadium. The story of The Tempest is convoluted and Byzantine to start with, including ten main characters. In its original form, The Tempest is communicated solely through the spoken word. Not the best choice for a non-verbal medium on a massive, long distance stage. In fact only a tiny backfield Prospero, a handful of Calibans and two young lovers cut the clutter in this production, and for the most part, these characters don't interact. In addition to a super sharp staging and clarity, Crown's new ending smacks with immediacy and powerful political relevance.
  2. Full expanse is an option to use as a potent spice. One would think if you're strangling your playing space by a stagecoach and cemetery, and you're smushing your action into a small playing space, you almost have the obligation to prove those staging choices aren't an obstacle. This show takes place in the wide expanse of the desert and outback. The opening set is probably the best place to hit the yardlines to set that scene.
  3. Well at least in the ending of Inferno, the color guard was backfield, zero to zero, so not completely pushed forward.
  4. That guy is husband material. Nerves of steel.
  5. My only criticism of Crown's drill is that it doesn't use the backfield as much as other corps. The show seems pushed forward to feature dance and characters. And the field seems severed by the invisible road that the stage coach rides on, cutting off the backfield.
  6. This show is extraordinary because it's the first time, if memory serves, that a drum corps has completely and totally reworked the narrative of a show, with brand new drill sets and brand new choreography, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, each week. The Cadets have presented nearly an entirely different show each week during this entire season! The show's focus is one hundred percent different. We have been watching a live storyboarding process. On the one hand, that's an unbelievable technical feat for a corps to learn new drill and choreography every week, sometimes 50 percent new, and still, the corps has garnered huge technical numbers, with eye-popping precision. On the other hand, what in living hell is going on with this design team? What in God's name has been going on behind the scenes to garner a continual change in focus, change in the narrative, and shift in theme, continually over the period of three months? There is no way that a judging panel can look positively on a corps completely shifting its focus, thematically and visually multiple, multiple times monthly without sensing some weakness in vision. It's almost as if the design team could not decide on the staging, or the meaning they were trying to convey. When you change your set pieces with such frequency, you're telling the judges that none of the set pieces you've invested in so far took that much time to perfect. You're revealing that your drill sets, and visual set pieces are a dime a dozen, being cranked out of a doughnut machine, with no personal investment, and no stakes, and an uncanny ability to produce near perfection with some drill moves that are only hours old! That indicates that their talent level is surpassing the difficulty level, which is already shockingly high. Look at this enormous number of changes that this corps has taken on, perfected, and then discarded, as if they were in a Hana Barbara animation storyboard facility in the 1950's: --Stoned? --Statues Awakening? --Now just "Awakening?" --What happened to the platform? --What happened to being animal like? --What happened to being child-like? --What happened to the statues coming alive for the first time? --What happened to the capes? How did the show's focus change without them? Were they a critical component, or just an afterthought? --Who does the new male dance soloist represent? Wasn't his part bigger two weeks ago? --What do the full length smocks represent? Sophistication and advancement? If they're human, why do they choose a marble like pattern for their outer-wear? --What do the new fabric extensions tied to the feet represent or evoke? This is only a partial list. I fully believe that this corps could produce an entirely new drum corps show each week for the entire season. This opens up possibilities for the advancement of the art form to include weekly episodics, or weekly chapters in a saga. Cadets could perform all the major works for a single composer in one season. Or they could focus on one impossibly hard drill, where all the guard members stand on each other's shoulders and march 160 bpm, and where the horn players do backflips while playing.
  7. My prediction is that the last statue will turn human at Finals.
  8. We always see these posts at the end of the season where the corps and marching members realize that design is the very last and most important criteria to be judged. Design is the lynchpin at the end of the season when all the corps are executing at about the same level. All the captions are about at par, and the design rules all.
  9. It's s only there for those who appreciate it - - judges, show coordinators, designers and performers.
  10. The new era will be focused on original compositions and show designs generated by the marching members themselves-- a much more authentic and genuine artistic endeavor.
  11. Clearly the most functional staging choice is to have the blue silk move from the front sideline to the back, but that's been done by Crown. That's why I think they chose the movement from back to front. So the next logical movement is from audience left to right where it can naturally collapse itself into a pile on the goal line and dragged toward the back field. Either way, right now the silk itself isn't necessarily advancing the story or setting the stage. It's a special effect that seems a little superfluous. I suggest reducing the size of the silk to about ten yards wide, like a wall of water, and have it "chase" the ship in a curving pattern toward the front sideline. The ship is overcome by the wave. The silk size would more manageable, still impressive in size, and at least sets up the idea that the ship is tempest tossed. Presently the ship doesn't pull enough focus in the (intentional) dwarfing. I'd also have Prospero at the helm of the wall of water, directing, or commanding the wall of water, according to the original text.
  12. At the beginning, the cacti are in the position of arms raised, as in "don't shoot".
  13. Do you get it? Shooting him offers no story originality. That's cliche. There's no surprise. There's no originality, no depth, no reveal, no 360 rotation of character (as John Logan calls it). There needs to be some new, interesting information at the end in order to keep the forward momentum and Crown found it.
  14. http://www.spacesyntax.net/symposia-archive/SSS4/fullpapers/32Gavriloupaper.pdf
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