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Let's get this party started
Apr. 30th, 2009 06:52 pmMy Friday morning started pretty early, I was excited for the con to start, excited for my vidding history panel, excited to get more information about my volunteer duties, excited about the tai chi class with Adrian. Just excited and bouncing off the walls in general!
I checked in with Dar to first, since I was to act as her back up if needed in the control room. Also popped into the dealers room and help unpack a few boxes. After my panel was done I got a primer from Aine on running the video camera, since that was my afternoon assignment and even though vidding and still photography are my hobbies, I had never used a video camera before.
The vidding panel went very well. Started with only 2 or 3 people, but I had planned for a slow beginning and had the narrative part of the history at the beginning. By the end we had shown 14 vids, mostly older ones from 1996-2002, and had 25 or so people in the audience.
The opening ceremony was brief and then it was off to my tai chi class. What Adrian actually showed us was chi gung (or qi gong) and it was great. The two short workshops tai chi workshops I'd had in the past couple of years were not nearly as good as Adrian's class. He was a great teacher and maintained a great balance between pushing us as much as possible and respecting our individual limitations. Words cannot describe how grateful I am that he agreed to teach a second session. I missed Brandon's Q&A and most of Ken's panel, but it was worth it.
For the rest of the afternoon I was running one of the video cameras and trying to pay attention to what I was doing and the guests, while sneaking the occasional photo. I enjoyed James Horan's articulate discussion of his work, Highlander and otherwise. Donna and Gillian had great stories about Highlander and about the writing process.
David has been working a lot lately and therefore a lot to talk about. One project is for German tv production company and is a story about a young woman who was orphaned as an infant and taken to New York. As a grown woman she goes back to Israel to find more about her background and discovers that she's actually Palestinian, disrupting everything she ever believed about who she is.
The one I was really interested in came out of a script he wrote based on King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (one of my absolute favorite books as a child). The Al Jazeera children's chanel loved his script and wanted to try and develop an animated series about a couple of foals that lived in the dessert. This put him in an ethical dilemma. Should a Jewish man from LA work on a series for Al Jazeera. He consulted a number of persons whose opinion he trusted on religious and ethical questions and decided to move forward with the project.
He met with the producers, who were from Lebanon, and had them come to his house for dinner. He also traveled with them to an Arabian horse ranch in Arizona. When all was said and done he had broken bread with them, played music with them, found common ground on many issues and had revelations of his own on the separation of individuals from their cultures as a whole.
F. Braun McAsh came out next and was his usual entertaining self. After his panel was done I talked to him a bit about the Reclaiming the Blade movie and the resurgence of European martial arts. Always fun to talk history with Braun.
Then it was time for the Pounds for Peace meeting. Adrian was extremely appreciative of all our efforts. Several people talked about their experiences and/or the money that they had raised for PEACE. He is a very insightful man and a couple of things he said to me have me thinking about additional ways in which I might raise money for PEACE via the Pounds for Peace effort.
Finally, we had the premiere of Eyeborgs. I enjoyed the movie and thought that Adrian's performance and the great CGI were the strongest points. Hope it does well in London at the film festival there.
So that's Friday. Saturday and Sunday were both so jam-packed with activities that each day will probably take 2 reports. For more photos go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/valoise/collections/72157617447462412/
I checked in with Dar to first, since I was to act as her back up if needed in the control room. Also popped into the dealers room and help unpack a few boxes. After my panel was done I got a primer from Aine on running the video camera, since that was my afternoon assignment and even though vidding and still photography are my hobbies, I had never used a video camera before.
The vidding panel went very well. Started with only 2 or 3 people, but I had planned for a slow beginning and had the narrative part of the history at the beginning. By the end we had shown 14 vids, mostly older ones from 1996-2002, and had 25 or so people in the audience.
The opening ceremony was brief and then it was off to my tai chi class. What Adrian actually showed us was chi gung (or qi gong) and it was great. The two short workshops tai chi workshops I'd had in the past couple of years were not nearly as good as Adrian's class. He was a great teacher and maintained a great balance between pushing us as much as possible and respecting our individual limitations. Words cannot describe how grateful I am that he agreed to teach a second session. I missed Brandon's Q&A and most of Ken's panel, but it was worth it.
For the rest of the afternoon I was running one of the video cameras and trying to pay attention to what I was doing and the guests, while sneaking the occasional photo. I enjoyed James Horan's articulate discussion of his work, Highlander and otherwise. Donna and Gillian had great stories about Highlander and about the writing process.
David has been working a lot lately and therefore a lot to talk about. One project is for German tv production company and is a story about a young woman who was orphaned as an infant and taken to New York. As a grown woman she goes back to Israel to find more about her background and discovers that she's actually Palestinian, disrupting everything she ever believed about who she is.
The one I was really interested in came out of a script he wrote based on King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (one of my absolute favorite books as a child). The Al Jazeera children's chanel loved his script and wanted to try and develop an animated series about a couple of foals that lived in the dessert. This put him in an ethical dilemma. Should a Jewish man from LA work on a series for Al Jazeera. He consulted a number of persons whose opinion he trusted on religious and ethical questions and decided to move forward with the project.
He met with the producers, who were from Lebanon, and had them come to his house for dinner. He also traveled with them to an Arabian horse ranch in Arizona. When all was said and done he had broken bread with them, played music with them, found common ground on many issues and had revelations of his own on the separation of individuals from their cultures as a whole.
F. Braun McAsh came out next and was his usual entertaining self. After his panel was done I talked to him a bit about the Reclaiming the Blade movie and the resurgence of European martial arts. Always fun to talk history with Braun.
Then it was time for the Pounds for Peace meeting. Adrian was extremely appreciative of all our efforts. Several people talked about their experiences and/or the money that they had raised for PEACE. He is a very insightful man and a couple of things he said to me have me thinking about additional ways in which I might raise money for PEACE via the Pounds for Peace effort.
Finally, we had the premiere of Eyeborgs. I enjoyed the movie and thought that Adrian's performance and the great CGI were the strongest points. Hope it does well in London at the film festival there.
So that's Friday. Saturday and Sunday were both so jam-packed with activities that each day will probably take 2 reports. For more photos go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/valoise/collections/72157617447462412/
