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Vegas con report 5
Nov. 29th, 2008 08:23 pmSunday
This was a long day and I put anything in my journal about the day, so I am really sorry if I miss something along the way. The morning began with showing the 2 winning song videos. Lee described what elements of the vid by Tes made it outstanding. One edit in it that I particularly like took a scene from one episode where Methos is bowing down and seamlessly blended it with a scene from another episode where he is rising from the same position.
http://tes-fic.livejournal.com/168398.html
My Way – the Director’s Cut (Peter asks questions of Jon)
All weekend the moderators for each panel had been fans, this was Peter’s turn as moderator; he talked to Jon about directing. Several of the things I remember were:
1. Good directors hired to work on TV need to do their homework. For example, when he was working as DP on Forever Knight they had a new director come on 8 episodes into the season one year. Jon asked him if he has watched the first 7 episodes and the guy said, “No.” Jon’s response was that to ask him if he would pick up a book and start it at chapter 8.
2. The work atmosphere on the set of 24 sounds like it would produce a good creative environment, one that fosters a sense of ownership of the product for everyone involved from producers to actors to crew. Everyone has a valuable role to play.
3. The best directors respect their actors and on 24 the cameras are always at ‘human level’. By that he means that they don’t go in for fancy angles or crane shots but shot at the level of the actors and try to keep things rolling in a way that lets the actors really get into the role. He contrasted this to the traditional way of shooting where the actors find their marks and say their lines. They then move to the next scene and do the same. Said it’s called ‘park and bark’ in the business.
Glitter Gulch Bargains (auction)
If you’re hoping for a long report on the auction, you’ll be disappointed – it’s something that you’ve just got to be there to experience. I did buy one thing (a journal with a cover from the Book of Kells) but got outbid a lot. From the HLWW con in Vancouver I had bought David’s camera and had 3 hard cover books with dust jackets made, 1 for me, 1 for PEACE and 1 for Project Edan. I got a lot of the signatures I needed at Indylander and David auctioned off the Project Edan book in Vegas. I was very happy to see that it went for more that I bought the camera for.
Buffet
Lunch brought it own surprises. We had a buffet, which was excellent, but there was also a surprise. All 4 GOH ate lunch with us and fans were selected to sit with them. The fans were chosen several ways. The con committee, volunteers?, some Project Edan donors, and fans chosen by the luck of the draw. There may of been other criteria, too, but everyone had a shot and several newbies were surprised to be included.
I was at Jon’s table and we kept the poor man talking so much I’m afraid his lunch must have gotten cold. But he was having a great time and so were we. It’s easy to get him talking about his profession and he has lots of stories to tell. A long and very funny story about the winning his Emmy for Best Director on 24 was great. But probably best of all, he said that he does workshops for film students and I mentioned that Celena, a newbie at our table, was a film student. He jumped at the chance to talk to her about the industry and how best to break into a career in film. His passion for working with budding filmmakers was very evident.
Autograph session
Since I worked at the Saturday autograph session, this was my day to get things signed. I was among the last to go and except for Jim’s table where Dail joined us, it was just me and Vonda with each of the GOHs.
There’s No Business Like Show Business (Peter and David)
The final panel was about the War of the Worlds animated movie. David wrote it and is the producer and the animation is being done in Malaysia. Apparently the Malaysians want to break into the animation industry and are using this film as a show piece of what they can do. They are producing highly detailed schematics of all the ships and battle vehicles and laying the design groundwork necessary to potentially broaden the scope of the movie into an animated series. David mentioned that they would like to have it picked up by Spike or SciFi. Both of them said that they have seen the drawings and production still and that are amazing. It will combine hand-drawn and CGI work.
David said that what he was striving for was more than an action or sf story; he wrote a story with strong characters and themes. One thing that David said at one point during the weekend was that when he is working, his friends will be working. So he found great roles for Peter and Adrian and Lizzie and Jim.
When asked about doing the voice work, Peter said that in many ways it was similar to the work he did for the BBC radio series, The Archers. He wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it, but David told him to just be himself; that isn’t how Peter normally approaches his work. There was a great story about a love scene between the chracters voiced by Peter and Lizzie. For animation voice work the actors normally go in alone to do their lines. For this particular scene they were in the recording studio together. During the love scene she ‘really got into her role’, so much so that she and Peter were doing their lines facing away from each other, eyes closed. The crew in the control booth were flabbergasted. David’s daughter was there in the control booth and he couldn’t even look at her. In fact, David kept turning away and blushing as he was telling us the story, it was that steamy. It remains to be seen how much of this makes into the final project.
Closing ceremonies and aftermath
Closing ceremonies were kept brief, we were running late and the GOHs had flights to catch. Peter had a Project Edan check for Kate Weber of UNICEF and was happy to announce that we had met our goal of $100,000 by the end of 2008. This is a rather amazing amount for such a small club to have raised in only 5 years. He also talked about a new UNICEF initiaive called Believe in Zero. Check out the web site for ways that you can help. http://ibelieveinzero.org/
Peter then had 2 more announcements: he had signed up to do HLWW9 in LA and the next PWFC con would be in San Antonio in 2010.
And so it was over. Dinner with friends and then gathering with a few people in the sports bar were nice and low key. I always hate heading off to the airport alone after a con, so I was happy to share a cab with Dayl on Monday morning. This was a fantastic con. Ree, the con committee, and all the volunteers worked together to bring off a weekend crammed with activties.
This was a long day and I put anything in my journal about the day, so I am really sorry if I miss something along the way. The morning began with showing the 2 winning song videos. Lee described what elements of the vid by Tes made it outstanding. One edit in it that I particularly like took a scene from one episode where Methos is bowing down and seamlessly blended it with a scene from another episode where he is rising from the same position.
http://tes-fic.livejournal.com/168398.html
My Way – the Director’s Cut (Peter asks questions of Jon)
All weekend the moderators for each panel had been fans, this was Peter’s turn as moderator; he talked to Jon about directing. Several of the things I remember were:
1. Good directors hired to work on TV need to do their homework. For example, when he was working as DP on Forever Knight they had a new director come on 8 episodes into the season one year. Jon asked him if he has watched the first 7 episodes and the guy said, “No.” Jon’s response was that to ask him if he would pick up a book and start it at chapter 8.
2. The work atmosphere on the set of 24 sounds like it would produce a good creative environment, one that fosters a sense of ownership of the product for everyone involved from producers to actors to crew. Everyone has a valuable role to play.
3. The best directors respect their actors and on 24 the cameras are always at ‘human level’. By that he means that they don’t go in for fancy angles or crane shots but shot at the level of the actors and try to keep things rolling in a way that lets the actors really get into the role. He contrasted this to the traditional way of shooting where the actors find their marks and say their lines. They then move to the next scene and do the same. Said it’s called ‘park and bark’ in the business.
Glitter Gulch Bargains (auction)
If you’re hoping for a long report on the auction, you’ll be disappointed – it’s something that you’ve just got to be there to experience. I did buy one thing (a journal with a cover from the Book of Kells) but got outbid a lot. From the HLWW con in Vancouver I had bought David’s camera and had 3 hard cover books with dust jackets made, 1 for me, 1 for PEACE and 1 for Project Edan. I got a lot of the signatures I needed at Indylander and David auctioned off the Project Edan book in Vegas. I was very happy to see that it went for more that I bought the camera for.
Buffet
Lunch brought it own surprises. We had a buffet, which was excellent, but there was also a surprise. All 4 GOH ate lunch with us and fans were selected to sit with them. The fans were chosen several ways. The con committee, volunteers?, some Project Edan donors, and fans chosen by the luck of the draw. There may of been other criteria, too, but everyone had a shot and several newbies were surprised to be included.
I was at Jon’s table and we kept the poor man talking so much I’m afraid his lunch must have gotten cold. But he was having a great time and so were we. It’s easy to get him talking about his profession and he has lots of stories to tell. A long and very funny story about the winning his Emmy for Best Director on 24 was great. But probably best of all, he said that he does workshops for film students and I mentioned that Celena, a newbie at our table, was a film student. He jumped at the chance to talk to her about the industry and how best to break into a career in film. His passion for working with budding filmmakers was very evident.
Autograph session
Since I worked at the Saturday autograph session, this was my day to get things signed. I was among the last to go and except for Jim’s table where Dail joined us, it was just me and Vonda with each of the GOHs.
There’s No Business Like Show Business (Peter and David)
The final panel was about the War of the Worlds animated movie. David wrote it and is the producer and the animation is being done in Malaysia. Apparently the Malaysians want to break into the animation industry and are using this film as a show piece of what they can do. They are producing highly detailed schematics of all the ships and battle vehicles and laying the design groundwork necessary to potentially broaden the scope of the movie into an animated series. David mentioned that they would like to have it picked up by Spike or SciFi. Both of them said that they have seen the drawings and production still and that are amazing. It will combine hand-drawn and CGI work.
David said that what he was striving for was more than an action or sf story; he wrote a story with strong characters and themes. One thing that David said at one point during the weekend was that when he is working, his friends will be working. So he found great roles for Peter and Adrian and Lizzie and Jim.
When asked about doing the voice work, Peter said that in many ways it was similar to the work he did for the BBC radio series, The Archers. He wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it, but David told him to just be himself; that isn’t how Peter normally approaches his work. There was a great story about a love scene between the chracters voiced by Peter and Lizzie. For animation voice work the actors normally go in alone to do their lines. For this particular scene they were in the recording studio together. During the love scene she ‘really got into her role’, so much so that she and Peter were doing their lines facing away from each other, eyes closed. The crew in the control booth were flabbergasted. David’s daughter was there in the control booth and he couldn’t even look at her. In fact, David kept turning away and blushing as he was telling us the story, it was that steamy. It remains to be seen how much of this makes into the final project.
Closing ceremonies and aftermath
Closing ceremonies were kept brief, we were running late and the GOHs had flights to catch. Peter had a Project Edan check for Kate Weber of UNICEF and was happy to announce that we had met our goal of $100,000 by the end of 2008. This is a rather amazing amount for such a small club to have raised in only 5 years. He also talked about a new UNICEF initiaive called Believe in Zero. Check out the web site for ways that you can help. http://ibelieveinzero.org/
Peter then had 2 more announcements: he had signed up to do HLWW9 in LA and the next PWFC con would be in San Antonio in 2010.
And so it was over. Dinner with friends and then gathering with a few people in the sports bar were nice and low key. I always hate heading off to the airport alone after a con, so I was happy to share a cab with Dayl on Monday morning. This was a fantastic con. Ree, the con committee, and all the volunteers worked together to bring off a weekend crammed with activties.
