05/09/2024
Throwback Thursday Story Time!
Thousand Oaks HS, Spring 2001. I was reading the WGI Rulebook regarding “lighting” in shows, and it seemed like a gray area to me. I had this idea to blend a “silent film” with a Drumline show, so I created this 1940’s detective story called “The Case of the Crimson Ghost.” I shot it as a short “silent” film (complete with dialog cards) with the TO kids as the characters, then the staff and I wrote a Drumline show to function as the “soundtrack” to the movie. We had a huge screen that played scenes from the movie we shot at certain points during the show. It was awesome. We had a great group of kids that year and they played their butts off. At our first WGI Regional, we were disqualified for breaking the “lighting rule.” Evidently the head judge did not think the wording on the rule was as “gray” as I did. I managed to convince the head judge to give us a 40 point penalty instead of the disqualification so we could still perform in finals, but we were not allowed to use the video at any other WGI/SCPA shows that year. Fortunately, we also competed in ADLA which did not have a rule against using video, so we were able to perform the show as intended in ADLA that year. 11 years later, WGI changed the rule and allowed video projections in shows, which many groups chose to utilize to this day.