karuna Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 Let's GO Crownies! Make the '25 thread even better than the '24 thread. Here's my first topic for the thread: what would you change? The biggest issue I'd address design-wise is pacing. '24 the show is fire right up to the first percussion feature. (1) the break is way too long (2) it leads into a brass feature which seems unconnected to the previous 2 sections. At that point you've lost all the momentum the show had at that point. There are lots of other places where I just ask "why" when the design throws away the momentum and just drags on. SO....pacing, pacing, pacing! Next? 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KVG_DC Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 Concur with the pacing. I'm wondering how much of this was a product of the timing of the rollout of the show and the collaboration with Mackey. I love the notion of the collaboration and writing something original for the show itself but I'm left wondering about the timing as it seemed the rollout took...forever. And then the cleaning and tweaking of it was paramount. The piece itself was nice but there's something that just 'disconnected'. I believe this also was a two year deal with Mackey? If so, I suspect his familiarity with the idiom itself (not just seeing and hearing his work arranged for the idiom) has grown a LOT given the exposure to "how the sausage is made" for a DCI show and that will improve. Props. It worked in the end but it took a LONG time getting there. That seemed to create a drag on show momentum too. There's something to be said for not overbuilding the visual package. If that much layering is needed, I feel like they should have started the layering earlier in the season. Again, they may have been holding up visual layering while dealing with the roll out of the music tweaking? I really don't know. The usual "slow burn" of Crown's layering seemed at bit too slow this year. Honestly, I think if the season was another week, Crown would have that 'super comfortable at their peak' and not just 'arrived at their peak' energy. They'd be past Phantom and charging at BD at that point unless Phantom figured out more to put in. The shorter season seems to have disrupted the timeline rollout game for Crown staff. Other corps had their timelines adjusted much smoother. Color. They don't have to go full RHRN or Boston, but the color palette the past two years has been heavy on the browns. The gold this year eventually shone through, but I'd like to see what Crown can do with color again. DON'T change...music. Crown's lean into dramatic orchestral sound is fantastic. It feels like a niche they can do and make their own that other corps aren't doing. This time last year we were throwing out various opera ideas and I firmly feel there's a slew of contemporary opera out there just waiting for Crown's amazing treatment. They could reach back for echoes of 2016 while leaning into this with something like John Adams' Girls of the Golden West Or bring the drama of the Bright Sheng/David Henry Hwang collaboration "Dream of the Red Chamber" Not sure how that'd work with the Mackey deal if it's continuing but...ideas! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllRise99 Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 11 minutes ago, KVG_DC said: Color. They don't have to go full RHRN or Boston, but the color palette the past two years has been heavy on the browns. The gold this year eventually shone through, but I'd like to see what Crown can do with color again. This is a good point…personally, I thought the bright orange of the guard uniforms were a fantastic and vivid contrast to gray-ish brown of the fabrics worn at the very beginning. But of course, that contrast goes away when they reveal their main uniforms right before the opening hit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post NewArpege Posted August 11 Popular Post Share Posted August 11 A concept that is more abstract or a story that doesn’t require an over-abundance of literal imagery to derive understanding. The past two years Crown has needed to develop the storytelling in a ton of detail in order for the concept to work. That’s creatively difficult and takes a long time to put a broadway-style production on the field. The end result is beautiful, but the 2 month time window is a disadvantage unless they go less literal or put more on the field earlier. 10 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllRise99 Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 I’m not knowledgable about this so I’ll do my best, but I think “Visual” is the name of the game for them in 2025. They haven’t finished higher than 4th in overall visual since 2017…CrownGUARD seems to be on the rise so that’s a bright spot, but I’m guessing the rest of the visual package ties very closely into design, and that’s where they’re lacking right now. I hope the staff creates something that is more innovative, because the music is clearly still very strong. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TigerBaritone19 Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 9 minutes ago, AllRise99 said: I’m not knowledgable about this so I’ll do my best, but I think “Visual” is the name of the game for them in 2025. They haven’t finished higher than 4th in overall visual since 2017…CrownGUARD seems to be on the rise so that’s a bright spot, but I’m guessing the rest of the visual package ties very closely into design, and that’s where they’re lacking right now. I hope the staff creates something that is more innovative, because the music is clearly still very strong. Big time agree. The visual package just wasn’t there this year. Don’t think anyone needs to move on or be fired, but they do need to have a better visual package next year 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllRise99 Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 14 minutes ago, TigerBaritone19 said: Big time agree. The visual package just wasn’t there this year. Don’t think anyone needs to move on or be fired, but they do need to have a better visual package next year I want to see some cool drill or something…I miss the 3D geometry from 2012, 2013, and 2015 (although I thought I saw a moving flame in the closer this year) Prop staging can also take away from that as we saw this year because it felt to me like there was less real estate on the field to work with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZTWright Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 One word: Evolve. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeRapp Posted August 11 Share Posted August 11 1 hour ago, NewArpege said: A concept that is more abstract or a story that doesn’t require an over-abundance of literal imagery to derive understanding. The past two years Crown has needed to develop the storytelling in a ton of detail in order for the concept to work. That’s creatively difficult and takes a long time to put a broadway-style production on the field. The end result is beautiful, but the 2 month time window is a disadvantage unless they go less literal or put more on the field earlier. This to me is the biggest issue. Crown has become the home team for high school bands—but that isn’t proving to be interesting compared to the competition. They need to stop being so on the nose—totally my opinion here. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karuna Posted August 11 Author Share Posted August 11 2 hours ago, KVG_DC said: Concur with the pacing. I'm wondering how much of this was a product of the timing of the rollout of the show and the collaboration with Mackey. I love the notion of the collaboration and writing something original for the show itself but I'm left wondering about the timing as it seemed the rollout took...forever. And then the cleaning and tweaking of it was paramount. The piece itself was nice but there's something that just 'disconnected'. I believe this also was a two year deal with Mackey? If so, I suspect his familiarity with the idiom itself (not just seeing and hearing his work arranged for the idiom) has grown a LOT given the exposure to "how the sausage is made" for a DCI show and that will improve. IMHO not much. Takes discipline to say "you're only getting X bars of percussion or brass feature here and it needs to connect to measure Y as it ends". It may be that the design was put on the table by the Subel team but then left to "design by committee" after his "departure" (which is always a bad thing --yes you need a great creative team but you also need one designer with "the vision"). Most of the brass and percussion features are rather aimless and too long which suggests a design team stuck with someone else's vision who's completely absent. Strangely enough I've seen this happen up close. You're too far a long to switch out the show concept completely and not enough time to really "fix" all the problems. Hopefully this is just a one off transitional problem. I agree that any future Mackey collaboration will benefit greatly from the behind the curtains view he was afforded this year. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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