So I went on break from work for a little while after the last assignments so my posting lately has been a little light. However, I do have a couple of more posts to make so you should see some more content over the next couple of days.
The last assignment is now complete and has been handed in, but I haven't uploaded it to my webspace yet, will do when I'm on my own computer.
What I do want to talk about today is the Melbourne 2008 Supanova expo. One of my housemates wanted to go because of some awesome Stargate movie pre-screener, and didn't have anyone to go with (you need a partner to go there, unless you want to get glomped by scary Cosplay people). The weekend 'Supafan' pass cost $40, and that got you access to the Friday night prescreener, Saturday and Sunday. Now, to be honest, I was expecting just a lot of cliche` anime screenings, anime fanboys/girls everywhere, and generally a pretty boring outfit if you didn't like anime. However, it turns out that it's a really interesting event for your general internet loving nerd and even professional in the area of film making/artistry. Appearances included actors from the Stargate and Firefly series, voice actors (some of the likes who did some work on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade), and comic artists (not quite from Marvel but those who are always aspiring to be). In the commercial sector (all the stalls selling their geeky apparel and replica BSG dolls), they had the must-have for any geeky convention, the Stormtroopers, who patrolled around getting photos with people. There was even a Doctor Who fan club sign up stall, if that illustrates just how geeky this convention was. Even better were the tables packed full of people playing Magic The Gathering. Yeah, we felt fairly normal after seeing that.
So the first night the three of us went to see the Stargate SG1 film prescreening. We got awesome seats right up front, and watched the event beforehand, which was a Master's session for comic art. I don't remember who they were but one specialised in zombies, and the other in the female figure. So basically they drew and were projected onto the big screen and the crowd got to interview them. One of the most useful pieces of advice was this:
"Never stop being a student. And I don't mean stay at university or whatever, I mean never stop learning, because it's an evolving industry."
Probably in more words than that, but it struck me as being the core of multimedia: you stop learning, and you fall behind. So I really enjoyed the words of wisdom from these guys.
So we got awesome seats, and the Master's session had just ended. The lovely executives from Fox Studios demanded that the audience be vacated, and all recording equipment to be left out of the theatre. We ended up near the back because people were already lining up out front, gg. As many disgruntled people in the line mentioned, "It's been on torrent for days now", "we already saw it on Youtube". Funnier than that is the recording equipment was taken for a 30 second trailer for the new X Files film, not for the Stargate prescreener. Go figure. All in all, the Stargate film was really a glorified extended episode of the usual thing, and I'm not really all that into it anyway (I do like Atlantis though, far better character development).
The second day I sadly missed because I completely overslept, which is sad because Spike Spencer (voice actor, did some work on WoW:TBC) would have been really interesting to see, and Michael Winslow (another voice actor) sounded really entertaining. Oh well, atleast I got to see Winslow try Singstar.
So we all ended up going for the last day, the highlight of the Sunday was the interviews with actors from the likes of Stargate and Firefly (if you haven't seen Firefly, it's most definitely worth a watch). Jewel Staite was one of these interviewees, mainly renown for her role as Kaylee Frye in the Firefly series. It was interesting to hear about their interests before they acted on a sci-fi series, and how it has shaped who they are now. More interesting than that was the look on those poor fanboys' faces when they realised their beloved Kaylee is nothing like her sci-fi counterpart (ie, the most common question was "Do you visit forums", which the flat answer is usually "No, I have a life!"). Fantastic. Teryl Rothery from Stargate SG-1 was really interesting too, she plays such a serious role on Stargate but her flamboyance came out during the interview.
There were also screenings other than anime screenings which was to my liking. I've never seen Pure Pwnage on a large flat screen TV before, it makes the experience much better!
I really wish I'd got to see more while I was there, but even with the few things I did see, it was totally worth going to, even mainly for the interviews. Also, thank god there weren't too many scary Cosplayers.
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