After the second year of the
FIRST Song Parody Contest and the deadline, November 1st, right around the corner, I've noticed some changes since last year.
1. Teams were generally less enthusiastic about it this year, whether that be expressed in comments on Chief Delphi, FRC Reddit, or simply the 75% drop in total submission quantity.
2. Of the 2016 Song Parody Submission, 16 (17 if you count the team that submitted two parodies) were by teams that did not participate in last year's competition. That means 67% of the submissions this year were assumedly by teams without previous experience making parodies.
3. Only 8 teams that participated in 2015 returned to the contest this year. That's roughly an 8% retention rate.
All this is to say what I'm sure a lot of you Chief Delphians already felt: these parody contests are a nice sentiment in theory but hardly sustainable or engrossing long term. While I appreciate what FIRST is trying to do with emphasizing creativity, video production, and recognizing the people who accomplish that, I do not believe this is the best way to go about it. So what's the solution?
Gradual Steps.
Song Parodies are extremely hard to pull off without them being cringe-inducing. I've made five of them, and despite how much I've been able to improve, it's still difficult not to produce an awkward version of a song, whether in quality or content. In FIRST, experienced film and audio production people, let alone singers, are few and far between. To start here was a huge leap.
But it's happened, and now we need to move forward. Let's throw some ideas out there and hopefully get FIRST's attention. Some of my ideas for implementing better video contests in FIRST include recounting a display of gracious professionalism, recounting a time your team was creative in solving a problem, defining what FIRST is in one sentence, creating a comedy sketch about FIRST, or even just robot reveal videos. Anything that brings it back to the style of #makeitloud from 2013 seems progressive to me.
But this is just my opinion, what are your thoughts on the FIRST Song Parody Contest and what FIRST should implement moving forward?