natertater21000

okay, I have to comment on the sun "rippling" across the field at the start of moon river. I love when the sun plays an inadvertent role 😂

Super excited for this contest as always! Wishing the best of luck to any student performer reading this, go show off all of your hard work and HAVE FUN! My prediction/discussion days are behind me with my new position but I'll continue to lurk. Glad this forum is still going strong.

I was more referring to the quality of equipment, I should've been more specific 😅 They had multiple large cameras, moveable rigs, the whole nine yards. They just utilized like they had opened them up the day before.

I don't really think it's a money problem. It's more a problem of unfamiliarity with the activity. The issue with the NFHS broadcast wasn't image/audio quality (okay maybe a little with the odd Instagram filter color grading) but more an issue of poor mic placement, having absolutely no idea where to look and when, bad camera angle placement (like the weird fish eye lens) and clearly not being ready for the volume that the bands put out in terms of the mic balancing. Ironically the best recording of shows each and every year remains the head band directors IPAD Pro in the press box.

I can only hope that the mountain of strongly worded emails they received last year caused them to seek some advice from Box5 or at least Flo.

I'm a big fan of this prelims schedule change, both for the students and myself. My knees may or may not still be a different shade than the rest of my body from attending last year's Austin regional. 😅

I did think that 2016 in particular was oddly low.

The score inflation has way more to do with the increase in quality of the lower finalists and bubble bands IMO. If the 14th place band is now good enough for an 88/89 (which I believe is an accurate representation of their improvement) then the scores can only go up from there. This more or less forces the judges into a corner scoring wise. This is why I think Reagan broke the record in 2019. Bands like Vandy, Hebron, Vista, Leander, and CTJ were so good that year that for Reagan to be scored higher the judges had no choice but to put them over a 97. All scores are relative to the field. Side note: This is why I think record scores in a reward based system are a novelty at best. The only truly objective record score exists in an old school tic system where it is literally the show with the fewest errors.

Just goes to show the insane amount of population growth so many Texas suburbs have been seeing in the last 20 years.

That would give Hebron a 98.110 and Vandy a 98.155. Still CRAZY close! This one doesn't work as well though because it would assign 60% of the score to one judge.

It is interesting to note that if UIL averaged all the judge's raw scores (while all being weighted the same) to create a more BOA style 0-100 scale that the results would have been flipped. Hebron-98.3 Vandegrift-97.9 Edit: this post is not meant to take away anything from Vandegrift, I'm just a huge numbers nerd 🤓

I don't think a medal is out of the question for Vista.

Wow! Cy Woods!! That show has cleaned up so well.

Shoutout to rocketfan86, I miss his recordings.

A Facebook Live stream from an Ipad on a stand would genuinely be better at this point.

Great run from Cedar Ridge Someone needs to explain to them that the camera doesn't need to ALWAYS be panning left or right.

They have apparently always had first right of refusal to stream UIL state. They have just always (wisely) passed it along to other streaming services.

I don't understand what made them think it would be a good idea to take this on.

These Camera angles scream I don't know how to record a marching show, and no high cam option. Lovely

I really do honestly believe that bands got that much better. Virtually everyone stepped their game up. Speaking only for texas, 2013 put blood in the water. You could no longer be certain that Marcus and Bell would be 1-3 and it opened a power vacuum in the Texas band world that everyone was chomping at the bit to fill. Over the next three years (2014-2016) Many bands rose out of competitive obscurity trying their hardest to take the biggest piece of the competitive pie as possible. A rising tide raises all ships and the extreme level of competitiveness caused a rise in performance quality that had yet to be seen. I watched all or portions of SA finals in person from 2011-2021 and the performance quality in 2017 onward was truly on another level. Edit: I remember watching 2017 finals and thinking Leander wasn't performing at a considerably lower level than 2016, especially musically, and the scores would back that up. A 90.85 in 2016 and an 89.03 in 2017 isn't an enormous difference, and you could attribute most of that to a not so fantastic design from Leander in 2017 by comparison. So why the drop from 3rd to 14th?? Everyone else just got THAT much better.

If anyone has a screen capture of Hebron in finals please DM me. That run was lights out and I NEED it in my collection lol

BOA SA has been very 4A dominant in the last 10 years or so. Most years it was really unfair to count leander as 3A given that they were 6A at the same time.

Cedar Park is the only 3A finalist. It simply is that good of a year for Texas 6A schools. UIL State is going to be a treat.

The end of the opener where they march forward doing the leg swing visual with the power chord made me have deja vu. The pit writing is also reminiscent of Bloo 2010 to me as well. It's soooooo good.

Overall thoughts on day one: So many programs had their absolute best run of the season! Even more exciting than that, I felt that many programs fielded their best version of themselves to date (or at least in a very long time). Westlake, Lake Travis, Cedar Ridge, Keller Central, Glenn, Round Rock, Sandra Day O'connor, Brandeis, and many more! It's truly heartwarming to see so many programs flourishing just a short 2 years after the covid lockdown. Some more specific takeaways from the first day. Vandegrift, Reagan, and FloMo were in a league of their own in my opinion. I could honestly see the three of them in any order. Vandegirft is so incredibly clean both musically and visually. Getting an ensemble that size to march THAT well is a herculean task. Reagan is the Texas master of Visual GE. The drill and guard integration is simply sublime and the finale is a visual feast. They are MUCH cleaner musically than they were in Katy and I can see(and hear) why they won Area. FloMo's show is so incredibly unique in a meta way. They have also cleaned up quite nicely, especially in regards to tuning and ensemble balance. Fantastic shows by all. CTJ, Cedar Ridge, Vista Ridge, and Cedar Park make up the next block of bands in terms of score in my opinion. I'm not sure how close any of these four will be to my previously mentioned top 3, but they will all be very close to each other. No order of these four bands would be incorrect in my eyes. I know some would lump CTJ into the same realm as Vandy, Reagan, and FLoMo and if we are talking about performance quality I would agree. The CTJ show just isn't speaking to me on the same level as the other three but that's more subjective opinion. I think Cedar Ridge is still fantastic, but I could see CTJ and Reagan overtaking them now that they have all cleaned since Katy. Vista blew my socks off. It's unfortunate that they lost so many to illness, especially the soloist, but you wouldn't know it from their performance quality. Cedar Park is just pristine. highly emotional show that is SQUEAKY clean. Side note: Anyone else get major bluecoats 2010 vibes from CP this year? Maybe it's something to do with the specific chords, I love it. I'll keep the last bit brief because this already feels like a novel: Rouse, Keller, Round Rock, Hendrickson, Leander, Timber Creek, Westlake, and Keller Central all had fantastic showings. Any of them could be in finals with Round Rock being the most likely out of this particular group. As an alumni I am positively floored by the perseverance and grit of the Leander band. Their Austin performance was but a shadow (pun intended) of what they put out on the field last night. Finals or not the staff and students should be incredibly proud of what they have been able to accomplish this season. Edit: completely forgot Bowie, I do not envy these judges one bit. Hats off to all involved.