valoise

When hl_chronicles first announced the categories for the 20 years of Highlander challenges I immediately had two thoughts. That's a great idea. Too bad you can't vid that. But using killabeez as a sounding board, it dawned on me that I could do this by pulling together clips from Highlander, Peter Wingfield's later tv work and other source material.

The song, Times Will Change by Danish band Marvins Revolt, was the only one I considered. I liked the changing pace of the music and the lyrics are filled with urge to keep moving, grow stronger and survive. What could be more Methos than that?

Download link

( David Abramowitz’s panel with info on the Highlander remake )

( The panel where Peter read stuff )

( Auction and autographs )

And that’s it for tonight. It looks like I might be splitting the con report into four parts instead of three, so come back in a couple of days for more.

I just got back from the Peter Wingfield Fan Club con in Portland. It was absolutely fantastic and full of Sanctuary & Highlander goodness but the con report is going to have to wait until later after I've unpacked. Meanwhile, I do have links for the vids that I made for the con.

The first, Doctor Wingfield, is a montage of some of Peter's roles as a doctor on tv. ruamor asked me to make it as a nod to Peter's return to medical school and hiatus (or retirement?) from acting and I was very happy to oblige. This isn't on YouTube, but you can download it directly.

download Doctor Wingfield

We also had a vid show, dedicated to the memory of Harlene Finn who organized the first PWFC vid show at the con in Las Vegas several years ago. I was already working on this idea and decided to go ahead and premiere it at the con. I've heard more than one British actor comment on the fact that American television tends to typecast British actors as bad guys. Peter even mentioned this in an interview a few years ago. A decided to focus on some of his early work, mostly from the UK, where he is definitely a romantic lead, and contrast it with some of his 'bad guy' roles. A big thanks to franzeska for her excellent beta.

Live and Let Die
download
stream on YouTube

Since I'm not going to be writing up a con report here (it's going to appear in two parts in the LFT - the PWFC newsletter) I decided to go ahead and make this video slideshow to share.

To download directly
http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/96rsbq

I know folks probably think I'm going to post on my experiences with the Peter Wingfield Fan Club, Peter Wingfield and fangirly stuff, and I will later on, but after the amazing weekend in New York, what has left me truly awed is the absolute wonder I felt in watching the marathon itself. I cheered the runners from two points along the route. First at the 7 mile point and finally at the end of the route. The courage and determination in the face of each and every runner was beyond anything I could imagine. And the sheer number of runners was mind-boggling. Over 43,000 runners from all over the world, each one with his or her own motivation and goal for being there.

This morning at the airport there were runners and their family and friends everywhere I looked. Some wearing the marathon shirts, some still proudly wearing their medals. I got into a conversation with a young woman from South Carolina. When I mentioned that I had been at the marathon to cheer on a friend, she said that they all really appreciate it. She said that it makes a difference, really helps motivate to continue on when the spectators along the route cheer them on and clang the cow bells and call out their names. So hats off to the marathoners and to one runner in particular.



Really will write up my account of the weekend later.

Sunday
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 is actually going to be divided up into 5 parts instead of 4 - so much happened on Saturday that I'm going to split it up.

Saturday


Methos Rocks: But does he tell the truth? (Peter and David)
The first panel on Saturday started out strong and set the pace for the day; my biggest regret was that I didn’t enter anything in my con journal until early in the evening and I know I forgot some of the details.

The fan questions were good and when someone asked David about the experience of writing for the Highlander characters, he said that he felt like he channeled them as he wrote. While he was talking Peter stated that he had never heard David talk like this about writing Highlander.

I asked them if any of the fan questions submitted for the Methos Rocks dvd had surprised them since they have both been to so many cons and talked to so many fans. The answer was no, they were no real surprises although there were questions they just incomprehensible and questions that were outside the bounds of what they could or should consider. In preparing for the dvd they chose the questions and then David drafted replies. In the process of filming Peter adlibbed some of his responses (which was to be expected) and David slipped in some extra questions that he hadn’t told Peter would be in there. The question about Methos’ first sexual experience was one of those.

Nancye made a comment about how she was still waiting for her dvd. Several us made it know that we were also having problems. This opened up the whole can of worms about our customer service experiences with Legendary Heroes. One person asked why they couldn’t distribute though Amazon as well. David said that this kind of problem would be something Peter Davis would want to know about and he pulled out his cell phone and called him up. He explained about the problems and posed the question about Amazon. Then Peter Davis did something totally unexpected and told David to give us his email address so we could let him know what the problems were. David hung up and started to spell out the address and paused – many of started yelling, “Don’t do it!” He decided instead to have us send our complaints to Ree who would send them forward. Then he called Peter David back to let him know what we are going to do. What a guy!

There was a lot of talk about the possibility of more HL episodes or possibly little web episodes. David was mulling over how this could be financed and made commercially viable. I can’t remember the exact train of thought that led up to it, but David asked if fans would be willing to buy into the franchise with $25 or $50 a head to finance episodes. If they ever did turn a profit, then they would get a share of that.

As he was pondering how the true-to-Highlander sword fight scenes could be done for a webisode budget he started outlining a scene where Methos encounters an unknown immortal, the challenge is made, they screen would tighten up on clashing swords with offscreen dialogue, essentially the action happens offstage. Peter pointed out that this goes theater technique goes back to classic Greek theater.



PWFC Meeting & lunch
There was a club meeting, but Ree kept it short and I honestly don’t remember much about what we talked about. After the meeting I had lunch with Lisa Weston and we talked mostly about vidding. Since goes to Vividcon, a vidding con held in San Francisco, and has met one of my very favorite vidder, AbsoluteDestiny, whose Firefly/Serenity vid, Rodeohead, is the BEST vid I have ever seen. He doesn’t do Highlander fandom, but watching good vids of any fandom is always a learning experience for me.

Contemporary Blues and the Indy Music Market (Jim)
Jim talked about the his career and the musical influences that have been important to him. He has an upcoming tour of Canada and someone asked about the possibility of a US tour. He said something that I’ve heard him say before, that it is really had to tour without a corporate sponsor. In these bad economic times, that is especially true. His Canadian tours are often underwritten by grants. He also talked about how hard it is to break into cities with existing music scenes, such as Seattle. Recently he was invited to play at the taping of a radio show at the Paramount Theater there. This is a major venue and hopefully this will help him get booked into this major music market.

I think I'm going to do this in 4 parts, but there's no guarantees just how fast I'll get them posted.

The flight to Vegas was nice and uneventful, even arriving half an hour early. At the hotel I spotted PWFCers before I even got in line to check in. In quick succession I ran into two Marys, Terri, Bev, Lyn, Anita and Miss Vicki. Had lunch with some of the gang, hung out with Sharon & Bruce Gobioff and took a walk around the area before I met up with Dail, Mary G., Terri, and Sharon and Bruce for dinner. Dail, who lives in the area suggested The Steakhouse at Circus, Circus where the big tasty steaks and great service keep getting it voted as best Vegas steakhouse year after year.


I knew I was going to have all day on Thursday to do something, but the question was, what? Take a bus tour of Hoover Dam? Go out to the Grand Canyon? Ethel M.’s Chocolate Factory and Cactus Garden? Walk up and down the strip? Harlene solved this problem for me – she was looking for someone to come along on a trip to Red Rock Canyon. Turned out to be a great option. We had a great time driving out there, got some good recommendations for an eating place frequented by locals (buffet at Red Rock Casino), and had time to talk and get to know each other better. We enjoyed the exhibits at the visitors’ center, the beautiful rock formations and managed to stay just ahead of a bus full of school kids for most of the time. The sky was an amazingly intense blue. I even got a cute little gift for the granddaughter.


Later that afternoon I made my way down to the con early registration area and started greeting old friends as they came in. We took turns posing for Dar as she shot some footage for the closing ceremonies video. I spent the rest of the time at dinner and hanging out with friends.

The actual con kicked off with a volunteer meeting at 11. I already knew that I was working with Bones with newbies and that Bev wanted me to help with autographs, but I also volunteered to help watch the door for the concert on Thursday. This brings us up to the start of the con and the video contest, the Wingnut Film Festival. There weren’t many vidders, but there were plenty of vids. Mine were beginner vids and it was both exciting and painful to wach. I’ve learned a lot since I made them and would make different choices in content and style if I did it over again. But the funny bits got laughs and they were all applauded. There were some great entries from other fans and hopefully this will be a regular feature for future PWFC events.