October design conversations

[grimmo]

Carolina Crown

Much has been written on this forum and elsewhere about Crown's 22 show. At the season's outset I felt they, if anyone,  had the show best placed to top Blue Devils. While the show didn't come together as perhaps I thought it might, I really enjoyed Crown exploring avenues other than large props to create theatrical effect. I hope that the learnings from 22 provide a springboard for a show that comes together and truly catches fire in 23.  

So what might they be considering? Percussion featuring and integration seems an obvious aspect that may change through new voices in this fall's design process. I guess many may share my view that Crown's approach to brass is something that we hope never loses its sparkle, but!...I do wonder what the technical wizardry sourced from Brass Band repertoires is now in the realms of diminishing returns. Is it feasible to create those crazy brass arrangements from different musical sources and genres? 

I hope too that they continue to explore the use of different tarps and fabrics, especially if they can find a concept where their use is integral to that concept.

With a strong guard that will hopefully carry through into 23 I feel like Crown, as much as anyone, are well placed for next season and a lot boils down to what is crafted this winter.

While rings can only ever be earned, I feel like Crown's time for another is well and truly due?

 

 

SCV

Looking back to this past season the final ending was truly 'Santa Clara' in nature and worked great. I do wonder if they were hindered a little by having an incomplete show early season so this tag ended up being something like the fourth increment of ending. I appreciate there are a million things that can get in the way of being ready right out of the gate, but for this show, with such a great closing idea that really coalesced the concept, the pacing of changes through the season didnt quite seem optimal.

This fall the brass arranger will have a season on the team under his belt, and without knowing the in personalities involved, it seems reasonable to speculate that that will help the process. 

Looking back at recent Vanguard shows I feel 18 caught fire due to the way the components fused together, cool prop usage, cool costumes, a couple of great moments music and visual coordination. 19 and 22 to an extent didn't, imho, have such effective prop usage (and to a less importance cool costuming) nor moments, said ending aside, that stood out like 18.

With this in mind it will be interesting to see where their concept design and prop usage goes this next season. Looking at MG's WGI work over the years, his units have excelled with clever prop usage time and time again. Can SCV do the same? 

Prop usage in general seems to have matured now to the point where most clever/innovative/surprising uses have been covered and prop effectiveness is more dependent now on how it enhances a chosen concept, rather than any wow factor due to the nature of the prop itself.

Of course, corps could continue to throw increasing budgets at prop design bring more of stage theatre elements to the field, but I hope the activity doesn't go too much further in this direction, which may only widen the gap between the 'haves and have nots'.

Back to Vanguard, and we might expect they will continue to heavily utilise props in 23, and a fairly dark musical sound, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out. 

Lastly, I hope they can bring back a little of the visual magic from the Oroboros show, . IIRC, 17 may have been PW's last year on board, which would explain some stylistic differences, but there were some eye catching aesthetics to that visual book - and even some of MG's eye pleasing magic from his Cavaliers years - that would be welcomed to return.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by grimmo

[fighterkit]

On 10/24/2022 at 10:18 AM, grimmo said:

With design teams now finalised, October is the time when show ideas are sifted and concepts sketched out. With this in mind, are there any learnings from this past season that we think might be applied to design thinking for 2023?

Here are a few thoughts to get the ball rolling...

BD
'if it ain't broke...' is the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to Blue Devils programming for the past decade or so. While concepts come and go, there do seem to be patterns - if not as much as a template-  to discern. Choosing 6-8 pieces across a variety of styles, with a super melodic ballad to help with accessibility expectations. They are masters as balancing content, allowing for an optimal proportions of melody harmony and technicalities. Likewise for visual, claims of lack a demand and marching are quieter than 5+ years ago but not gone completely.
I tend to see the last minute of BD shows as a weak point - I think I go right back to 92 for a BD finale that last gave me goosebumps -  but it might be that they go about their programming so that they don't need an ending based on a 'big idea' to tip on them over the edge.. the goods have already been delivered by then and a decent but not great ending is all that is needed to tie a bow on things? Expect we'll see more-of-the-same-but-in-different-packaging from Devils in 23.

 

 

BAC
By most measures 22 was a fantastic season for Boston and for a brief period towards the end of the season they may have seen Devils as catchable.
Programming for 23 may be interesting in that we've seen before that it's much easier to slip from 2nd to 4/5th than to go from 2nd to 1st.
Will Boston continue to plough the furrow of story based, and classical, concepts?
I really enjoyed their 22 show in terms of music and visual but with the caveat that I didn't feel a strong connection to Paradise being lost, and so the down ending didn't resonate as an much as it might.
Will Boston try a new direction or did 21's Zoom inform them to stick within a certain bandwidth of topics?
All other aspects that contribute towards a successful season being equal,  it will surely be an interesting process for their design team this fall. Can they craft a package that takes them one step higher. One might think the safest way to do this is to stay quite close to the design pattern of 22. Maybe not quite vanguard 88 into 89 but not a million miles away!

 

 

Just going off the past decade+ I can see BAC doing another show relating to a story, though it may not be a “story show” and more of the emotions tied to it. But no matter what I’m sure it’ll be a great show and performed well