AV Connection '03 report

[Declan_Vee]

AV Connection 2003 has been and gone. For myself I can't say much more about the convention other than what happened to Screening Room 3. aka "North Dining Room".

Friday
Setting up - After lugging my equipment up to the 4th floor (Yes, there was an elevator, so it wasn't all that hard) I was assisting Nick with the projector set-up in Screening Room 1. aka "Union Cinema". In a nutshell, we were screwed over. One company that had promised us 10 projectors only delivered 4. And they weren't all that great. While another projector company didn't supply the long VGA cable we had asked for. After barely getting this room organised on time, we had to move off. As the steward was only paid to stay until 8pm.

The Governor Hindmarsh, Reset://0 gig - The band "Re-set://0" were awesome. So was their support band "9½ Incas". This was one of the events that was very AVcon. Where other conventions would spend upwards of a thousand dollars getting artists, directors etc, sent over from Japan, or in the case of certain not-so-conventions, America. Which will only serve their purpose on discussion panels and whatnot. We're more then happy to spend that money on getting a band sent over to perform for our guests. And well, they rocked.

Saturday
Set-up - I was finally able to set up Screening Room 3. This involved picking out 8 couches, 20 chairs, some tables, a projector and a screen. However, not much sooner after the hard-drive received the playlist. Which involved physically removing it, slaving it to the Tower of Terror (12x120Gb Hard drives, packing literally over a year of anime) and leeching only what I needed. People were coming in. I was 20 minutes behind schedule.

Anime Screening - After culling an episode of Wolf's Rain off the playlist I was able to catch up. Nick in SR1 had his hands full, but managed to keep up, and SR2... In my opinion didn't look all that great. So I'm glad I didn't get the bar this year.
I can't stand group tags. I don't mind them putting their overlays I n the credits and even during the anime itself. But when I'm looking for a file on a projector... the last thing I want is barely searchable filenames. But enough of that for now.

The AMV panel - ... ... ... I apologise. I'm just going to be 100% truthful about this. It wasn't planned. We just didn't have time for it. The machine in the room wasn't my editing machine, that's currently out of commission. Another reason why the short 24 seconds of my new video wasn't longer. And Mitchell's machine which he had promised to bring, was late, and without Premiere. Now we all know that he keeps a "backup copy" of Premiere and Acrobat, just in case Adobe lose theirs. Once that was done... we really didn't do much. The room set-up just didn't allow for it. However had the room been set-up in a more panel friendly way... it just wouldn't have been as awesome. We showed some videos, talked about editing, the not-so-edity parts of making an AMV. Stuff like that. Hopefully this is pretty much what goes on at AMV panels in the US. Looking at the Mindwarp docos from last year, I'm relieved... Unless they were edited to show stuff not happening. While the panel didn't turn out to be all that informative or even useful I've been told it was "very entertaining", and "at least you guys put on a good show" The re-run panel, in the proper panel room never happened. This was due to a lack of staff to man SR3.

The AMV Competition - Firstly a big thanks to everyone who entered. AV Connection is definitely the AMV convention for Australia; I might even contact AWA about becoming a little-sister-con or something. The competition ran smoothly... until my machine tried to play WMV... Why oh why did I have this down as an allowed format!? Gah! This comes down to a lack of testing, which could have been done, had certain companies delivered. And my disapproval of WMP7 and higher. What really gets to me is that those videos didn't stand a chance in hell of winning. Oops, I probably shouldn't have typed that.
To remedy this situation I called that the competition be split into 2 days... like last year we had a backup plan and this was doable. All hail the bitmap of doom!

The Quiz Night - ... Let's curse Mitchell some more. While his bantering of Mark may have seemed comical to some. It clearly wasn't for the staff. Then saying that he stole the idea from Manifest was just not what we wanted in 42pt on a projector for all to see. However the mass order of Pizzas for the guests worked out pretty well. Despite not having a mic for my "Yo! Who ordered a bunch of pizzas!" It lacked a lot of the charm that we had last year, But I'm sure the first timers still found it to be enjoyable.

Sunday
Set-up - Oh, this was a breeze. I was all set... then Nick needed some more videos for SR1. "Why didn't you leech them yesterday!, oh well" I was only 15 min behind. A huge thanks to Deaths Ally for giving me a hand putting the screening drive back in the machine... damn case.

Anime Screening - Ran like clockwork. No complaints there... A few odd faces when we showed Amazing Nurse Nanako. A few feminists weren't impressed, to which I replied, "Hey, I happen to be a nurse, and it doesn't bother me" Ah Nanako, If you must know why it was shown, there's an interesting story to go with it. About a month ago myself and a few other con staffers were helping Mitchell move. Once all of his furniture was in his new place we relaxed with some: Pizza, Beer (Coopers Pale Ale), AMVs, Soul Calibur 2 and Amazing Nurse Nanako. "This needs to be on the playlist at the con" we all agreed... drunk off our heads.

Cosplay - Apparently there were some four Chii cosplayers... Four of them! I didn't even get to see one of them. I think people were telling them to avoid SR3 for their own safety, well at least there'll be other cons. A certain ego was floating around as Dejiko. I was able to get someone to man SR3 while I ducked out and changed into my... damnit. I can't remember his name... Someday's Dreamers... guy with the red shirt... I'm sure it'll come back to me. Emily my ex-girlfriend was doing a fine Rabi-en Rose, we caught up for a while and she wants to get back together sometime, excellent.

The AMV Competition Part 2 - With the bitmap of doom and Mitchell's machine, we were able to complete the rest of the competition... That is... Once I found the line-out plug on the Audigy... Why Creative decided to stop using colour on their cards after the Live is anyone's guess. Once that was settled, it was just a matter of playing the WMV files and anything else we hadn't played yet... Ever used two computers on one projector, with two mice (one set to left handed on the right, and a right handed one on the left) and one keyboard? You should try it out someday... quite challenging.

Red vs Blue - "You backstabbing cock bite" Rooster Teeth never sent us the DVD they had promised. We were reduced to use the Hi-Res copies we had... which were burnt very last minute and some of which were denied by WinXPs CRC menace. Luckily I had the Lo-Res copies on the screening drive, so we were able to show up to episode 13 using a combination of High and Low resolution videos. All is well, and I thought Donut died... Oops hopefully that didn't spoil it for anyone.

AMV Judging- This was a pain... Seriously, last year with not all that many videos and a clear winner it was a piece of cake. This year... Truly we should have judged in categories. However we just didn't have the prizes for it, the appropriate people have been complained to. But in the interest of the creators... a runner-up prize was awarded. I wasn't overly keen on the idea. But it's better than nothing.

Karaoke, The Band and finishing off - Oh god by then I was about to collapse. Barely slept over the weekend. The runner-up prize for the AMV competition received his prize... That's really all I remember... I caught up with Deaths Ally a bit, outside by the BBQ... That's right. The Unibar... They were supposed to be serving meals. Another company skipped out on us. As a result, not many people bought drinks. If enough people did, we could get the bar for free... but I think that's something else we'll have to pay for. Yeah back to catching up with Deaths Ally... This is something I wish I was able to do more of... talking to all of the AMV creators, I was just too busy. I know he had a camera, caught me off guard biting into a sausage. "Well that's great, why not a picture of me in that great suit of mine?" Yeah, I haven't had time to check out any photos that may have been taken. Hopefully He'll post some great shots of SR3, The Band, Yours truly, The Games and Dealers rooms.

Overall, the weekend went off very well. With an estimated attendance of 750 guests. And very little miss-hap. Besides Inferior codec problems, and audio issues with plugging into the audigy... Now to dump this into Word and check for spelling errors, before going off to AJAS for a night of anime goodness, that I won't have to plan. OK, so I'll post it the next day. or the day after.

Goodnight Everyone... Expect an overview of the competition in the contest forum some time tomorrow or right now, or the day after. Complete with the 4 finalists, and the themed special comment awards. Which don't get any physical prize, just a notice.

[Deaths_ally]

you guys did a great job with the running of the con, considering it was it's second year, and the technical hitches.

but as can be said, it could have been worse. and in the end it was a good two days..

A huge thanks to Deaths Ally for giving me a hand putting the screening drive back in the machine... damn case.

hey.. it was no problem at all. always happy to help

AMV Judging- This was a pain... Seriously, last year with not all that many videos and a clear winner it was a piece of cake. This year... Truly we should have judged in categories.

I noticed it took ages for the final decision to be made after I left the room...

in the interest.. a stuff it.. because I want to...

AV Connection AMV results

Here they are. I'm only a week late... bah, better late then never.
This year we had four finalists. Here they are in no real order, well "Best of show" is up top, and it's only natural for the runner-up to go after that...

Best of show
"This is your Life - Lain" Xan Smith (Xombie Studios)

Runner-up, Best of show
"Heartbreaker" Stuart Brunne (Nexus)

Test for inferior codec award
"Melodie of Faye" Justin Bairstow (Deaths_ally)

The Audigy has too many plugs award
"Nursery Rhyme" (Kopikat Studios)

I decided to give all finalists special awards... for some reason or another.
Ah, sorry it took so long. Hopefully this won't be the last time I'm online for a while.

(I swear.. never again am I doing a Huffy --> Divx convert on my comp.. something must be seriously wrong with Vdub...)

I know he had a camera, caught me off guard biting into a sausage. "Well that's great, why not a picture of me in that great suit of mine?" Yeah, I haven't had time to check out any photos that may have been taken.

It's just a shame 80% of the pictures didn't work any good because of the poor light.. I had one of you in that suit as well, but it didn't work out well enough to show any true detail

[doomhammerofdoom]

hey, finnally i run into some fellow south australians, I was at the av conn and yeah i thought it went rather smoothly good work. You know what really annoys me? the tiny anime community in this country town of ours called adelaide, there really should be more than one major anime event per year