Cadets fall at finals

[kickhaltsforlife]

We are talking about how the percussion fall affected scores... it could effect the music and visual score in many ways. All valid discussion.

Music effects visual/visual effects music.

Both often go hand in hand. Both GREATLY effect the other.

[BRASSO]

The problem with Brasso's analysis is pretty simple: he's making the implicit assumption "all other things being equal" which is unfortunately not the case. His test cases were 2 times when Crown beat Cadets despite (a) having members fall during the show (b) marching holes. He then makes the incredible leap to "having holes" or "having falls" results in an increase in your score which is pretty silly. Crown beat Cadets despite the fall or holes not because of them. There's not a cause and effect relationship like he's trying to establish. In theory if Cadets and Crown had identical visual scores absent the falls (or holes) I suspect Cadets would have won both shows. Obviously those judges on those nights decided to reward Crown with a higher visual score even taking the holes or fall into consideration. End of story.

" end of story " remarks unfortunately signify a personal confiction of one being right and others wrong and not open to the presentation of data that could conceivably alter one's belief system. Thus, it would seem folly for me to try and engage a closed mind. So I'm certainly not about to attempt to do so now with you by providing research data that does not support your belief of enhanced performances by other members on the night of multiple holes and multiple fall downs as it relates to the GE. Vis. and Vis. Perf. captions. Suffice to say, the judges do assume members are present in the Visual caption formation completion when it fact a hole is present and not a marching member there in the visual formation completion. We can dispute whether or not judges should assume this or not, but your remarks above tell me tha you are basing your comments on a misunderstanding of the judging system in place.

Edited November 18, 2009 by BRASSO

[BRASSO]

i cant imagine gets credited in the performance sub box. i can see if demand causes the fall the book number gets the nod

' hate to use the figure skating analogy, ( but it's appropriate ): if a figure skater in competition does a safe and relatively easy routine, and has no fall downs, that skater almost without exception will best in competition a skater that had a much more demanding routine but unfortunately on a given day had multiple fall downs during the demanding routine.

As for " holes", if one is involved in an Art competition and one creates a painting to depict a completed circle, but two of the dots are somehow left out, despite the overall greatness of the rest of the painting, points would be subtracted for the incompletion of the circle that needed to be completed in order to generate the desired effect. If a similar painting had less demand in the painting, but had fully completed elements in the painting, more often times than not, the painting with the fully completed elements would win out over the painting with the noticeably uncompleted elements, despite the greater demand.

However, this is not the case in Drum Corps judged competitions at all. Judges ASSUME a completed visual formation has been completed, despite the obvious hole. No points are subtracted for the inability to complete the visual move component as designed. It is ASSUMED that had a marching member been present in that hole that the member would have executed his move well, thus completing the visual design in total for the unit. However, the naked eye tells us a different story. The visual move as designed was not completed successfully ( ala the dots needed in a circle in a painting ). I'm not arguing here that changes should be made in this ( although I believe there should be ), my point is that holes and multiple fall downs have no negative bearing on GE Vis. and Vis. Perf. captions, and quite the contrary, holes and multiple fall downs can indeed result in higher scores in these captions..... when in othere sports and in other art competition venues this would be next to impossible to occur.

[perc2100]

However, this is not the case in Drum Corps judged competitions at all. Judges ASSUME a completed visual formation has been completed, despite the obvious hole. No points are subtracted for the inability to complete the visual move component as designed. It is ASSUMED that had a marching member been present in that hole that the member would have executed his move well, thus completing the visual design in total for the unit. However, the naked eye tells us a different story. The visual move as designed was not completed successfully ( ala the dots needed in a circle in a painting ). I'm not arguing here that changes should be made in this ( although I believe there should be ), my point is that holes and multiple fall downs have no negative bearing on GE Vis. and Vis. Perf. captions, and quite the contrary, holes and multiple fall downs can indeed result in higher scores in these captions..... when in othere sports and in other art competition venues this would be next to impossible to occur.

That is not true. I have heard tapes/spoken with judges who "subtracted points" (or, in actuality, given less credit) because of holes in the forms. I've heard judges say "close the holes and you'll get a better score."

That being said, say SCV has one or two shows mid/late season when members are out sick. If it's mid/late season, chances are the visual judge has seen their show before, perhaps even recently. If it is known that there are holes because members are out sick, then the judge will probably not be too big of a jerk and kill their score for the hole. Also, if the members on the field do a great job of maintaining the holes and thus marching/holding the forms, they MIGHT get some credit for good marching. This season, assuming people are talking about that, there were several corps who very publicly had MANY members out with a nasty virus. It was on the DCI website, it was in local newspapers, it was big news. Some corps dropped shows for members to recoup, some corps forged ahead with shows at the expense of having a dozen or so holes. I'm sure the judges knew they were missing so many members because the kids were sick and had a little bit of sympathy.

I guess what I'm saying is not all drill holes are equal. If it's early season and a corps hasn't filled out the ranks, then the judges obviously don't know what they're looking at (incomplete pictures + early season when things are dirty anyway = an unknown intent from a judge's perspective) and they won't give a design credit. If it's later season and there are holes because many kids are out sick, then a) the show is cleaner than it was early season so it's more readable, b) chances are good a judge has already seen the show/talked to staff about design intent and knows what the corps is going for, c) the judge has sympathy for the multiple sick kids and for the members going out there putting on a show with a ton of holes, thus making things more difficult for everyone, and d) if the corps is a well trained corps they will probably march and maintain the holes well and demonstrate excellent marching technique.

[BRASSO]

It is has been said before that judges do not allow off the field situations to impact the score they give a Corps during a performance competition.. That judges judge simply the performance in front of them. This is of course a misconception and is erroneous. This misunderstanding in fact causes confusion on any given score when some fans are not aware of the impact in scores that off the field events have on a judges score.

Judges DO take into consideration off the field events when judging a Corps performance. Some people apparently were not aware of off the field events having an impact on a score in performance competition. Once again, you have given us one more example ( sickness ) of off the field events having an impact on judges when judging a Corps performance in competition. This is not new either, and thanks for sharing.

Education is always the best antidote to misunderstanding and confusion.

Edited November 18, 2009 by BRASSO

[Jeff Ream]

' hate to use the figure skating analogy, ( but it's appropriate ): if a figure skater in competition does a safe and relatively easy routine, and has no fall downs, that skater almost without exception will best in competition a skater that had a much more demanding routine but unfortunately on a given day had multiple fall downs during the demanding routine.

As for " holes", if one is involved in an Art competition and one creates a painting to depict a completed circle, but two of the dots are somehow left out, despite the overall greatness of the rest of the painting, points would be subtracted for the incompletion of the circle that needed to be completed in order to generate the desired effect. If a similar painting had less demand in the painting, but had fully completed elements in the painting, more often times than not, the painting with the fully completed elements would win out over the painting with the noticeably uncompleted elements, despite the greater demand.

However, this is not the case in Drum Corps judged competitions at all. Judges ASSUME a completed visual formation has been completed, despite the obvious hole. No points are subtracted for the inability to complete the visual move component as designed. It is ASSUMED that had a marching member been present in that hole that the member would have executed his move well, thus completing the visual design in total for the unit. However, the naked eye tells us a different story. The visual move as designed was not completed successfully ( ala the dots needed in a circle in a painting ). I'm not arguing here that changes should be made in this ( although I believe there should be ), my point is that holes and multiple fall downs have no negative bearing on GE Vis. and Vis. Perf. captions, and quite the contrary, holes and multiple fall downs can indeed result in higher scores in these captions..... when in othere sports and in other art competition venues this would be next to impossible to occur.

i understand on the hole. but you lose me when talking about a fall.

[euponitone]

' hate to use the figure skating analogy, ( but it's appropriate ): if a figure skater in competition does a safe and relatively easy routine, and has no fall downs, that skater almost without exception will best in competition a skater that had a much more demanding routine but unfortunately on a given day had multiple fall downs during the demanding routine.

As for " holes", if one is involved in an Art competition and one creates a painting to depict a completed circle, but two of the dots are somehow left out, despite the overall greatness of the rest of the painting, points would be subtracted for the incompletion of the circle that needed to be completed in order to generate the desired effect. If a similar painting had less demand in the painting, but had fully completed elements in the painting, more often times than not, the painting with the fully completed elements would win out over the painting with the noticeably uncompleted elements, despite the greater demand.

However, this is not the case in Drum Corps judged competitions at all. Judges ASSUME a completed visual formation has been completed, despite the obvious hole. No points are subtracted for the inability to complete the visual move component as designed. It is ASSUMED that had a marching member been present in that hole that the member would have executed his move well, thus completing the visual design in total for the unit. However, the naked eye tells us a different story. The visual move as designed was not completed successfully ( ala the dots needed in a circle in a painting ). I'm not arguing here that changes should be made in this ( although I believe there should be ), my point is that holes and multiple fall downs have no negative bearing on GE Vis. and Vis. Perf. captions, and quite the contrary, holes and multiple fall downs can indeed result in higher scores in these captions..... when in othere sports and in other art competition venues this would be next to impossible to occur.

Ignoring all the examples and wordiness here, i think I can basically agree with one of your points, and disagree with the other. Holes in the show....possible to score as well, or better, given certain circumstances. People falling down - no, i do not agree that judges unfairly score them better than no falls at all. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that a corps with mutiple falls scored better than they would have without those falls, and there NEVER WILL BE.....quite simply because no corps will ever perform the exact same show, the exact same way, with the exact same judges, with all things being equal, except for the falls.

If corps A and corps B are close in score, but corps A has 2 or 3 bad releases in the opener, but still beats corps B in brass, should we assume that bad releases are rewarded by the judges?? Or maybe, we would use common sense to realize that timing, intonation, quality of sound, blend and balance, technique, and about a million other things (which are also judged) go into a brass performance and score. The EXACT same logic can be applied to the visual aspect of performance. By your logic, the cadets snare who fell on finals night must have done it because he thought it would give them a little nudge in score to take out crown....preposterous.....

[euponitone]

i understand on the hole. but you lose me when talking about a fall.

[BRASSO]

Ignoring all the examples and wordiness here, i think I can basically agree with one of your points, and disagree with the other. Holes in the show....possible to score as well, or better, given certain circumstances. People falling down - no, i do not agree that judges unfairly score them better than no falls at all. There is no empirical evidence to suggest that a corps with mutiple falls scored better than they would have without those falls, and there NEVER WILL BE.....quite simply because no corps will ever perform the exact same show, the exact same way, with the exact same judges, with all things being equal, except for the falls.

If corps A and corps B are close in score, but corps A has 2 or 3 bad releases in the opener, but still beats corps B in brass, should we assume that bad releases are rewarded by the judges?? Or maybe, we would use common sense to realize that timing, intonation, quality of sound, blend and balance, technique, and about a million other things (which are also judged) go into a brass performance and score. The EXACT same logic can be applied to the visual aspect of performance. By your logic, the cadets snare who fell on finals night must have done it because he thought it would give them a little nudge in score to take out crown....preposterous.....

" bad releases " are quantifiable. They can be heard by the Judge.

" Holes ", on the other hand, are not quantifiable. They can not be " seen " as if a marcher was present, nor as if the the marcher would have executed the visual move had he or she been present to execute the visual move. No matter the qualification or experience level of the judge. Thus, one can not compare " holes " with " bad releases ".......... " bad releases " are negatively scored. We know this. How ? From judging critiques and judging score sheets....... " holes " due to sickness or whatever on the other hand do not have the same impact on Vis. Perf. scores, nor GE. Vis. scores. How do we know this ? There is no evidence from judging comments via critiques that " holes " in line warranted automatic loss of credit. Nor is there anything on the scoring sheets that judges are to factor into their visual scores as to whether a particular visual component was successfully completed or not due to visual " hole "..... " holes " are not a factor on the judging sheets. The naked eye confirms however that the visual component was NOT fulfilled as designed due to the " hole" or... " holes " ( missing marchers ). The fact that judges factor in off the field events ( sickness ) confirms that " holes " in line have no bearing whatsoever on GE. Vis. nor Vis. Perf. scores except perhaps as generating " sympathy " credits with judges that has been cited before, including this thread by another poster above.

Edited November 18, 2009 by BRASSO

[highpitch_83]

No, we learned early last season that falling down does not cost you points. Some on here also said that falling down but getting up quickly and/ or smoothly can actually provide youu style points with the judges due to agility and dexterity demonstration. For example, a Corps last season on a rainy slippery field in June in a competition in New England had several members fall down during the show. They got points for this by executing a return to formation gracefully and separated themselves point wise over a Corps that unfortunately had no opportunity to demonstrate such agility, as no one from their Corps fell down during their performance. As a result, their overall Vis. Perf. score and Ge. Vis. score went down from the previous night, and they lost by a wider margin to the fall down, get back up gracefully and with aplomb Corps.

I don't think "style points" is the right way to phrase it... I believe the official term is: "recovery" (anyone?)

That being said, if we had the Judges tapes on the DVD's this discussion would be a whole lot more interesting...

Edited November 18, 2009 by highpitch_83