Check out the post below. Fermata Nowhere took home the ICCA title on Saturday night, with a high energy performance complete with acrobatics and Rhianna covers. MTV filmed the competition, with the hopes of turning the event into an a cappella series.One of the quirks of the evening: an MTV announcer (one of Disney's Cheetah Girls) who appeared on stage at the end of the night to announce the winner (replacing Dave Brown, the ICCA host who conducted the show up until that point). MTV dubbed the men of Fermata Nowhere the "underdogs." Now some in the a cappella community are questioning whether the presence of MTV affected the outcome.
Joseph of Fermata Nowhere writes in to the Pitch Perfect blog: "I can't believe the fact that we were pigeonholed so crudely. I'm speaking for myself, but I bet most of the guys in Fermata would agree with me that we worked very hard to get to where we are, and we don't consider ourselves the "underdogs" of collegiate a cappella. As long as I can remember, we've at least placed at our ICCA quarterfinals, and in 2004 came in 2nd at the finals! I feel like we deserved our win, but now people may debate about how much our win was influenced by the MTV angle. And that's something that none of us want to deal with."
I said, in my previous post below, that Fermata deserved to win. They may not have delivered the best technical set, but I'll celebrate entertainment value over complex arrangements any day.
What do you think of the MTV situation? Respond in the comments section below.
Here's a clip of Fermata Nowhere at the 2009 semi-finals.
3 comments:
Given that I was in the judging room (doing tabulating), I can tell you with 100% accuracy that MTV had absolutely nothing to do with the results whatsoever.
Nor did any producers. It was 100% the judges' decisions. (Besides, we're too busy furiously adding to have any input whatsoever.)
If MTV were to have an influence on the decision, that's something that the groups and the public would've known about in advance. There's no way MTV had an influence. I know Amanda/VV would never allow that.
In addition, it's not about the best technical set alone, nor is it about entertainment value. There's a very public copy directly on the Varsity Vocals web site of what the groups are judged on, and were I a judge that night (I've judged, produced before) I would've most likely had the same result:
http://www.varsityvocals.com/icca/pdf/JudgeForm.pdf
-Randi Stanley
www.nycacappella.com
Good point, Randi. Though I find that the judges don't always agree on the technical merits. (That certainly happened the year Divisi took second place.)
Also, the competition works best when the audience leaves that night feeling like the best group won. And the best group, from an audience standpoint, is generally the one that entertains the most.
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