This is going to be really rambly. I'm totally out of it right now, hopefully others can fill things in.
Thursday night:
Got packed and took care of some food issues (mostly baking and making sandwiches). Vic showed up around 8ish, we were up until 2:30 working on things for Weakest Link and just hanging out. Insomnia struck me and I didn't fall asleep until 3:30 or so.
Friday:
Vic wakes me up at 6:15 by coming into my room and singing Oha Rock! by Shingo Mama. We strike my computer, bag up everything that could take in water (it had been raining since Thursday afternoon) and head over to Plato's (a diner in College Park) for breakfast. The car was totally full of stuff to the point where Vic's busted suspension didn't matter - the car was heavy enough to take hits from just about anything.
We got done with breakfast around 8 and hit the road. We managed to screw up bigtime though as Vic was in the wrong lane on an access road to get to the hotel and we had to go all the way out to Dulles and double back to get to the hotel (we were about 2 blocks away when this happened), causing us to get there about an hour later than we thought. Met up with Waldo and dji. Walked around a bit, talked a lot to Duane Johnson, confirmed that he's no longer on Otakon staff, talked with Steve Bennett for a bit about manga on both sides of the Atlantic, and did generic Friday things like visiting the con suite.
The AMV contest was...something I didn't see most of. IMHO I'm just as well off. I'm so burned out now on AMV just from what I've seen this weekend. What I saw was, for the most part, pretty good. The crowd was small and dead Friday. Didn't go to the screening Saturday (slept, saw people, did a panel instead), more people were there, heard crowd was better.
There was some generic AMV screening beforehand. Met up with Nightowl there, much bitching about b-ko and functionality ensued. Someone else can remember the tech issues better than I can.
AMV panels Friday:
Overview - kind of a waste. Vic and I played some stuff, took a few questions, mostly used it to plug the other panels.
Beginner's Corner - took this one on my own with Vic around to point things out as he was re-configuring his computer for Codecs. Good turnout, made it through concept to distribution encoding in an hour. Dji showed up at about 50 min. into it.
Codecs - Vic showed what was good and bad in video encoding. Smaller turnout, pretty technical, but well done and some good examples.
Post-Panel screening - the Waldo archive and B-Ko showed up, and videos were played first from Waldo's because B-Ko broke (again) and needed to be fixed. B-Ko also apparently can't run her CD drive while the RAID is turned on, so pat's piss-poor copy of daicon IV from the old JACO days couldn't be replaced with newly filtered MPEG-2 hotness.
Saturday:
AMV contest time is covered above.
Showcase/Inspiration:
Vic had a great crowd. Alan had a thinning but good crowd. I had four people to talk in front of. Joy. Lack of food and audience made irribility high on my part. Got pizza afterwards, felt slightly better.
Old School: RYS and Duane Johnson were mostly the ones talking and playing videos (again rather loudly) for the hour. Not bad.
Digital Age: Cancelled because cosplay ran short and it was time for the AMV awards. There were a bunch of them, and as my video sucked ass I knew well in advance that I wouldn't be getting anything so I ducked out and played on my computer for a bit. After awards ended it was time to set up...
The Weakest Link: This was the highlight of all the programming. Words can not describe the hilarity and mayhem that ensued, fortunately the video of it will be online within a couple days. Sadly I had to pump the audio so that it could be heard as the dance was in the room next to ours and the sound was bleeding through.
Party time: No seal of approval from Hsien! Plenty of alcohol into nightowl, dji got some great footage. There was this fucked up scary dude in the lobby. Reminds me why I hate drunken alcoholics.
Sleep: Sleep was good. the hotel had shitty alarm clocks though. I had no idea how to turn the alarm off. Got to sleep in a bed Saturday, best sleep I've had in ages but not enough of it.
Sunday:
Slept until about 11, didn't even bother with AMV screening. Went to the anime tractor pull and won a mini valkyrie figure (american edition, POS, can't believe they charge $7 for this thing but oh well i didn't pay for it) and a wicked city tshirt. Played a song of DDR with Vic and we loaded up the car and came back to college park.
Overall, this con was, at least for me, way too much work and not enough play. Definately fewer panels next year and I'm tempted to just burn a ton of CDs for myself of anything I'd want to play for people and just leave my computer at home. If it wasn't for the people (when they actually showed up at the stuff they were supposed to) and Weakest Link and Saturday drunkenness to watch, this wouldn't have been worth it.
The worst thing is probably that my speakers were used at all these panels, and at the smaller room screening they were turned up LOUD AS FUCK. I'm trying to get them reconfigured and adjusted, but it looks like this weekend has taken a lot out of them. I'm not sure yet if it's just me being tired and not making everything out or if they were blasted for too long too many times in too short a time and something doesn't want to go now. The bass is a bit lacking, which makes me question the sub the most. Will eventually figure it out.
In the meantime, it's 7PM and I feel like I could go to sleep for the night now.
AnimeUSA Con Report...
Forum rules
If posting about a specific convention, please mention the year along with its name in the title.
If posting about a specific convention, please mention the year along with its name in the title.
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iserlohn
- Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2001 1:40 am
- Location: Wien, Österreich
AnimeUSA Con Report...
"I'm recording an album tonight. Funny material and laughter will be dubbed in later."
--Bill Hicks
--Bill Hicks
-
Waldo
- Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2000 1:29 pm
- Location: Baltimore
- Contact:
From my vantage point the contest went over pretty well. Granted I had forgotten to make the Viewer's Choice ballots eariler in the week and didn't remember until thursday night when I was at the hotel so I had to set up my machine in the hallway floor and design the ballots there. The hotel gave us the Atrium to store all of our equipment thursday night, which in my opinion was probably the worst place they could have put us. Sure it was relatively safe, but it basically a large balcony overlooking the f*cking pool and hottub! As you can image, the humidity levels were ridiculously high and some of us were worried about our equipment being left in there because of condensation levels on the circuit boards.
My memory is kind of spotty and out of order but I'll try to cover as much as I can remember. Initially we tried to use B-Ko to show videos during the "random music videos" portion of the schedule in Main Events. Unfortunately we found out that B-Ko stood for Bitch-Ko since that machine was a bitch to get working. On friday early afternoon during the first of the random videos, B-Ko would lock up after showing three videos and would need to be rebooted. That was of course after she finally found her RAID array. Poor, poor, B-Ko. We all gathered around her, said a quick pray, then tossed her under the table and hooked up Salamandastron. For the rest of the weekend, Salamandastron(aka "the big-ass monster tower") was used for showing all the videos and for showing the contest; though B-Ko was resurected for a couple hours on friday night.
The Friday afternoon AMV Contest showing was pretty sparse; maybe 40 people at any given time. And the didn't seem very "educated" in AMV appreciation. For the most part they just sat there and watched. Every so often there was a small collection of claps for a particular video but that was about it. Saturday's showing was much better. There were about 150 people at any given time and they were much more into the videos than the previous batch. They applauded at the end of each video and really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Initially I had planned for the AMV awards ceremony to only take about 30 minutes since the Cosplay, AMV awards, and cosplay awards were scheduled for a 2 hour time block. Cosplay started on time at 8pm, but there were only about 20 walk-ons and 5 skits so I was asked if I could lengthen the awards ceremony to help fill out the time. So instead of just showing the winning videos from the six main cetegories, I showed the winning videos for each of the main category plus the special awards. I also had those winner come up on stage to receiver their gift certificates and sketches from Matsubara. I think the AMV awards went for about an hour, then it was time for the cosplay awards.
Saturday night was certainly the highlight of the con thanks to the AMV Weakest Link, Nate, and the 4am panel: "Balding Drunk Guy's Lessons for Life, co-paneled by Nathan Bezner."
The AMV Weakest Link was hilarious. Unfortunately we were in a room right next to the dance but the air wall seperating the two rooms didn't close all the way so ther was a lot of background noise. At one point the game show seemed reminicent of Survivor as the left hand side of the panelists were voted off the show one by one until just Hsien, Andy, Senta, and Nate remained. Hopefully the edited tape will be ready sometime soon. After the AMV Weakest Link was over I was sent on an hour long quest to find a coax cable so that Vic could hook up his camcorder to his hotel TV so that we could watch ourselves making fools of ourselves. Eventually we had to have the hotel security re-open one of the junior ballrooms to get a cable that had been looked away in there. Then we found out that the camcorder couldn't output the tape correctly to coax so I went and got my VCR from my room to use. Sometime during this quest, Nate had gotten even more plastered than he was before and proceded to play Afronova on the one remaining DDR pad in the game room while wearing a tabel cloth as a toga. Once we got eveything hooked up and the tape playing we realized how bad the audio quality really was and tried to think of ways to fix it in the future. Alas there were two casualties after we finished watching the tape. First, Nate got a hold of Vic's purple silk gloves and proceded to "educate them" on the joys of life. He then stumbled a bit and fell over a few times. Unfortunately he landed on my VCR during one of the falls. I think it still works but I haven't gotten a chance to test the control buttons on the display since they are currently protruding from the face at odd angles.
In an effort to walk things off and feed the nicotine addiction, some of us decided to go down to the lobby to have a smoke and the rest of us followed with a "camera crew" in tow. That was where we ran into Nate's new mentor and motivational speaker. Apparently the guy was at the hotel for his 20th highschool reunion and was brooding in the lobby when Nate passed by. The two began talking for a bit one-on-one and eventually a group of about 6 or 7 people were sitting around in a circle listing to the drunk guy talk about the mistakes he had made in his life and how us young folk should do something with ourselves. Things were still going on when I went to bed.
My memory is kind of spotty and out of order but I'll try to cover as much as I can remember. Initially we tried to use B-Ko to show videos during the "random music videos" portion of the schedule in Main Events. Unfortunately we found out that B-Ko stood for Bitch-Ko since that machine was a bitch to get working. On friday early afternoon during the first of the random videos, B-Ko would lock up after showing three videos and would need to be rebooted. That was of course after she finally found her RAID array. Poor, poor, B-Ko. We all gathered around her, said a quick pray, then tossed her under the table and hooked up Salamandastron. For the rest of the weekend, Salamandastron(aka "the big-ass monster tower") was used for showing all the videos and for showing the contest; though B-Ko was resurected for a couple hours on friday night.
The Friday afternoon AMV Contest showing was pretty sparse; maybe 40 people at any given time. And the didn't seem very "educated" in AMV appreciation. For the most part they just sat there and watched. Every so often there was a small collection of claps for a particular video but that was about it. Saturday's showing was much better. There were about 150 people at any given time and they were much more into the videos than the previous batch. They applauded at the end of each video and really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Initially I had planned for the AMV awards ceremony to only take about 30 minutes since the Cosplay, AMV awards, and cosplay awards were scheduled for a 2 hour time block. Cosplay started on time at 8pm, but there were only about 20 walk-ons and 5 skits so I was asked if I could lengthen the awards ceremony to help fill out the time. So instead of just showing the winning videos from the six main cetegories, I showed the winning videos for each of the main category plus the special awards. I also had those winner come up on stage to receiver their gift certificates and sketches from Matsubara. I think the AMV awards went for about an hour, then it was time for the cosplay awards.
Saturday night was certainly the highlight of the con thanks to the AMV Weakest Link, Nate, and the 4am panel: "Balding Drunk Guy's Lessons for Life, co-paneled by Nathan Bezner."
The AMV Weakest Link was hilarious. Unfortunately we were in a room right next to the dance but the air wall seperating the two rooms didn't close all the way so ther was a lot of background noise. At one point the game show seemed reminicent of Survivor as the left hand side of the panelists were voted off the show one by one until just Hsien, Andy, Senta, and Nate remained. Hopefully the edited tape will be ready sometime soon. After the AMV Weakest Link was over I was sent on an hour long quest to find a coax cable so that Vic could hook up his camcorder to his hotel TV so that we could watch ourselves making fools of ourselves. Eventually we had to have the hotel security re-open one of the junior ballrooms to get a cable that had been looked away in there. Then we found out that the camcorder couldn't output the tape correctly to coax so I went and got my VCR from my room to use. Sometime during this quest, Nate had gotten even more plastered than he was before and proceded to play Afronova on the one remaining DDR pad in the game room while wearing a tabel cloth as a toga. Once we got eveything hooked up and the tape playing we realized how bad the audio quality really was and tried to think of ways to fix it in the future. Alas there were two casualties after we finished watching the tape. First, Nate got a hold of Vic's purple silk gloves and proceded to "educate them" on the joys of life. He then stumbled a bit and fell over a few times. Unfortunately he landed on my VCR during one of the falls. I think it still works but I haven't gotten a chance to test the control buttons on the display since they are currently protruding from the face at odd angles.
In an effort to walk things off and feed the nicotine addiction, some of us decided to go down to the lobby to have a smoke and the rest of us followed with a "camera crew" in tow. That was where we ran into Nate's new mentor and motivational speaker. Apparently the guy was at the hotel for his 20th highschool reunion and was brooding in the lobby when Nate passed by. The two began talking for a bit one-on-one and eventually a group of about 6 or 7 people were sitting around in a circle listing to the drunk guy talk about the mistakes he had made in his life and how us young folk should do something with ourselves. Things were still going on when I went to bed.
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dokidoki
- c0d3 m0nk3y
- Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2000 7:42 pm
- Status: BLEEP BLOOP!
- Location: doki doki space
- Contact:
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Kusoyaro
- LEGENDARY!!!
- Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2001 10:03 pm
- Location: HOT FUCKING
- Contact:
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gambitt
- Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2001 10:25 pm
- Location: NJ/NY/NC
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iserlohn
- Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2001 1:40 am
- Location: Wien, Österreich
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Waldo
- Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2000 1:29 pm
- Location: Baltimore
- Contact:
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AbsoluteDestiny
- Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2001 1:56 pm
- Location: Oxford, UK
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