Crown vs. BD this year

[lindap]

I liked Crown and I loved BD (which is something I haven't said for a while).

I can't wait to get my DVD and watch BD over and over as there was so much going on that I'm sure I missed a lot.

Of yeah - BD won't be on my copy of the DVD.

Oh well...

I watched semis on FN tonight first time in months. Crown was available and BD was not (no viewing over and over?). Personally I liked watching/listening to Crown and BD live at Indy 2013 and enjoy the repertoire from both corps. They both performed very well on finals night and personally SCV should have been 3rd at finals based on performance that night imo : )

edit: every 2013 On Demand FN video of BD says 'This content has been blocked due to licensing for your location'. Oh my. No worries. I have a CD. Sorry for interrupting this thread. Please carry on with the discussion. Thanks.

Edited November 6, 2013 by lindap

[jmc5682]

After really being honest with myself and watching all of the top corps from this past summer I can honestly say I did not like BD's show or Crown's show, or Cadets for that matter. My favorite show was SCV. I also enjoyed Bluecoats, Blue Knights, Boston, Cavies and I don't want to forget how much I really enjoyed the Troopers.

I have loved BD since I was a little boy. I wanted to march with them so badly, but sadly they did not have guys in their guard when I was able to march. Luckily for me the Freelancers existed and I was able to have a terrific corps experience.

I really loved BD visually this past year, but musically I was left uninspired. This has been the case with BD over the past few years. I have been so in love with BD for so long that I have been giving them a pass on what seems to be their lack of audience focus. Well, no more. I am tired of not being entertained by shows. It is not just BD. I honestly felt Crown, while having an amazing horn line, was not really focused on entertaining the audience as well this past season (congrats to them on their first DCI win though). I am not talking about the individual performers, but the design of the shows.

I don't think there needs to be an audience reaction score added, but I do hope that more corps will follow SCV's formula. They were not only great fun to watch, but they were 1 tenth from medaling. I have spent money on the fan network and I go to at least one show (normally the Stanford show) per year, I want to keep supporting this activity I love. I hope the corps will keep the audience in mind with the programs for 2014. Here's hoping!!

[flammaster]

I think SCV had the best conventional show. There should be another category for that. BD and Crown had very different shows and are very modern. Two other shows I really loved was Phantom Regiment and Blue Stars. Everyone was so good this year! I really thought BDB should have placed much higher than they did. There was some serious competition though so not as high as i wanted. They could have made top 12 a few years ago with that show.

[jmc5682]

I disagree. For instance, BD chose to play music that has been around for years. It was not modern. I am also not saying that the placements were incorrect. Also, I understand that each person in the crowd appreciates different things. I am going to show my support by giving the 100 dollars I normally donate to BD to SCV instead. I think that is a positive way to support the kind of program I enjoy most.

[TESB]

Does anyone feel like they enjoy BD more than Crown this year? I've been watching BD a lot since finals, and I find it pretty stunning. The combination and coordination of so many elements, the effects created through amplification and electronics, and the source music all combine into a powerful package. I love how they play with expected forms--musically, visually, choreographically. For example, many "traditional" drill moves and marching techniques are absent, but the individual responsibilities of the performers are still impressive. I'm beginning to wonder if BD vs. Crown is was a bit like Star vs. Cadets in 1993. Cadets won with a pretty conventional "higher, faster, harder, louder" design, but BD on repeated viewing accomplished some very daring and effective things exceptionally well. Anyone with me?

I think this is a valid topic.

There's a notion that BD shows are so layered that you get more and more out of it each time you watch. But I felt Crown just put it all there on the surface. There's usually no more than one or two things happening on the field which is even less than normal I think. So the more I watch crown post season, the more things I find wrong or banal with the show. It's very bland and happy throughout, there's no tension, just constant release.

There are a lot of reasons I could go into, but I feel that the show should have been out of top 3 on the drill alone. Am I going crazy when I just see mistakes and inconsistencies everywhere? Not in the kids necessarily, but in just the writing of dots? I think even Phantom or Bluecoats had more imaginative and polished drill writing wise. If you took a screenshot for all the rectangles Crown made, you'd have about 12 pictures all with crown in the same-ish block with the same intervals on the same-ish part of the field.

And other than that, I really could rant for quite a bit about how little attention to detail and care there was in writing the drill. I would argue there's more scatter in this show than any BD show because every single line to box type of move is pretty much just scattered to. Because it looks like the drill writer just highlighted some performers and pressed the "put them in a grid" button on pyware, there are a lot of drill moves that are essentially set, scatter, set, scatter, set. At least BD's scatter is deliberate and not used as a band-aid (I'm looking at you galaxy to galaxy scatter at the end of the "energy part II"). There are other things too, kids dots seem to switch, patterns established in some members aren't followed or even straight up contradicted in some parts (look at infinity sign to grid to pods in beginning). There's a part where all 80 or so of their brass is doing three man parallel pinwheels (choosing to do 3 person pinwheels a questionable choice to say the least in an 80 person hornline but it works kinda) except for 9 tubas. Whole corps going one way, 9 tubas in the back going a different way. Those are three big examples, but nearly every visual idea, there's a moment of "wait, what? why are you making them do that? why are they doing that?"

And lemme just talk about 3D drill real quick. It's an illusion people! It's lines passing through each other and intervals compressing, aka normal drill. It's a drill writer's trick with a few subsets. It's not even something that's "never even been attempted" or whatever other exaggeration you find strewn about the webz. The illusion of 3D in drill (playing with your depth perception) is something cavies and BD have been doing for years. Even phantom had a 3D book opening up this year and that one was a changing axis! Crown's pyramid was horns down, 16 counts, on a fixed axis, and was based on a single kid doing a true 4-5. Compare that to the rotating cube. If you're still crossing your eyes staring at those .gifs of rotating shapes, you are a sucker! Especially with the pyramid.

The only real 3D drill is stuff people have been doing for years, ramps and platforms, chairs and other props, not that it matters.

Did anyone else find it weird that the EotB show called E=mc2 (with that logo being abundant on the field in the drill, costume, and drum) had maybe two ideas from the source material expressed through anything other than the pit (brass). I mean, they play the Gm, F, Bb chords in the beginning and during the first Lovatt-Cooper piece, and then brass soloists for the ballad, but that's kinda it. Everything else is the (amazing when not a recording) voice work and (not so amazing) choreography and some pit/synth shtuff. And then everything else is just something else, The Abyss, some Lovatt-Cooper pieces, one of which shows up at the end out of nowhere. Remember that Crown won because they won GE because they won music GE because they got some 20s there. BD beat them in vis GE, Vis overall and Music overall.

BD, it seems to me, had a really good semis performance and simply got royally screwed on the sheets. I mean I think people on this forum were calling dci out that night that top two corps' spread swapped with a difference of .8 pts. Has that ever even happened before that dramatically? Go watch Crown's semis performance, they drag, they phase, their ritardandos and rubatos were a mess. I think BD got spooked with that point shock and had a remarkably terrible finals performance (chipped solos, phasing, that sort of thing) totally their fault. But still nothing like Crown the week before at allentwon, who were that night still only .2 down from devs. man that video is quite embarrassing.

Not trying to put down their win or say anyone got robbed Saturday night, but no one else got the jumbotron shot of the corps name and logo in their multi cam as they introduced the corps and there has been no apparent attempt at taking down the numerous crown finals and encore performance vids from youtube. Non of these opinions have to do with the kids, it's all the design.

Edited November 9, 2013 by TESB

[MisterA]

I think this is a valid topic.

There's a notion that BD shows are so layered that you get more and more out of it each time you watch. But I felt Crown just put it all there on the surface. There's usually no more than one or two things happening on the field which is even less than normal I think. So the more I watch crown post season, the more things I find wrong or banal with the show. It's very bland and happy throughout, there's no tension, just constant release.

There are a lot of reasons I could go into, but I feel that the show should have been out of top 3 on the drill alone. Am I going crazy when I just see mistakes and inconsistencies everywhere? Not in the kids necessarily, but in just the writing of dots? I think even Phantom or Bluecoats had more imaginative and polished drill writing wise. If you took a screenshot for all the rectangles Crown made, you'd have about 12 pictures all with crown in the same-ish block with the same intervals on the same-ish part of the field.

And other than that, I really could rant for quite a bit about how little attention to detail and care there was in writing the drill. I would argue there's more scatter in this show than any BD show because every single line to box type of move is pretty much just scattered to. Because it looks like the drill writer just highlighted some performers and pressed the "put them in a grid" button on pyware, there are a lot of drill moves that are essentially set, scatter, set, scatter, set. At least BD's scatter is deliberate and not used as a band-aid (I'm looking at you galaxy to galaxy scatter at the end of the "energy part II"). There are other things too, kids dots seem to switch, patterns established in some members aren't followed or even straight up contradicted in some parts (look at infinity sign to grid to pods in beginning). There's a part where all 80 or so of their brass is doing three man parallel pinwheels (choosing to do 3 person pinwheels a questionable choice to say the least in an 80 person hornline but it works kinda) except for 9 tubas. Whole corps going one way, 9 tubas in the back going a different way. Those are three big examples, but nearly every visual idea, there's a moment of "wait, what? why are you making them do that? why are they doing that?"

And lemme just talk about 3D drill real quick. It's an illusion people! It's lines passing through each other and intervals compressing, aka normal drill. It's a drill writer's trick with a few subsets. It's not even something that's "never even been attempted" or whatever other exaggeration you find strewn about the webz. The illusion of 3D in drill (playing with your depth perception) is something cavies and BD have been doing for years. Even phantom had a 3D book opening up this year and that one was a changing axis! Crown's pyramid was horns down, 16 counts, on a fixed axis, and was based on a single kid doing a true 4-5. Compare that to the rotating cube. If you're still crossing your eyes staring at those .gifs of rotating shapes, you are a sucker! Especially with the pyramid.

The only real 3D drill is stuff people have been doing for years, ramps and platforms, chairs and other props, not that it matters.

Did anyone else find it weird that the EotB show called E=mc2 (with that logo being abundant on the field in the drill, costume, and drum) had maybe two ideas from the source material expressed through anything other than the pit (brass). I mean, they play the Gm, F, Bb chords in the beginning and during the first Lovatt-Cooper piece, and then brass soloists for the ballad, but that's kinda it. Everything else is the (amazing when not a recording) voice work and (not so amazing) choreography and some pit/synth shtuff. And then everything else is just something else, The Abyss, some Lovatt-Cooper pieces, one of which shows up at the end out of nowhere. Remember that Crown won because they won GE because they won music GE because they got some 20s there. BD beat them in vis GE, Vis overall and Music overall.

BD, it seems to me, had a really good semis performance and simply got royally screwed on the sheets. I mean I think people on this forum were calling dci out that night that top two corps' spread swapped with a difference of .8 pts. Has that ever even happened before that dramatically? Go watch Crown's semis performance, they drag, they phase, their ritardandos and rubatos were a mess. I think BD got spooked with that point shock and had a remarkably terrible finals performance (chipped solos, phasing, that sort of thing) totally their fault. But still nothing like Crown the week before at allentwon, who were that night still only .2 down from devs. man that video is quite embarrassing.

Not trying to put down their win or say anyone got robbed Saturday night, but no one else got the jumbotron shot of the corps name and logo in their multi cam as they introduced the corps and there has been no apparent attempt at taking down the numerous crown finals and encore performance vids from youtube. Non of these opinions have to do with the kids, it's all the design.

I agree with several of the points you have brought up here. Being at finals week, I too thought it was a little odd when Crown and BD flipped places at semis. All 4 of the top corps did have some design flaws, and I thought possibly Cadets should have possibly pulled out the win during the week. Nothing against BD or Crown, but I thought Cadets overall performance was a little better on Saturday. More than anything I thought with the level of performances of the top 4, that the spread between 1-4 was a little too big. It was nice to see SCV and Cadets only .1 apart, but really thought regardless of who had won, that there should probably only be about .5-.7 between 1st and 4th. Crown was great in brass, but a little weaker in visual GE in my opinion. It just seemed like they were trying to imitate BD. BD was clean, but still seemed to have a disconnect from the crowd, which I sometimes felt was more that the crowd was really hoping for a new champion. Cadets and SCV to me seemed to have a better overall package. I think the moving boxes kind of hurt Cadets, but I thought Cadets should have been 2nd in overall Music GE behind SCV. But I felt all of the top 4 had some minor flaws on finals night, and if they had been judged on the tick system, Crown probably would have ended up 4th. But regardless of who won and who came in 4th, I think it was the best top 4 since 2000.

[TESB]

I agree with several of the points you have brought up here. Being at finals week, I too thought it was a little odd when Crown and BD flipped places at semis. All 4 of the top corps did have some design flaws, and I thought possibly Cadets should have possibly pulled out the win during the week. Nothing against BD or Crown, but I thought Cadets overall performance was a little better on Saturday. More than anything I thought with the level of performances of the top 4, that the spread between 1-4 was a little too big. It was nice to see SCV and Cadets only .1 apart, but really thought regardless of who had won, that there should probably only be about .5-.7 between 1st and 4th. Crown was great in brass, but a little weaker in visual GE in my opinion. It just seemed like they were trying to imitate BD. BD was clean, but still seemed to have a disconnect from the crowd, which I sometimes felt was more that the crowd was really hoping for a new champion. Cadets and SCV to me seemed to have a better overall package. I think the moving boxes kind of hurt Cadets, but I thought Cadets should have been 2nd in overall Music GE behind SCV. But I felt all of the top 4 had some minor flaws on finals night, and if they had been judged on the tick system, Crown probably would have ended up 4th. But regardless of who won and who came in 4th, I think it was the best top 4 since 2000.

Yeah I was definitely a little uncomfortable with the fact the 2nd to 3rd spread was so large considering what was on top, but if only Cadets had a better show, or even a better opener or second movement, I think all the GE would have fallen into place for them and would have swept. They were by far the cleanest corps. Crown had easy cadets drill at best and weren't anywhere near cadets clean.

I guess I'm glad we have a new champ and all, but it's too bad they couldn't do it with a more enduring show for me. Just too many big picture visual ideas lost on me. Did anyone consider the fact that the 3D tetrahedron was pretty much the 3rd or 4th triangle idea in a sea of circles and quadrilaterals? The other triangles? as far as I could tell the low brass made one for their little soli in the energy movement and guard a little before that to foreshadow. Oh also the part just before the two galaxy scatter band-aid things at the end of the Energy movement. But before and after that, it's all rectangles and the occaisional circle, which are few and fleeting themselves and I'm assuming are only there for either transition fodder or to echo the rolling bass drums (which is another lost visual idea).

[Tim K]

But I felt all of the top 4 had some minor flaws on finals night, and if they had been judged on the tick system, Crown probably would have ended up 4th. But regardless of who won and who came in 4th, I think it was the best top 4 since 2000.

While 2000 was a great year, for me, this past year's finals had the best Top 4 corps from a competitive point of view since 1980 with BD, 27th, Bridgemen, and Spirit. If you recall, there was a very narrow point spread between first and fourth. I wanted it to be 27th's night, and was thrilled when BD delivered what I thought was a lackluster performance, at least it came across as lackluster due to two major reasons: one, I loved 27th, and while we had a reasonably good television, it did not pick up the nuances of drum corps. However, I was worried Spirit was going to win, especially with "Let It Be Me," which from what I was told moved everyone to tears, including some members of 27th who appeared after 27th. Remember, this was the year Jim Ott was killed. Scores were close and you could sense an upset in the making.

I agree that SCV's performance was better than the placement they received because Cadets did not have quite the fire they had in some other shows. There was a major flaw that I thought might cost Crown the title though I would have had them no lower than 2nd. I also anticpated some serious cases of nerves. I have felt that Crown has been hungry for a title since 2009, and while I did not believe "Rach Star would have won the title, I felt nerves kept it from placing higher and I believe nerves got the better of them when they faced BD in 2012, but as I said in an earlier post, BD was missing something from BD in Indy, and Crown had a certain passion. The same thing happened in 2011 when Cadets "Angels and Demons" won.

[Lincoln]

Yeah I was definitely a little uncomfortable with the fact the 2nd to 3rd spread was so large considering what was on top, but if only Cadets had a better show, or even a better opener or second movement, I think all the GE would have fallen into place for them and would have swept. They were by far the cleanest corps. Crown had easy cadets drill at best and weren't anywhere near cadets clean.

IMO two things affected Cadets - the movement of the boxes was never clean at any point during the season. Then there were issues with the guard. That huge unison flag work at the end was never clean either. For a corps of this calibre it stuck out like a sore thumb.

I also hated all the late season additions for example the climbing on top of the boxes. The show started to become the equivalent of an overdecorated birthday cake.

[Tim K]

IMO two things affected Cadets - the movement of the boxes was never clean at any point during the season. Then there were issues with the guard. That huge unison flag work at the end was never clean either. For a corps of this calibre it stuck out like a sore thumb.

I also hated all the late season additions for example the climbing on top of the boxes. The show started to become the equivalent of an overdecorated birthday cake.

Cadets did have some "wind issues" at a show in Lynn, MA last summer where the "boxes" or "canopies" as they've also been called had trouble staying put, however that same night a plane that was approaching Logan Airport was flying low during a portion of Cadets' show (not that uncommon, Lynn is very near Logan as the crow flies), but if there was a competition between the plane and the Cadets drum line, let's just say the plane would have come in second.