Comic-Con report ahoy!

[jaina]

Well, I'm mostly recovered from Comic-Con and I'm bored at work, so here's the first part my Comic-Con report. I'll warn you in advance, this is very very long and probably contains far too much boring detail. But lots of stuff happened and I want to remember it all!

Wednesday
Costume: no real costume, but I wore my Red vs Blue Tex shirt and blue jeans. If only I'd had a cowboy hat to go along with it...
Hours of sleep since Sunday: 9

Rogue and I met at home after lunch and took off for Preview Night. We stopped off at SDSU on the way to pick up Weird Al tickets for his concert in August-- woohoo! At the convention center, we found a parking lot around the back which offered all-day parking for $8. We parked there the rest of the con except for Saturday, when we had to park in the Petco Park garage. We found our way inside and called Mary, who sent Kristen (Kristin?) out with our exhibitor's badges. I came to love my badge very, very much over the next few days. Yay for the color orange.

There wasn't much for us to do, so Rogue and I set off to wander the floor. On the way to the Decipher booth, we spotted the LOTR costumes on display at New Line. I'd had no idea they were going to be there, and I let out a shriek as I started running toward the display. I think I very much scared the New Line people. Pretty pretty PRETTY costumes omg! Back at the Lucasfilm pavilion, we kept seeing more friends arrive. There were hugs all around. The CJ contingent consisted of myself, Rogue, Brian, Cindi, Aaron, Vic, Lisa, Debby, Dan, Sean, and Shane. The last three weren't there at that point, though, because they weren't working.

At 4 pm, all the shop volunteers had a training session on the registers, which were pretty self-explanatory. My first cashiering gig! The floor opened for regular attendees at 5:30. Rogue had to work, but I didn't, so I wandered aimlessly around the Lucasfilm pavilion for a bit until I ran into Steve, who said, "Hey, if you're bored, they could really use some help at the Gentle Giant booth." Apparently GG had been planning to sell some limited-edition products on a first-come, first-serve basis, but right before the floor opened the Evil Comic-Con Announcer Girl (more on her later) told us all "If you're selling anything that's limited-edition, you have to raffle off the chance to buy one. You can't do it first-come, first-serve." This sent the GG people scrambling to put together some sort of raffle on a half-hour's notice and they desperately needed help. So I spent about an hour giving tickets to a seemingly endless line of people, reciting "Whole ticket for Luke, half-ticket for the Bust-Ups, raffle at seven" until I was hoarse. But it felt good to be useful, and some nice person got us all bottles of water. After that, I wandered around some more, stopping by the Watch Farscape booth to pick up swag and say hi, and just generally getting a feel for the floor.

When the floor closed at 8:30, the rest of the Club Jade folk went to go have dinner, but Rogue and I went home. It was pretty clear that we were going to have to wait awhile to eat no matter where we went, and I still had a lot of sewing to do once we got home. Plus, Sean was due to arrive at our house around 10 pm, and we didn't want him showing up and us not be there. He arrived safely. I sewed far into the night.

Thursday
Costume: Padme's Tatooine midriff dress
Hours of sleep since Sunday: 12

Rogue and I both had 9 am shifts on Thursday morning, so we showed up around 8:45. The floor opened at 10, and I got my first taste of cashiering. I seriously don't know how people do it for a living. There's a lot to remember, and DAMN your feet get tired! Silly me forgot all about the gel insoles I'd bought the week before. Alas. The line for those magic silver sandtroopers stayed pretty steady till around 12 pm, and even after that we still had a constant stream of people. I don't know if it was because all the hardk0r collectors had gotten their figures on Preview Night or what, but I really didn't get all that many of the obnoxious "There's this tiny little ding right here, I need a new figure!" type of people. Mostly if people asked for a new one, it was because there really was an obvious crease or bend or whatever in the packaging, and I was happy to find them a better one.

We got off work at 1 pm and walked around the floor a bit more. I acquired an "Irreversibly Contaminated" Farscape button to wear on the shoulder of my costume. At 3 pm, I went upstairs to watch Inuyasha (subtitled! yay!) after agreeing to meet back up with Rogue at the 4 pm Watch Farscape raffle. Rogue must have good raffle karma, because he won two S1 DVDs (eight episodes total) along with a Ben Browder poster. No box set for us, though. Then he went off to do card-type stuff, and I used the computers set up at the Lucasfilm pavilion to find the contact info for the other people in my Masquerade entry, since we definitely needed to get together before Saturday to rehearse.

Having found our ringleader's booth number, I headed over to find her. Hurray! We met. We'd probably be getting together on Friday to rehearse, she told me. She also let me know about the Ringers documentary panel at 6 pm that evening, which I hadn't been aware of. The panel was pretty good, despite some technical issues. Looking forward to seeing the movie once it's finished. I sat with Dan and Debby, and after the panel was over we started collecting people to go up to the Star Wars Fan Film Awards. We found Aaron first, then picked up Tim and Anna in line. The awards were really fun-- some great, great films. I didn't "get" the winner, but apparently that's because I haven't seen the Planet of the Apes movies. Then afterward we were treated to a one-man Star Wars show (ANH only), which was very excellent. They said he'd be doing the whole trilogy at C3, which should be great.

And then we went home, stopping for Wendy's on the way. I stayed up all night to finish Friday's costume.

Friday
Costume: Padme's family gown (deleted Ep2 scene)
Hours of sleep since Sunday: 12

Ah, Friday. I'd thought my days of pulling all-nighters were behind me, but apparently I can still do it. Mostly. I really loved how the dress turned out, though, and I got a ton of pictures taken of me, so I think it was worth it. :)

We showed up at 8:45 am again for my 9 am shift at the booth, which was much less busy than Thursday, as it seemed most of the crazed collectors had already bought their sandtroopers. Partway through the morning, though, the word came down from Finance: volunteers weren't allowed to handle money, so actual LFL employees would have to work the registers. The rest of us were moved to bagging or running duty, which meant we had rather a surplus of workers. I hung out over by the pile of stock, watching people audition for the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit DVD. They'd get up on a little stage, give their name and hometown, then read a short speech. If the judges liked them, they got sent upstairs for the second round; if not, they got a free T-shirt. Eventually, the line of auditionees ran low, and the girl who was working the line spotted me. "Hey! You should audition for this! Come on, it's really easy!" Fateful last words.

Since I really wasn't doing anything useful, I said okay. She handed me a stack of papers, each one a different potential question for the game-- the "speeches" I'd been hearing earlier. These were the audition materials; I was told to pick one and then read it for the judges in an "interesting" and "animated" manner. The basic gist of each question was that we were describing a scene in one of the movies, first in a very general manner, then gradually getting more and more specific. I guess in the game, the players are supposed to figure out what movie the scene is in, and the first one to guess right wins the question? Anyway. After some frantic shuffling, I picked a question from ESB describing how the crew of the Falcon hide on the Star Destroyer and then "float away with the rest of the garbage." Then I read it for the judges, who, to my shock, passed me through to the second round! A guy with a clipboard told me to report back to the Trivial Pursuit booth at 1:30, and they'd have someone escort me upstairs.

Eek! Talk about nerve-wracking. I puttered around for an hour or so, basically just waiting it out, then presented myself at the booth promptly at 1:30. Another guy then walked me upstairs to the area that would become backstage for Masquerade on Saturday. I was again presented with a choice of scripts, but there were only three to choose from this time. Luckily, one of them was the script I'd read downstairs, so I picked that one. The guy outside told me to memorize as much of the script as I could, since that would make things easier inside.

Finally, after about ten minutes of nervous waiting and memorizing, I was taken inside the room. They had a full film crew there-- it was pretty intimidating! The director introduced himself, the sound guy put a mike on my collar, and the makeup lady powdered my face so I wouldn't be shiny under the lights. Everyone was really nice and relaxed, which helped me to calm down, and before long I was chatting with them about my dress, how I'd made it, my ambitions to be a costumer, etc etc. Then they had me go stand on a mark under the lights and started rolling the cameras. It was the same deal as downstairs-- name, hometown, and read the script, except I didn't have the script in front of me this time. But I'd mostly memorized it, and they fed me the lines when I tripped up. It seemed to go really smoothly; the director appeared to like my line delivery and only had me repeat a few things.

After that, I got interviewed by another guy who I guess was doing some sort of behind-the-scenes thing. It was the type of questions you'd expect-- why do you like Star Wars, do your friends and family know how big of a fan you are, what would you think if you made it onto the DVD? I had a feeling I wasn't giving quite the answers the guy wanted to hear, but oh well. And then I was done! The guy outside told me that about 40 people total made it upstairs, and they'd pick about 20 of us to go on the DVD. I still have no idea when/if I'll find out whether I made it or not. But it was really a total blast!

I walked around a bit to decompress after that, then went and watched that day's Inuyasha showing. At 3:30 I had another shift down at the booth, so I headed back downstairs. There was still an excess of volunteers, so there wasn't that much to do, and at quarter to five I got a call from Debby that they'd been let into the New Line panel and had managed to save one seat for me, but I had to hurry or they might lose it. After checking with Mary to make sure it was okay, I zipped over to Hall H and found Debby and the others. I sat next to Shane and we chatted a bit, but I was fading fast. The panel didn't start for another 45 minutes and there were two movies ahead of the LOTR stuff, so I tried to nap a bit, which didn't work very well, especially when Shane spilled water on me! :-P (Thanks for the massage, though, dude. That was nice.)

Finally, though, the LOTR portion of the program started, and they brought out Billy Boyd and David Wenham, who were just adorable. They showed a whole bunch of clips from the ROTK EE-- AWESOME! (There was a great Faramir/Eowyn Houses of Healing scene that I know you'll *love,* schneck128!) They also had the DVD producer guy there, and having him talk about doing all the behind-the-scenes documentaries was really neat. They showed a hilarious clip of Dom and Viggo being interviewed; Dom giving a fake story about Viggo and Viggo's reaction to it. So funny!

After the panel, I met up with my Masquerade group (well, five out of seven of us) to rehearse our skit for the Masq the next day. We trooped over to Garf's (our ringleader's) friend's condo and had it pretty well worked out in an hour or so. We still needed some serious practice with all seven of us on Saturday, but at least most of us were now on the same page. Then I met Rogue, Dan, Aaron, et al down at Pat & Oscar's, and we went home. I tried to stay up to work out attachments for my Sikozu boot tops and gauntlets, but finally just said "screw it," used gaff tape, and went to bed for six blessed hours of sleep.

Saturday and Sunday are coming up, along with links to more pictures. But I think this entry is already long enough as it is!

Comments

[schneck128.livejournal.com]

There was a great Faramir/Eowyn Houses of Healing scene

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember you!

[padmeamanda.livejournal.com]

Hey, I was at Comic-Con, too, and I remember you because I was ALSO wearing Padmé's pale blue Tatooine dress (on Friday)! I was one of Queen Amidala's handmaidens in the Masquerade on Saturday night, a Cobra trooper the rest of Saturday, a Gryffindor Quidditch player on Thursday and handmaiden again on Sunday... and I squeezed in a couple other costumes here and there. Small world! You've done a great job on your costumes. Are you in Rebel Legion? If so, PM me there and say hi! My screen name is Padme Amanda there, too.

Re: I remember you!

[brightcupenny.livejournal.com]

Hi! I very definitely remember you, although I only said hi to LadySonnet at Masquerade. Were you the Gryffindor Quidditch player with the whole bunch of other HP costumes? If so, I remember seeing you guys at Comic-Con last year! I was in Gryffindor student robes and had my pic taken with the Slytherin player and the referee.

I'm not in Rebel Legion, but I'm beginning to think I ought to join! Do you post at the TFN costume boards?