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Phantom Regiment 2018


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13 minutes ago, NakedEye said:

How long has he been there? This was the first year that I noticed his signature style on it, and the guard reminded a lot of his past work, such as SCV's Miss Saigon, the covered faces, etc. Even though the show was more than a bit frantic, and the 1-900 voiceovers were not a net plus, I thought the program was a big step in the right direction from recent efforts. 

Senility is a terrible thing. I thought for sure Cartwright had been at Phantom longer than a year and I was wrong.

I thought the music writing this year was a step in the right direction. I still felt the visual program was a bunch of independently good ideas that did not work together well enough to form a solid whole.

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6 minutes ago, hostrauser said:

Senility is a terrible thing. I thought for sure Cartwright had been at Phantom longer than a year and I was wrong.

I thought the music writing this year was a step in the right direction. I still felt the visual program was a bunch of independently good ideas that did not work together well enough to form a solid whole.

i think you let Cartwright and Pitts see if they can meld for a few years...get it right. I didnt hate 2017, but there were some technical issues to hash out

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6 minutes ago, hostrauser said:

Senility is a terrible thing. I thought for sure Cartwright had been at Phantom longer than a year and I was wrong.

I thought the music writing this year was a step in the right direction. I still felt the visual program was a bunch of independently good ideas that did not work together well enough to form a solid whole.

Not perfect, but compared to the milquetoast Paris show, etc., there were sparks of something beginning to happen. 

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6 hours ago, hostrauser said:

After several years of under-written shows that didn't give the corps a chance to succeed, Phantasm at least had the chops to give them a chance. But there were still a lot of problems. Most key for me: the past two years, Phantom has had shows with a lot of great IDEAS that have failed to coalesce into a working whole. The cohesiveness of show design is simply not there and, let's be honest, hasn't been for a while. This leads me to my first, most drastic suggestion:

1. Replace Dan Farrell and/or Wes Cartwright

Phantom needs new eyes at the top and, quite frankly, some fresh design and instructional staff. This won't be an easy task: quality program coordinators do not grow on trees. But Rick Valenzuela is already in place and I think he can bring in good replacements. This corps has scored below 90 at Finals only four times since the build-up system was introduced in 1984. Three of those have been in the past nine years. Their Finals score has dropped five years in a row, and their Finals placement has dropped four of the past five years. There has been no correction in the opposite direction to provide optimism. It's time for a big change. In fact, it's time for multiple big changes. This leads me to my second drastic suggestion:

2. Lose the helmets

Yep, I like the look, too. But they are visual albatrosses and it's not reasonable or feasible to keep designing holes in the show for the members to take them on/off. Phantom wore shakos before, they can go back to that, go bare, or even get creative like Crown and invent an entirely new type of headgear that fits the Phantom image without hamstringing the corps' visual potential. Visually, the activity is leaving Phantom behind. You can argue all you want that it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is. 9th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 9th, 10th have been their visual subcaption scores the past two years at Finals. The middle 7th and middle 9th are their Visual Analysis scores, which means they are maxing out what little visual vocabulary is written into the show.

3. Keep your classical identity

It might seem contrarian to my prior two statements, but there's no reason Phantom needs to reinvent the wheel on their musical books. There's more than enough content in the classical repertoire to provide Phantom with great shows for years to come. (Mr. Will Pitts, please check out a work by English composer Granville Bantock entitled "Thalaba the Destroyer".)

#1 is going to be difficult AF. The Farrell's have created a monopoly at Regiment. If RV got rid of Dan, Tim and the board would get rid of him. On the flip side they need to recognize no one with major cred is going to come there and deal with an authoritarian running things.

 

I called this a long time ago. I've given up on them changing. 

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On 8/14/2017 at 11:52 AM, hostrauser said:

That is what is puzzling me so much. Cartwright's work with Broken Arrow (and, before that, L.D. Bell) was constantly inventive, original, and fresh. 

Edited by BoaDci
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1 hour ago, BoaDci said:

Disagree.  I've followed BOA pretty closely the past few years and found his work impressive, but rather commonplace on that circuit.  Let's the guards hair down, adds a few enticing narrations, gets the biggest guard he can and drops the equipment, moves them to flag.  It's impressive yeah, but his style has aged poorly.  I was hoping he might pull out something new when going to Phantom, but it seemed to be his same old style.  

I think the key word in what he said was "was."

Cartwright's work with Bell was pretty magical in their mid-'00s run. Certainly extraordinary for the Texas end of BOA (you know, the better end :whip:) at the time. He had them on equipment still, too. (If you can find it [I can't remember the url], there used to be a wonderful treasure trove of videos of Bell shows floating around the Internet, which may provide some insight.)

That era's the era of BOA I'm most familiar with, so it's what sticks out for me when Cartwright is mentioned. That said, it's entirely possible (likely, even) that he's gotten stale in the meantime.

EDIT: FOUND IT. http://www.dfife.com/ Useful site is useful.

Edited by ftwdrummer
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22 minutes ago, phd-student-TTU said:

So what happens now?

Run contrary to what the activity is doing now, go back to your look from 2010 and present a show similar to "Into the Light." Flame me for what I'm about to say if you'd like, but it's time to scrap the whole Phantomette thing.  It been great, but time to move on.  While so many other corps are coming out in onesies, the Phantom look, especially the light colored uniforms are classy and iconic.  Stand out by returning to what this corps used to be.  What's old is new again. Phantom is the one corps that could pull this off.

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I would like to see Phantom return to the world of opera. The last time they medaled was 2012 with "Turandot." I would love to see the famous double bill: Cavaleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci on the field, more than just Vesti la Giuba, Gounod's Romeo and Juliet  could be amazing, his Faust was not part of Phantom's earlier show of the same name. Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman could provide interesting opportunities. Verdi's Don Carlo would have great musical selections but portraying it on the field could be troublesome. I know all you have to do is suggest opera and some say opera and drum corps does not always mix, but I'd like to see them give it a try. 

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