The REAL San Antonio Rough Riders Thread

[pudding]

6 hours ago, jwillis35 said:

To me, this is an insult to the Blue Devils and the judging community. People say this all the time, that BD designs to the sheets. I don't think so. Of course, what people often mean when they say this is that the Blue Devils found some loophole in the judging sheets and decided to exploit it for scores. That somehow they are willing to exploit a loophole in the sheets for easy numbers.  When you have the most championships there will be more criticism. I get that.   

Then there are those saying BD is too formulaic and that they are not pushing the activity. Nothing wrong with formulas. Crown has one. The Cavaliers used a formula to great success in the 90s and early 2000s. The Cadets used one for decades -- to great success.  A formula is a great thing.  The Madison Scouts used to thrill fans and light-up stadiums around the country because of a formula.  The Bluecoats finally won a DCI title because of a cool formula.  

Why is it that many seem to feel the leaders in the activity should always be pushing the envelope? There is nothing in the sheets that say you have to do that. Push too hard, change too much, and experiment too often and one can lose their identity, quality, and find themselves in uncharted territory for which they have little experience. This can be fun, certainly challenging, but also risky.  The wheel does not always need to be reinvented. The judging system is setup to reward performance, quality design, and overall effect.  The sheets do not care whether your show is trying the newest or craziest ideas.  The sheets care about the quality of performance, design, and how those two things combine for a total effect. 

And yet, it's an absolutely undeniable fact that BD designs to the sheets. The way the sheets are laid out rewards including as many styles and elements as possible in order to demonstrate as many skills as possible. What is conspicuously missing from the sheets is any kind of restriction on cohesion and integration of these elements together. While corps will often do these things in an integrated manner in service of a holistic show, there are many, many examples of things being "thrown in" for the sake of more credit, with little or no relation to the show theme or concept. Alternatively, skills or design elements will be treated as a checklist that the designers go down: Double tonguing section? Check. Hard drill section? Check. Body movement/dance section? Check. Drum break? Check. Etc...

BD is the most conspicuous and flagrant offender in terms of this style of design, and it's not their fault. That's just how the sheets are designed. They've recognized this, and they are designing to the sheets. As I said before, my problem isn't necessarily with BD (although philosophically I disagree with them), it's 100% with the sheets for having the loophole in the first place and letting it happen.

[jwillis35]

4 minutes ago, pudding said:

I'll admit that when I wrote that post, it was very late and I was not necessarily thinking with 100% of my brain, so I needlessly diluted my off-the-cuff descriptions of those corps. I do believe that your evaluations are more complete and more accurate in general, but I think that you're leaving some things out.

SCV's show this year reminds me very much of a cross between 2005-ish Cavaliers and 2009-ish BD (which makes sense, given both the staff and the general design direction of the activity). My primary complaint with the show holistically is that it doesn't seem to go anywhere in terms of build or excitement. I feel that this is because they have made a musical decision to only ever have very short passages in the brass (of varying technical difficulty, let's leave that discussion for elsewhere) interspersed between many, many percussion breaks. In my opinion, this breaks up the natural flow and build of the show into instead a series of vignettes, which are individually very nice but from a gestalt perspective do not combine into a powerful whole. As far as relation to BD, I think that it's more subtle than with Crown, but there's definitely elements of influence from 2000-2009 era BD in terms of feel and pacing.

Crown's musical execution this year is, as always, top-notch. Their brass sound continually amazes me with its sonority, even inside the very awkward harmonies in pieces like the Akiho. Additionally, they have several interesting visual ideas; in particular, I enjoy the broken yard lines as an effect. However, throwing a bunch of good ideas into a blender and calling the smoothie cohesive is not good overall design. As has been discussed in the Crown thread, it's very difficult to rationalize the awkwardly composed back half with the relatively cohesive front half. For me personally, as soon as the vocalist in For Good begins singing, I can't watch anymore because my "suspension of disbelief" (or whatever the analogue is for this activity... immersion?) is broken; it's too jarring of a shift from the beautiful brass and percussion sounds to the unprocessed Broadway/Disney-style singing. The performer herself is doing a great job of what's being asked of her, my problem is with what she's being asked to do. The entire second half of the show screams to me of the kind of overly-abstract, highbrow kind of post-structuralist art that BD was doing in 2010-2013, yet for some reason (because it's Crown instead), they're being given the benefit of the doubt by everyone instead of being justly criticized for their hodgepodge design. Their own show description is more or less a mirror, so that in lieu of any provided explanation the audience and the judges can just tack on whatever explanation they want.

Bluecoats have definitely been influenced by BD in terms of visual design philosophy. While they've been steadily developing a unique style since 2014 (actually, going back to 2007 or so, but those developments are less relevant to this discussion), starting last year they really started to embrace the idea of full-body movement as visual content. This is definitely a BD-esque design decision. Sure, they've also been influenced by other sources (Scouts brass and Cavaliers percussion as you mentioned), but there is a distinct element of BD in their visual design. Since visual has always been their Achilles heel, I think that it's very notable that they are attempting to integrate BD-style visual philosophy in an attempt to boost both their effect and their numbers.

Some excellent points and I enjoyed your point of view here. 

[jwillis35]

5 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

In retrospect, I feel as though we are finally seeing other corps establish themselves by doing what BD chose to do a decade ago.

Which is to find a style, a way of designing shows, and building only within those parameters.

And we are seeing those design styles be rewarded, consistently, by the judging community.

We now have to address things that up to now have not been a part of scoring, in terms of difficulty. Some of the things some corps are doing, as a part of their style, in the past may have been scored as less demanding than other ways of getting there from here. DCI must address this, as they did a decade or so ago, or fans will become jaded and cynical about the competition itself.

The use of electronics is headed to a scoring category.

Follow the leader, long felt to be something less difficult than marching formations, will have to be reevaluated. Because the way Bluecoats is doing it is ###### hard to do well.

Again, just as BD convinced DCI that guard, jazz running and dramatic story telling had to be valued, and assymetical marching drills, these are things that also need to be re-valued.

I doubt this re-evaluation will have much impact on the top of the activity. But, it will encourage corps to step out of their styles more, and try new ways to do things. And hopefully, far more importantly, it's critical to expand the activity to allow more opportunity for up and coming corps to find their own niche.

A lot of fine points. I agree with much of this. I hope you're wrong about electronics moving to its own category on the judge sheets. I think leaving as part of GE is best.  

I agree about Bluecoats. That show is incredibly demanding from a visual perspective. I do think the judges will give it credit...soon. They need to clean feet and forms. They were 3rd in brass yesterday and percussion scored well with one of the judges. I think their strength in performance captions will begin to show as the feet get clean.  They have time. 

[pudding]

Bloo's feet are always awful (relative to their top-tier peers). Additionally, I think that an unspoken drawback to their high-energy, high-hype shows is that their performers can overhype, which leads to visual dirt (one kid leans in too much here, one kid gets excited and turns their hat too much there). Control, control, control needs to be their focus going forward.

[MikeRapp]

8 minutes ago, pudding said:

And yet, it's an absolutely undeniable fact that BD designs to the sheets. The way the sheets are laid out rewards including as many styles and elements as possible in order to demonstrate as many skills as possible. What is conspicuously missing from the sheets is any kind of restriction on cohesion and integration of these elements together. While corps will often do these things in an integrated manner in service of a holistic show, there are many, many examples of things being "thrown in" for the sake of more credit, with little or no relation to the show theme or concept. Alternatively, skills or design elements will be treated as a checklist that the designers go down: Double tonguing section? Check. Hard drill section? Check. Body movement/dance section? Check. Drum break? Check. Etc...

BD is the most conspicuous and flagrant offender in terms of this style of design, and it's not their fault. That's just how the sheets are designed. They've recognized this, and they are designing to the sheets. As I said before, my problem isn't necessarily with BD (although philosophically I disagree with them), it's 100% with the sheets for having the loophole in the first place and letting it happen.

The compulsory approach to show design is something I psonally have zero interest in. But, I understand that this historic view of the activity has required it, or at least rewarded it. 

This is where the chasm is developing in this activity, make no mistake about it. Corps are beginning to build shows, and even brands, around specific concepts and directions. To the exclusion of the compulsory aspect of the sheets. Bluecoats won't find a way to include something in the show design if it doesn't fit the concept. I don't WANT them to see if they can reverse engineer their shows for the scoring sheets, and I don't think the activity should want that either.

Mark my words, this is where we are headed, because the crowds love it. 

When I watch a movie, I don't have a sheet by which I tick off all of the elements the director included. I conclude whether the movie had a unique story, great acting and directing, and sold the concept at the end. Therefore, a movie like Tron, which depended almost exclusively on special effects, can be evaluated on the same scale as a move like Sideways, which had none.

[MikeRapp]

8 minutes ago, pudding said:

Bloo's feet are always awful (relative to their top-tier peers). Additionally, I think that an unspoken drawback to their high-energy, high-hype shows is that their performers can overhype, which leads to visual dirt (one kid leans in too much here, one kid gets excited and turns their hat too much there). Control, control, control needs to be their focus going forward.

Why? Why should "control" be valued over performance?

[pudding]

4 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

Why? Why should "control" be valued over performance?

Overhyping is not "performance", it's sloppiness. To use an boxing analogy, strength without control is just violence. It's possible to have too much energy to the point where it distracts from the overall product; the show is not about any single one of these kids, but about all of them. It's important to harness that energy and direct it toward selling the product, while still projecting their atmosphere of enjoyment and passion.

[Cappybara]

7 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

Why? Why should "control" be valued over performance?

Precision perhaps?

[George Dixon]

Interesting discussion

everyone seems up in arms in regard to guard scoring - personally felt the greatest issue there was the underscoring of BD and the overscoring of Regiment 

the caption i find most interesting was GE music with some disagreements between the judges as well as the ordinal to music captions and overall placement

Personally felt Bloo was underscored in GE music

there are a bunch of contest the next few nights so it will be interesting to see if these trends continue or were a blip

i felt the judges got the top tour corps correct based on just having watched it on line 

i personally would have reorganized the next six corps but the scoring trend was obviously in the minds of the judges last night 

Cavaliers, Cadets and Madison each increased their scoring around 2 points

I predict by ATL Regiment will flip places with Blue Knights, Cadets will flip with Boston and Bluecoats will close in on Crown

Crossmen is an enigma this year. They felt  flat last night was. They may move ahead of Blue Stars in ATL

At the very top I feel SCV is being highly rewarded in GE and content scores. I'm wondering if the judges will put them in first or they fade a bit down the stretch. Not sure. I personally do not enjoy the show, so hard for me to judge it

 

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by George Dixon

[George Dixon]

4 minutes ago, Cappybara said:

Precision perhaps?

DCI is all about control and clarity