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What Show Design Tropes Make You Cringe?


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I read an AV Club article today about bad TV tropes writers use: "enhancing" photos, fake band names, using 555-1234 as phone numbers, the "magic" of Christmas, etc. Most of the reasons given were that they pulled the viewer out of the show, and I could see how it could also apply to DCI. What design tropes do you hate the most or are over-used?

For me, most of them seem to be in the pre-show. Mostly voice-over stuff. Honestly, the adjusting the dial with old-timey radio announcers does it the most for me. It's getting old.

Here's the AV Club article: http://www.avclub.com/article/what-tv-trope-aggravates-you-most-202160

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2 minutes ago, MikeN said:

This is an interesting idea to discuss, because it forces us to pull out of the comfortable and ask why things are, in fact, the way they are.  My personal ones are:

  • Slide Whistle = comical.  That went out of fashion in the 40's. 
  • Drumline Feature bunny hops and bug stomps - it's fake aggression, and if everyone does it, it loses it's effectiveness
  • Guard soloist reaching for the sky at the big ballad chord cutoff.  Again, it's so overused, and in every possible context, that it has no meaning anymore. 

Mike

 

yeah, really good ones! The slide whistle reminded me of the bird whistle they put in every show in the corps I marched. Once was enough, haha!

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almost every show now has to have a soli dancer, then boy meets girl, girl pushes boy away and finds another.

some sub-groupings, alternating duets in movements, etc. might be more interesting than same old, same old.

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13 minutes ago, wolfgang said:

Arrangements, whether pop, jazz, or symphonic, that take a couple bars of the original and are filled in with dissonant fluff, with the obbligatory 16th note park and blow technical passage.

If it was good enough to put in your show, it's probably good enough to use a larger portion of it. Just play the tune, man.

It's amazing to compare 1999 and 2016 Scouts, where what you mentioned was slapped on pretty much throughout. Mostly because it's the same arranger, so the differences you hear are reflective of trends in the activity itself.

Edited by Hrothgar15
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Well, what makes you cringe, and what is cliche, can be two different things.

Cringe: Overdone drum-major salutes.

Cliche: Batteries that flex their muscles, fire guns, wipe away sweat, etc. after a rip. The Bridgemen beat you all to it, and could back it up, so just don't.

Edited by 2muchcoffeeman
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