Panorama fever gripped St. Lucia tonight and the show went into the early hours of Saturday morning. The live video feed for the show came via Choice Television of St. Lucia. This video feed was free on the Internet and proceeded without a hitch. Surprisingly the results were a repeat of the 2011 competition resulting is many smiling faces and celebrations as the trophies were handed over during the prize giving ceremony.
The marketing of this competition tonight was excellent. Not only did they promote the show but more importantly they promoted the country. I liked the fact that the island of St. Lucia was marketed well during the breaks for advertising. I learnt a lot about the island and enjoyed the video footage provided. The video stream was free but I am sure that the advertising last night helped immensely with the tourism efforts of the government.
I listened to the bands played and noticed some things that were very different from Trinidad. The stage the bands played on was not elevated. Most of the bands did not have canopies and the size of many of the bands was not very big. A big band had about seventy five players. It appeared to me that they did not have a system in place to properly capture the music coming from the bands. The tenors were easily heard but the sounds of the bass and middle pans were lost in the audio feed I listened too.
Many of the bands had their pans on regular stands and not in wheeled covered stands as they have in Trinidad. It appeared that there was also some problems with the placement of the pans on stage to get the best sound from the instruments. Some how the open space did not help with the amplification the sounds coming from the pans; the impact of the band, as a unit, got lost in the wide open space the bands used to perform. Clearly an elevated stage with the stands closer to the bands would have helped to get the crowd into the music. I could not see or hear the audience interacting or reacting to the performances of the bands. I like the Grand Stand/North Stand format used in Trinidad that helps to keep the audience in play and the sound of the bands performing enclosed.
Proper audio placement of the microphones is very important to give international viewers a better idea of the performance. If the audio capture equipment is not place properly a good performance can sound not so good.
I must say that I did enjoy watching and listening to the St. Lucia Panorama Competition for 2012. Many of my friends from the WACK Radio Shout box participated in the show. We had a good time listening to the music and enjoyed the fact that we were able to watch the video feed.
Here are the results:
Large Bands
1. Courts Babonneau (Repeat Champions)
443 Points
443 Points
2. Pan Time Steel Orchestra
431 Points
3. Lime Diamond Steel Orchestra
429 Points
Small Bands
1. Harmonites Steel Orchestra (Repeat Champions)
402 Points
402 Points
2. St. Lucie's Steel Orchestra
364 Points
3. Pan Exodus
344 Points