Comic-Con Report, 2005
Aug. 1st, 2005 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jainaThis is going to be a quick-and-dirty report for a couple of reasons including not remembering much clearly and not having enough patience to write a full accounting.
Comic-Con Report, Quick and Dirty
I thought about adding the "hours of sleep since Sunday" category again, but frankly I didn't keep track this time. Suffice it to say it was "not even close to the fringes of the realm of nearly enough."
Wednesday
Costume: None (just my SWME T-shirt)
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sirrogue and I arrived (separately) at 2 pm for our volunteer shifts. I spent the next few hours folding T-shirts for the store; he folded for awhile and then got moved to action-figure packaging. We were supposed to be off-shift when the floor opened for Preview Night, but two of the line control volunteers hadn't shown up so we stayed for a couple of hours. Line control was a veritable nightmare at first because there was nothing to keep the line separate from the people milling about the rest of the booth. After about half an hour, we stole the ropes that had been blocking off the Vader and R2 replicas (and oh, it was fun to keep people from touching *them*) while we waited for more ropes from the convention. Once they arrived and we were able to clearly separate the lines from the rest of the attendees, things went much more smoothly. After things calmed down we were able to go check out the floor, which as always was seriously massive. We spent a lot of time looking fruitlessly for the Browncoats fan booth and finally called Matt to find out where it was. Of course it was at the complete *opposite* end of the floor, and we'd already been there and missed it. Argh. We also found the Red vs Blue and Fellowship! booths, conveniently located next to each other. We chatted for a bit with Cory, the actor who plays Frodo. Then we went home and I sewed for a long time.
Thursday
Costume: Sith cheerleader
Most of Thursday was spent behind the counter at the Star Wars Shop, since we had shifts from 11-3 and 5-7. There wasn't much going on, so we didn't bother arriving until our shift started. It was pretty busy all day, but since there were lots of people working it wasn't too hectic. The actual LFL employees ran the registers, and we volunteers either ran line control, checked people off the Will Call list, or did "running" (more like "reaching") for the cashiers-- that is, the customer said what they wanted, and we found it and bagged it while the cashiers rang them up. Rogue also did some crowd control for the Master Replicas lightsaber duel. During our break I wandered the floor, but I probably just should've found a quiet space and sat down, because I was pretty beat. One guy asked for a picture and I guess I gave him this "oh god, please don't make me" look because he and his buddy just cracked up. They were actually really cool about it and they got both a "bitchy tired" cheerleader picture and a "much more cheerful" cheerleader picture after they made me laugh. After our 5-7 shift we met up with the rest of our Masquerade group because we'd wanted to rehearse after the floor closed, but due to UPS being a horrible, sucky, non-customer-oriented company, we had to bail to go pick up our package of faux suede for Rogue's browncoat. Which I ended up not having time to make, thus rendering the whole ordeal Rogue went through on the phone that day completely pointless. I suck. Anyway, we set a rehearsal time for 8:30 the next morning at Embassy Suites (their hotel), and after that, home for more sewing and little sleep.
Friday
Costume: Senatorial Leia
We actually managed to arrive downtown reasonably close to 8:30 for our Masquerade rehearsal. It went quite well (we're all stupendous performers, naturally) and then we drove over to the convention center because we had a 9:30 shift at the booth. I had to change into my Leia costume, so I went to the nice big bathroom outside Hall E and first did my hair (to the amusement of the ladies who came in and out while I was there) and then put on my dress. I wasn't *too* late, and anyway it all worked out. We were off-shift at 1:30, but Mary had asked us to come back around 2:30 for some extra crowd control. Apparently, Natalie Portman was there to promote V for Vendetta, and she graciously agreed to do some photo ops with fans at the Star Wars booth. Tickets had been given out earlier in the day to random customers at the Star Wars store. I didn't really do anything-- just hung out at the barrier with a bunch of other costumed volunteers-- but Rogue was stationed at the exit so he actually got to see Natalie, the lucky guy! The biggest excitement for us was Ray Park and Daniel Logan coming through to say hi to Natalie, and a chick in a Batman mask leaving. (Later, we found out it was actually Rachel Weisz.) Also, Jim Solo showed up and smarmed his way across the ropes, but to my knowledge didn't get in to see Natalie. Gotta love Jim Solo.
Things wrapped up around 3:30 and we hurried upstairs to catch the second half of the Battlestar Galactica panel. It was very cool and I wish we'd seen the whole thing. I especially enjoyed it because the fans were asking intelligent questions, and the actors and creators were giving thoughtful answers. It was a refreshing change from how these things usually go. Then we killed some time on the floor before finding seats in cavernous Hall H for the Star Wars Sort-of-Spectacular. It was mostly just Steve showing us videos of various things, although they did screen one of the deleted "formation of the Rebellion" scenes, and they had Matthew Wood come up on stage and do some things in "Grievous voice." When that finished, I hurried back to the big bathroom to de-Leia myself since I thought it might be weird to go to Fellowship! dressed as a Star Wars character and also the buns were starting to really pinch my head in some places. (My hair looked dreadful, half light brown and half sprayed dark brown, and stiff from the hairspray, but I just pulled it back into a ponytail and figured that was good enough.) Then we raced to Horton Plaza to grab some food before going to the theater (conveniently located right underneath the mall, oddly enough) and meeting up with most of the rest of our Masquerade group, who were also seeing Fellowship!
We'd seen it before in Los Angeles with Tree and Alex, but I was so glad we decided to go again. It was just as funny the second time and they definitely tweaked a couple of moments especially for their Comic-Con audience. Very, very screamingly hilarious. We went to the Gentle Giant party thingie afterwards and chatted with the CJers in attendance, but went home after a half-hour or so, where I commenced sewing for the final time.
Saturday
Costume: Zoe, from Firefly
Ugh. Can I just not talk about Saturday morning? It was many, many levels of awful and it was pretty much all my fault. Suffice it to say I didn't finish Rogue's browncoat, I fell asleep when I didn't mean to, making us very late, we got caught in traffic, missed the Lost panel, had to park many times further away and pay twice as much (although I didn't have to walk, Rogue dropped me off), and I had four bags to check and only $2 on me, which was the straw that broke the camel's back and I started crying at the bag-check booth. (Actually I had started crying earlier when I ran into Brandon outside the convention center, but he made me feel better and I was doing OK, but then I discovered I needed $4 to check my big, heavy bags and I only had $2 and that was pretty much it for me.) Anyway, the lady was really nice and let me sit down until I got ahold of myself, and then we figured out how to combine two of my bags into one so I checked those and the other big bag and carried the smallest around with me all day.
Then my day got infinitely better when I turned around and saw my friend Kathy, aka kay_dee from the JC C&P boards, in her beautiful Purple Senate dress that she's been working on for ages and finally finished. And oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. I was seriously a completely crazed fangirl about her dress. I took a bunch of pictures of her, held her stuff, and helped her get over to the "action figure packaging" they had over at the Hasbro booth and take her picture there. It pretty much made me forget about my horrendously crappy morning. Then I checked the time and realized I needed to get upstairs for a panel I wanted to see. So, calmed down and less-encumbered, I went up to the Stargate panel in Room 20. They had an hour and a half for both SG1 and Atlantis, and luckily SG1 was first. Ben, Amanda, Christopher, and Beau Bridges were there, along with some of the PTB types. It was clear they all get along really well and enjoy working with each other, which made me feel good about the new season. There were also some serious "the slash writes itself!" moments with Ben and Christopher (and even Beau, yikes!). The fan questions weren't especially illuminating, and of course the last one was "What's up with Jack and Sam!?" to which the producers responded that they were going to leave it vague so the fans could make up their own minds. YES! Congratulations, PTB, that's the right answer.
I would have liked to stay for the SGA panel, but I really, really wanted a good seat for the Serenity panel in Hall H, so instead I went downstairs and arrived as the Aeon Flux panel was ending, and I was able to find a pretty decent seat for Kevin Smith that worked as a staging point for finding a better seat for Serenity. (It's much easier to find a good seat when you're only looking for one!) I started chatting with my seatmate before the panel started since it was delayed somewhat, and she said she was at the Lost panel and it really wasn't that interesting. So that made me feel a little better about missing it. Kevin Smith was his usual amusing self; I thought the announcer's warnings beforehand about him using "strong language not suitable for children" were pretty funny. As his panel ended, I joined the growing mass of people who were pushing for the front and ended up with a pretty close seat on audience right. But before Serenity, we had to sit through a half-hour of Slither, which is this seriously gross horror movie with Nathan Fillion in it. It was amazingly obvious that basically no one in the room cared at all; we were all there for Serenity or one of the later panels. And they still took the whole half-hour and played their trailer *twice,* dammit. Finally they got off the stage and Joss came on, and then he introduced the cast one by one, except Alan who of course was doing Spamalot...and except for Jewel, who he apparently just forgot about! That was pretty funny. The panel itself was not really stellar, due in part to the questions sucking (a lot of "this is for the whole cast..." and every one of them answering individually, argh), but also due to the fact that we couldn't spoil the movie. So I think the questions were a lot less interesting than they could have been. And they only had a half hour, grrrr. They did show the whole bar/tavern scene from the movie, which was awesome. I totally thought they would cut it off halfway through, but it kept going! And even with all that...it was a hell of a thing to see Hall H completely packed (that's 6000+ people) for our little Big Damn Movie, considering that last year, they were in Ballroom 20 and it was barely half-filled.
Outside after the panel, I ran into James and Whitney who were going upstairs to the Teen Titans panel, so I joined them. I couldn't stay long, though, because our group had rehearsal time on the practice stage at 4 pm. We figured out our spacing and did a couple of run-throughs, then went for food. I was planning to go to the Subway a couple blocks away, but when I got there I was greeted with a lovely little sign saying "Our credit card machines our down, sorry for the inconvenience" and so I had to go back to the convention center, pay the fees for using one of their money-stealing ATMs, and get convention food because I didn't want to go back in the hot sun. Rargh. Then I picked up the rest of my bags from bag check, went upstairs, and dropped them in our dressing room. There was some confusion with checking in and which dressing room was ours, but we got it straightened out. I did some last-minute repairs on my dress (in my exhaustedness, I had accidentally cut into the right shoulder while trimming the sleeves) while I waited for the rest of our group to arrive. Getting ready was the usual flurry of confusion and misplaced items, but we were all finished and ready at 7:30. I greatly enjoyed watchingsbjudy have to be dressed in her GINORMOUS hoopskirt by two people. :)
From there, things pretty much went as usual. We went to the green room, got our picture taken by the judges, and found space to hang out. I wasn't as mobile as I usually am, so I didn't go around and chat with as many people as I usually do. We also did a quickie "rehearsal" with our costumes on to check that everything would stay in place properly-- and that I could still do the dance steps in my hoopskirt! :) They played trailers beforehand, as usual, and it was fun to see which ones got the best response. The whole green room went dead-silent when they played the Goblet of Fire trailer and there were huge cheers afterward. Masquerade itself was pretty standard; the only huge screwup was when the music didn't come on forsbjudy's and ajmeow's group and they were left standing there with nothing to do. And the MC made a pretty mean comment afterward, when it was clear that it had been a technical difficulty and wasn't their fault at *all.* All of us in the green room were really upset and hoping they'd fix it so they could go again. Luckily they *did* fix it and they *did* let them go again, and they did an awesome job, of course. There were a crazy number of entrants this year, somewhere over 60, and most of them were really good! So it was a good masquerade to watch. I'm looking forward to getting my video so I can actually see the Disney Princesses and the Van Hellsing group, since we were out of the green room when they were performing.
Our performance was kind of a disappointment; we didn't get as much crowd reaction as we hoped. The quiet was actually kind of disconcerting. What I didn't realize was that there was a special screening of Serenity going on at the same time, so likely a lot of Browncoats who would have been at the Masquerade went to the screening instead. But it's always fun to be up there,and I didn't hear any booing. And on Sunday I had several people tell me they really enjoyed our performance! Hopefully we got at least a few new people to ask, "What's Firefly?" and check out the series. During the judging break we went into the hall to take a bunch of pictures, and we also videotaped ourself performing the routine one last time, so we'd have a record of the whole thing. (Stupid Comic-Con always cuts to lots of close-ups, so you never get the full effect.) And then we got back out of costume and went home, and I slept. Oh, it was glorious, the sleeping.
Sunday
Costume: Kaylee's fluffy dress
So. Our group had planned to meet in costume at the Browncoats booth when the floor opened at 10 am. I was a bit late, because I once again changed at the convention center and had difficulties with my hoopskirt, because I had forgotten a safety pin to close it (not enough time to do proper fastenings) and only had a small one in my purse. Of course, it couldn't stand up to the weight, and so halfway across the con floor my hoopskirt and petticoat fell to the floor in a heap. So I stepped out of it, picked it up, hefted my skirt, and made my way over to the Browncoats booth where I swapped safety pins with Rogue (he had a big one securing his holster), which fixed the problem neatly. I did have one person ask for a picture while I was clearly trying to fix my hoopskirt and my dress was all askew. Argh, come on people, *look* at me! I've got my skirt hiked up and I'm fiddling around with something; have the decency to wait a minute! At last the remnants of our group arrived-- we were only six, instead of nine, missing Jayne, Wash, and Inara. Since Rogue and I had a shift at the store starting at 11 am, we decided to walk over as a group, stopping for pictures along the way. I discovered that my skirt worked marvelously for hiding our bags when we took pictures.
I didn't fit behind the counter, so Mary stationed me at the end of the line, giving out Star Wars coloring book sheets to children since it was Kids' Day. That was lots of fun-- I got my picture taken quite a bit, and several little girls wanted their picture with the girl in the "princess dress." Mary, bless her heart, let me out a bit early so I could run over to the Narnia panel in Hall H. And one of the volunteers there took pity on me and let me sit in a single chair in their area, since I would have a hard time sitting in a regular row. The Narnia panel was very, very cool-- they had the effects guys, including Richard Taylor, there in person, and the director and producer on a video-conference call from London. (The four kids were there in London too, but they pretty much just said hi and bye.) I found the panel very informative, and the questions got quite good once they announced they were giving original prop bits to people who asked the best questions. :) They even showed some footage, which was just awesome. I absolutely got chills when they showed Peter in armor. As we left, they gave us little metal pins with Aslan on them, and apparently there were posters too but I didn't get one. :(
After the panel I went back into the convention center, but not the exhbit hall. (What's that part called, that you enter when you come in from outside but before you go into the hall? I have no idea.) Anyway, I saw Kathy again, in civvies this time, and she took some pictures of me with my camera (including the one linked above). Then I saw Serena and Rebecca from Rogue's old work, who liked my dress. Then a girl asked to take my picture, and caught a glimpse of my nametag and said, "Hey, you won something in the Browncoats raffle! You should go over to the booth!" That made me super-excited, since there was a ton of awesome stuff to win, so Serena, Rebecca and I decided to go over. But we didn't get very far, because that was when Joss Freaking Whedon himself walked up to me and said he liked my dress. I said, "You liked my Zoe at the Riverside screening, too," and I seriously cannot remember anything else that he or I said after that because I basically turned into a gibbering fangirl. I think I asked him if he'd come to Masquerade, which if I'd been thinking at all I would have realized that no, of course he was at the Serenity screening, duh. I did, however, having the presence of mind (aided generously by Serena) to ask him for a picture, which he very kindly agreed to. I walked the rest of the way to the Browncoats booth in a pretty serious daze, and they told me I'd won the Ipod and I thought, this is it, it's the best day ever and someone's going to wake me up very soon. But it was real; I won a whole prize bag including the Ipod shuffle, a Browncoats Tshirt, a mini-poster signed by most of the cast, and a Jayne hat. Sunday, if you hadn't guessed yet, was far and away the BEST day of the whole con.
I stayed at the Browncoats booth for awhile longer, because the people were friendly and it was nice to stay in one place and not have my dress constantly stepped on. One very precocious little girl arrived with an adult who'd come to claim her raffle prize, and she thought my dress was about the coolest thing ever. She wanted to see what was underneath and what was making it stand out and what happened when I twirled and good gracious, five minutes with her and I was ready to keel over. Then I went upstairs (via elevator) to Masquerade playback. I tried to time it so I'd arrive in time to see the acts we missed, but I came a little bit too late. Oh well. As I was leaving, I ran into a group of photographers taking shots of the girl with the really good Slave Leia costume. I stopped to offer my compliments, and ended up having my picture taken *with* her by the photographers. That was pretty funny. :)
I did one final walk of the floor, which was slow going because I had my whole skirt to think of, but eventually I just came back to the now-mostly-deserted Star Wars shop with its very bare shelves and plopped down on the ground because damn, my feet were tired from walking around in two-inch heels. As the con wound down, CJers and other volunteer types began to gather around the booth as we figured out what to do afterward. Dan,blusurfer, sirrogue, and I decided to go to Fuddrucker's for dinner and wait out the traffic on the 5. We changed out of costume first, of course, but I left my big pink bow in my hair. :) We had a lovely dinner, and then finally went home to unwind and watch SciFi Friday at last. And that was the end of Comic-Con 2005!
Comic-Con Report, Quick and Dirty
I thought about adding the "hours of sleep since Sunday" category again, but frankly I didn't keep track this time. Suffice it to say it was "not even close to the fringes of the realm of nearly enough."
Wednesday
Costume: None (just my SWME T-shirt)
sirrogue and I arrived (separately) at 2 pm for our volunteer shifts. I spent the next few hours folding T-shirts for the store; he folded for awhile and then got moved to action-figure packaging. We were supposed to be off-shift when the floor opened for Preview Night, but two of the line control volunteers hadn't shown up so we stayed for a couple of hours. Line control was a veritable nightmare at first because there was nothing to keep the line separate from the people milling about the rest of the booth. After about half an hour, we stole the ropes that had been blocking off the Vader and R2 replicas (and oh, it was fun to keep people from touching *them*) while we waited for more ropes from the convention. Once they arrived and we were able to clearly separate the lines from the rest of the attendees, things went much more smoothly. After things calmed down we were able to go check out the floor, which as always was seriously massive. We spent a lot of time looking fruitlessly for the Browncoats fan booth and finally called Matt to find out where it was. Of course it was at the complete *opposite* end of the floor, and we'd already been there and missed it. Argh. We also found the Red vs Blue and Fellowship! booths, conveniently located next to each other. We chatted for a bit with Cory, the actor who plays Frodo. Then we went home and I sewed for a long time.Thursday
Costume: Sith cheerleader
Most of Thursday was spent behind the counter at the Star Wars Shop, since we had shifts from 11-3 and 5-7. There wasn't much going on, so we didn't bother arriving until our shift started. It was pretty busy all day, but since there were lots of people working it wasn't too hectic. The actual LFL employees ran the registers, and we volunteers either ran line control, checked people off the Will Call list, or did "running" (more like "reaching") for the cashiers-- that is, the customer said what they wanted, and we found it and bagged it while the cashiers rang them up. Rogue also did some crowd control for the Master Replicas lightsaber duel. During our break I wandered the floor, but I probably just should've found a quiet space and sat down, because I was pretty beat. One guy asked for a picture and I guess I gave him this "oh god, please don't make me" look because he and his buddy just cracked up. They were actually really cool about it and they got both a "bitchy tired" cheerleader picture and a "much more cheerful" cheerleader picture after they made me laugh. After our 5-7 shift we met up with the rest of our Masquerade group because we'd wanted to rehearse after the floor closed, but due to UPS being a horrible, sucky, non-customer-oriented company, we had to bail to go pick up our package of faux suede for Rogue's browncoat. Which I ended up not having time to make, thus rendering the whole ordeal Rogue went through on the phone that day completely pointless. I suck. Anyway, we set a rehearsal time for 8:30 the next morning at Embassy Suites (their hotel), and after that, home for more sewing and little sleep.
Friday
Costume: Senatorial Leia
We actually managed to arrive downtown reasonably close to 8:30 for our Masquerade rehearsal. It went quite well (we're all stupendous performers, naturally) and then we drove over to the convention center because we had a 9:30 shift at the booth. I had to change into my Leia costume, so I went to the nice big bathroom outside Hall E and first did my hair (to the amusement of the ladies who came in and out while I was there) and then put on my dress. I wasn't *too* late, and anyway it all worked out. We were off-shift at 1:30, but Mary had asked us to come back around 2:30 for some extra crowd control. Apparently, Natalie Portman was there to promote V for Vendetta, and she graciously agreed to do some photo ops with fans at the Star Wars booth. Tickets had been given out earlier in the day to random customers at the Star Wars store. I didn't really do anything-- just hung out at the barrier with a bunch of other costumed volunteers-- but Rogue was stationed at the exit so he actually got to see Natalie, the lucky guy! The biggest excitement for us was Ray Park and Daniel Logan coming through to say hi to Natalie, and a chick in a Batman mask leaving. (Later, we found out it was actually Rachel Weisz.) Also, Jim Solo showed up and smarmed his way across the ropes, but to my knowledge didn't get in to see Natalie. Gotta love Jim Solo.
Things wrapped up around 3:30 and we hurried upstairs to catch the second half of the Battlestar Galactica panel. It was very cool and I wish we'd seen the whole thing. I especially enjoyed it because the fans were asking intelligent questions, and the actors and creators were giving thoughtful answers. It was a refreshing change from how these things usually go. Then we killed some time on the floor before finding seats in cavernous Hall H for the Star Wars Sort-of-Spectacular. It was mostly just Steve showing us videos of various things, although they did screen one of the deleted "formation of the Rebellion" scenes, and they had Matthew Wood come up on stage and do some things in "Grievous voice." When that finished, I hurried back to the big bathroom to de-Leia myself since I thought it might be weird to go to Fellowship! dressed as a Star Wars character and also the buns were starting to really pinch my head in some places. (My hair looked dreadful, half light brown and half sprayed dark brown, and stiff from the hairspray, but I just pulled it back into a ponytail and figured that was good enough.) Then we raced to Horton Plaza to grab some food before going to the theater (conveniently located right underneath the mall, oddly enough) and meeting up with most of the rest of our Masquerade group, who were also seeing Fellowship!
We'd seen it before in Los Angeles with Tree and Alex, but I was so glad we decided to go again. It was just as funny the second time and they definitely tweaked a couple of moments especially for their Comic-Con audience. Very, very screamingly hilarious. We went to the Gentle Giant party thingie afterwards and chatted with the CJers in attendance, but went home after a half-hour or so, where I commenced sewing for the final time.
Saturday
Costume: Zoe, from Firefly
Ugh. Can I just not talk about Saturday morning? It was many, many levels of awful and it was pretty much all my fault. Suffice it to say I didn't finish Rogue's browncoat, I fell asleep when I didn't mean to, making us very late, we got caught in traffic, missed the Lost panel, had to park many times further away and pay twice as much (although I didn't have to walk, Rogue dropped me off), and I had four bags to check and only $2 on me, which was the straw that broke the camel's back and I started crying at the bag-check booth. (Actually I had started crying earlier when I ran into Brandon outside the convention center, but he made me feel better and I was doing OK, but then I discovered I needed $4 to check my big, heavy bags and I only had $2 and that was pretty much it for me.) Anyway, the lady was really nice and let me sit down until I got ahold of myself, and then we figured out how to combine two of my bags into one so I checked those and the other big bag and carried the smallest around with me all day.
Then my day got infinitely better when I turned around and saw my friend Kathy, aka kay_dee from the JC C&P boards, in her beautiful Purple Senate dress that she's been working on for ages and finally finished. And oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. I was seriously a completely crazed fangirl about her dress. I took a bunch of pictures of her, held her stuff, and helped her get over to the "action figure packaging" they had over at the Hasbro booth and take her picture there. It pretty much made me forget about my horrendously crappy morning. Then I checked the time and realized I needed to get upstairs for a panel I wanted to see. So, calmed down and less-encumbered, I went up to the Stargate panel in Room 20. They had an hour and a half for both SG1 and Atlantis, and luckily SG1 was first. Ben, Amanda, Christopher, and Beau Bridges were there, along with some of the PTB types. It was clear they all get along really well and enjoy working with each other, which made me feel good about the new season. There were also some serious "the slash writes itself!" moments with Ben and Christopher (and even Beau, yikes!). The fan questions weren't especially illuminating, and of course the last one was "What's up with Jack and Sam!?" to which the producers responded that they were going to leave it vague so the fans could make up their own minds. YES! Congratulations, PTB, that's the right answer.
I would have liked to stay for the SGA panel, but I really, really wanted a good seat for the Serenity panel in Hall H, so instead I went downstairs and arrived as the Aeon Flux panel was ending, and I was able to find a pretty decent seat for Kevin Smith that worked as a staging point for finding a better seat for Serenity. (It's much easier to find a good seat when you're only looking for one!) I started chatting with my seatmate before the panel started since it was delayed somewhat, and she said she was at the Lost panel and it really wasn't that interesting. So that made me feel a little better about missing it. Kevin Smith was his usual amusing self; I thought the announcer's warnings beforehand about him using "strong language not suitable for children" were pretty funny. As his panel ended, I joined the growing mass of people who were pushing for the front and ended up with a pretty close seat on audience right. But before Serenity, we had to sit through a half-hour of Slither, which is this seriously gross horror movie with Nathan Fillion in it. It was amazingly obvious that basically no one in the room cared at all; we were all there for Serenity or one of the later panels. And they still took the whole half-hour and played their trailer *twice,* dammit. Finally they got off the stage and Joss came on, and then he introduced the cast one by one, except Alan who of course was doing Spamalot...and except for Jewel, who he apparently just forgot about! That was pretty funny. The panel itself was not really stellar, due in part to the questions sucking (a lot of "this is for the whole cast..." and every one of them answering individually, argh), but also due to the fact that we couldn't spoil the movie. So I think the questions were a lot less interesting than they could have been. And they only had a half hour, grrrr. They did show the whole bar/tavern scene from the movie, which was awesome. I totally thought they would cut it off halfway through, but it kept going! And even with all that...it was a hell of a thing to see Hall H completely packed (that's 6000+ people) for our little Big Damn Movie, considering that last year, they were in Ballroom 20 and it was barely half-filled.
Outside after the panel, I ran into James and Whitney who were going upstairs to the Teen Titans panel, so I joined them. I couldn't stay long, though, because our group had rehearsal time on the practice stage at 4 pm. We figured out our spacing and did a couple of run-throughs, then went for food. I was planning to go to the Subway a couple blocks away, but when I got there I was greeted with a lovely little sign saying "Our credit card machines our down, sorry for the inconvenience" and so I had to go back to the convention center, pay the fees for using one of their money-stealing ATMs, and get convention food because I didn't want to go back in the hot sun. Rargh. Then I picked up the rest of my bags from bag check, went upstairs, and dropped them in our dressing room. There was some confusion with checking in and which dressing room was ours, but we got it straightened out. I did some last-minute repairs on my dress (in my exhaustedness, I had accidentally cut into the right shoulder while trimming the sleeves) while I waited for the rest of our group to arrive. Getting ready was the usual flurry of confusion and misplaced items, but we were all finished and ready at 7:30. I greatly enjoyed watching
sbjudy have to be dressed in her GINORMOUS hoopskirt by two people. :)From there, things pretty much went as usual. We went to the green room, got our picture taken by the judges, and found space to hang out. I wasn't as mobile as I usually am, so I didn't go around and chat with as many people as I usually do. We also did a quickie "rehearsal" with our costumes on to check that everything would stay in place properly-- and that I could still do the dance steps in my hoopskirt! :) They played trailers beforehand, as usual, and it was fun to see which ones got the best response. The whole green room went dead-silent when they played the Goblet of Fire trailer and there were huge cheers afterward. Masquerade itself was pretty standard; the only huge screwup was when the music didn't come on for
sbjudy's and ajmeow's group and they were left standing there with nothing to do. And the MC made a pretty mean comment afterward, when it was clear that it had been a technical difficulty and wasn't their fault at *all.* All of us in the green room were really upset and hoping they'd fix it so they could go again. Luckily they *did* fix it and they *did* let them go again, and they did an awesome job, of course. There were a crazy number of entrants this year, somewhere over 60, and most of them were really good! So it was a good masquerade to watch. I'm looking forward to getting my video so I can actually see the Disney Princesses and the Van Hellsing group, since we were out of the green room when they were performing.Our performance was kind of a disappointment; we didn't get as much crowd reaction as we hoped. The quiet was actually kind of disconcerting. What I didn't realize was that there was a special screening of Serenity going on at the same time, so likely a lot of Browncoats who would have been at the Masquerade went to the screening instead. But it's always fun to be up there,and I didn't hear any booing. And on Sunday I had several people tell me they really enjoyed our performance! Hopefully we got at least a few new people to ask, "What's Firefly?" and check out the series. During the judging break we went into the hall to take a bunch of pictures, and we also videotaped ourself performing the routine one last time, so we'd have a record of the whole thing. (Stupid Comic-Con always cuts to lots of close-ups, so you never get the full effect.) And then we got back out of costume and went home, and I slept. Oh, it was glorious, the sleeping.
Sunday
Costume: Kaylee's fluffy dress
So. Our group had planned to meet in costume at the Browncoats booth when the floor opened at 10 am. I was a bit late, because I once again changed at the convention center and had difficulties with my hoopskirt, because I had forgotten a safety pin to close it (not enough time to do proper fastenings) and only had a small one in my purse. Of course, it couldn't stand up to the weight, and so halfway across the con floor my hoopskirt and petticoat fell to the floor in a heap. So I stepped out of it, picked it up, hefted my skirt, and made my way over to the Browncoats booth where I swapped safety pins with Rogue (he had a big one securing his holster), which fixed the problem neatly. I did have one person ask for a picture while I was clearly trying to fix my hoopskirt and my dress was all askew. Argh, come on people, *look* at me! I've got my skirt hiked up and I'm fiddling around with something; have the decency to wait a minute! At last the remnants of our group arrived-- we were only six, instead of nine, missing Jayne, Wash, and Inara. Since Rogue and I had a shift at the store starting at 11 am, we decided to walk over as a group, stopping for pictures along the way. I discovered that my skirt worked marvelously for hiding our bags when we took pictures.
I didn't fit behind the counter, so Mary stationed me at the end of the line, giving out Star Wars coloring book sheets to children since it was Kids' Day. That was lots of fun-- I got my picture taken quite a bit, and several little girls wanted their picture with the girl in the "princess dress." Mary, bless her heart, let me out a bit early so I could run over to the Narnia panel in Hall H. And one of the volunteers there took pity on me and let me sit in a single chair in their area, since I would have a hard time sitting in a regular row. The Narnia panel was very, very cool-- they had the effects guys, including Richard Taylor, there in person, and the director and producer on a video-conference call from London. (The four kids were there in London too, but they pretty much just said hi and bye.) I found the panel very informative, and the questions got quite good once they announced they were giving original prop bits to people who asked the best questions. :) They even showed some footage, which was just awesome. I absolutely got chills when they showed Peter in armor. As we left, they gave us little metal pins with Aslan on them, and apparently there were posters too but I didn't get one. :(
After the panel I went back into the convention center, but not the exhbit hall. (What's that part called, that you enter when you come in from outside but before you go into the hall? I have no idea.) Anyway, I saw Kathy again, in civvies this time, and she took some pictures of me with my camera (including the one linked above). Then I saw Serena and Rebecca from Rogue's old work, who liked my dress. Then a girl asked to take my picture, and caught a glimpse of my nametag and said, "Hey, you won something in the Browncoats raffle! You should go over to the booth!" That made me super-excited, since there was a ton of awesome stuff to win, so Serena, Rebecca and I decided to go over. But we didn't get very far, because that was when Joss Freaking Whedon himself walked up to me and said he liked my dress. I said, "You liked my Zoe at the Riverside screening, too," and I seriously cannot remember anything else that he or I said after that because I basically turned into a gibbering fangirl. I think I asked him if he'd come to Masquerade, which if I'd been thinking at all I would have realized that no, of course he was at the Serenity screening, duh. I did, however, having the presence of mind (aided generously by Serena) to ask him for a picture, which he very kindly agreed to. I walked the rest of the way to the Browncoats booth in a pretty serious daze, and they told me I'd won the Ipod and I thought, this is it, it's the best day ever and someone's going to wake me up very soon. But it was real; I won a whole prize bag including the Ipod shuffle, a Browncoats Tshirt, a mini-poster signed by most of the cast, and a Jayne hat. Sunday, if you hadn't guessed yet, was far and away the BEST day of the whole con.
I stayed at the Browncoats booth for awhile longer, because the people were friendly and it was nice to stay in one place and not have my dress constantly stepped on. One very precocious little girl arrived with an adult who'd come to claim her raffle prize, and she thought my dress was about the coolest thing ever. She wanted to see what was underneath and what was making it stand out and what happened when I twirled and good gracious, five minutes with her and I was ready to keel over. Then I went upstairs (via elevator) to Masquerade playback. I tried to time it so I'd arrive in time to see the acts we missed, but I came a little bit too late. Oh well. As I was leaving, I ran into a group of photographers taking shots of the girl with the really good Slave Leia costume. I stopped to offer my compliments, and ended up having my picture taken *with* her by the photographers. That was pretty funny. :)
I did one final walk of the floor, which was slow going because I had my whole skirt to think of, but eventually I just came back to the now-mostly-deserted Star Wars shop with its very bare shelves and plopped down on the ground because damn, my feet were tired from walking around in two-inch heels. As the con wound down, CJers and other volunteer types began to gather around the booth as we figured out what to do afterward. Dan,
blusurfer, sirrogue, and I decided to go to Fuddrucker's for dinner and wait out the traffic on the 5. We changed out of costume first, of course, but I left my big pink bow in my hair. :) We had a lovely dinner, and then finally went home to unwind and watch SciFi Friday at last. And that was the end of Comic-Con 2005!
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Date: 2005-08-02 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-02 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-02 02:55 am (UTC)And holy cow, but I am in awe of Kathy's Purple Senate Gown. I mean, I like your Serenity dress (and can vouch for the 'fun' of dealing with hoop skirts) but wow.
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Date: 2005-08-02 06:56 am (UTC)And OMG, Kathy's dress is even more amazing in person, if that's possible. The tabard embroidery, and the sleeve embroidery, and the velvet, and the headpiece...it's absolutely stunning. She even made a purple farthingale to go under the dress! I am in absolute awe of her dedication to accuracy.
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Date: 2005-08-02 10:48 am (UTC)I'm glad to hear that the Firefly panels will be spoiler free. But, at DragonCon, I'm sure there'll be an idiot who stands up there and blurbs out everything in the hopes of asking a question. (The level of stupidity at DragonCon tending to run higher than most cons.)
In spite of the exhaustion, it still sounds like you had a great experience. Thanks for sharing it!
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Date: 2005-08-02 01:44 pm (UTC)Oh the fun and complications of hoop skirts. ; ) Yes, the weight gets to be a bit much over time. Actually, wearing a corset helps a lot - it helps distribute the weight better, so it isn't all resting right on your hips. And, yes, folks are always curious about how one moves about and sits while wearing such things. (Come on, people - see, it can collapse.)
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Date: 2005-08-02 10:43 pm (UTC)For instance, I can attest that it *is* possible to drive in your hoopskirt, assuming you've got the kind with the bendy plastic hoops. You kind of squash them under the steering column, and then it pops up on either side. But you'd better be wearing bloomers if you're getting out of the car in public (as you presumably are, since otherwise you'd put the bloomin' hoop on after you arrive at your destination)...
It is possible, by the way, to fit five teenage girls in hoopskirts into a 1977ish VW Rabbit. Just thought you'd want to know.
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Date: 2005-08-03 09:04 pm (UTC)The really strange thing is when we are mistaken for Amish.
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Date: 2005-08-02 10:06 pm (UTC)uh... the hallway...? :o) *mwah*
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Date: 2005-08-03 12:26 am (UTC)