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Ordiserria

PostPosted: Mon May 19, 2008 8:27 pm


So, I've been given what I think is an awesome opportunity, but now I'm not so sure.

A couple friends of mine want to start a side business writing marching band shows. One would write the musics and the other would write the drill, and they asked me to do the guard choreography.

I've done guard for a few years, so I know the moves, but I've never written choreography before.

What should I do/What would you do in this situation?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 10:34 am


I've never dealt with the prepackaged shows. My high school has a full writing staff and the same goes for every school I know. We've all tended to look down on the show-in-a-box kits. I'd say that in making one though, it's more important to know if you've taught choreography before than if you've written it. You're going to have to make a very long set of tapes/DVDs of yourself teaching this choreography to imaginary colorguards of unknown ability. You won't be able to just record yourself doing the moves once and be done with it. You'll have to do that AND record yourself going slowly through each move and explaining what you're doing with your hands and where the equipment should be at each checkpoint (and you'll need the drill finished in order to do that).

You'll also be the one fielding all the confused emails and getting most of the angry feedback becuase you're job is about ten times harder than your friends'. Once a band director gets the charts and the score in his hand, he shouldn't have any problem teaching his band but a guard captain with a video in hand is getting thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. Is this going to be the sort of product where you make several different shows for each theme to accommodate different difficulties of music and different size bands and then the directors have to tailor the drill and music further or is this more of a commission service where you guys get an email from a director with a request for a theme, a difficulty level of music, a number of marchers, and instrumentation stats? If it's the former, you would have an easier time with satisfaction but your friends probably wouldn't becuase it's almost impossible to tailor drill. It would work best as a business if it's on commission but then you are basically on-call all summer to answer inane inquires from guard captains.

Also remember that show writing isn't done during marching season. Most directors with their own writing staff will choose their theme in early spring and commission the music immediately for their projected instrumentation. A best draft would be due to the director before end of term. If the percussion stuff is written by someone else (which most top percussion music is), you might need to send working drafts sooner. The drill writer will start thinking about drill ideas and working with the draft of the music to plan impact moments then but won't have numbers to write with until class registration is over probably by the middle of May. The director will need to know what equipment you're writing for definitively by the end of June so they can order flags and uniforms to arrive before the start of the season. Deadlines beyond that would depend on the band. The band I work with is expected to have at least 2/3 of the music memorized, all of the opener drill, and at least half the opener in guard work by the end of August. Commission work will get much more business but think of all the work involved. Pre-written shows that only have drill tailored are easier, cheaper, and more hands-off for you but won't be nearly as popular (your target audience is probably going to be corps-style competitive bands too small to raise the money to hire writing staff) and the negative feedback could easily outweigh the positive. All marching bands need writing staff that do commission-work. Very, very few need the kind of company that pre-produces shows for mass consumption.

Edit: Lol. That was kinda rambling. Basically, I'm asking if you and your business partners know what you're getting yourselves into (and if you have a feasible plan)... and if you have a realistic idea of the work involved. If you're going into this with open eyes and you still think it's an awesome opportunity, go for it.

Ashokan Farewell

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