Went to Amano's world this weekend. Here's how it went down.
I joined MySpace recently(myspace.com/sqamv) and have been hosting a lot of my videos there, instead of Youtube(Youtube encodes crappily, surprisingly Myspace does it better XD), and because classmates of mine get jobs through MySpace.
So I joined to get a job.
I meet this guy named James who only talks in chatspeak. He says he got a presspass to the last two metrocon's, and is making a documentary. Normally I'd ignore a chatspeaking guy, but I was interested in how he got the passes. He said he just told the con staff he was making a documentary for school and they let him have them. That was the end of that conversation(But left me thinking of possibilities for future free cons...)
I'm at school early on Monday, and this guy hwo looks strangely familiar, but I can't place from where, walks up to me. He says, "You're SQ, right?" and I say "Yeah, you're that guy, with the... Who are you again?"
He's the guy with the press pass - James.
Turns out his crew couldn't go and wanted to know if I could fill in as a cameraman for MetroCon: Amano's World. I say no because I don't have any money. He says I don't have to pay for anything. So I say sure.
At that time, I didn't know anything about MetroCon, or even that Amano was going to be there.
Well, Friday rolls around and I go to James' house, we discuss what's going to happen at the con and I meet Loki, our main interviewer.
Saturday comes and we get up at around 9am, but don't get anywahere until about an hour later. We stop by McDonald's, and for some odd reason, James decides to get B-roll of us ordering stuff at McDonald's. He gets a big fat no-no from the manager, who says "We don't allow recording in here; so far you have pointed it away from where we cook, but we're letting you know you can't record here."
James seems surprised.
First warning sign that James probably doesn't know what he's doing.
We arrive at MetroCon at 10:40am. Technically before opening ceremonies, but not as early as we wanted to be. When we went to the booth to get our press passes, we weren't on the list. It took some time, but we got the passes anyway. Second Warning sign.
After that, Loki and James were off to get interviews, and I was set to get B-Roll. B-roll is basically that stuff that shows when people are talking. Like, if you have an interview with a person, and they're talking about flowers, and you have flowers on the screen with the audio of the interview- the flower shots are the b-roll.
The first thing I shot was this guy dressed up in some HUGE-a** armor.
When I asked him what it was, I heard "Magitech Armor". I'm unsure if I heard him right or not, but I'm just going to keep calling it Magitech armor.
Not even ten minutes later, the guy inexplicably falls over. Which, funnily enough, is right after he says "Never wear 100 pound armor, it's ******** HOT!"
Later I heard through the grapevine that he had passed out from heat. You can view the video of him falling over by clicking on the fallen Magitech Armor image(streaming .wmv). Why the people cheer/laugh after he falls is beyond me, but the cheering and clapping actually continues for quite some time. I think someone actually pushed him over, because there is this one girl in front who is going "Yes! Yes!"(which takes places after the video I uploaded).
It was determined that he hurt his knee pretty badly, and he was going to the ER on monday. Regardless, he was up and back in the armor later that day with his girlfriend.
On sunday, during Amano's Q&A session, he got Yoshitaka Amano to autograph his armor suit. What a haul!
But back to saturday, I interviewed a few random people, and we all got together and interviewed the Final Fantasy 6 cosplay group, which ended up winning Best Video Game cosplay(or something like that, I didn't cover the contest).
I think there were twelve of them in total. Their costumes ranged from taking 3 days to 3 weeks, with the exception of terra? Celestia? the main character with the blonde hair. Sorry, I suck! She worked on her's on and off for a few years, wearing it to previous cons. The main villian guy's make-up takes 30 minutes to put on, and most of them are college students who like drama and/or act. I'm glad they get the grand prize of being featured in a video game magazine, because they deserve it. ^_^
Later on, we went to Amano's autographing session to get some amano insignia. Since we had Press passes, we were considered VIP and thus got our stuff signed pretty early.
I had loki shoot me while amano was autographing the metrocon shirt I bought earlier that day, and I got a picture with Amano and the shirt on James' camera, but his memory card was stolen so I don't have that any more. That's fine, I guess. This image is good enough. I'll be selling the shirt on ebay sooner or later anyway, since I literally have almost zero money for school, now. This shirt will hopefully fund either food or another credit or so at IADT.
Late saturday night, James and Loki went to the Rave but I decided to go to the Guilty Pleasures Panel. It was during that time that Loki either misplaced her purse, or it got stolen(it's a toss-up, it wasn't found where she thought she left it) and James' camera's memory card was stolen. Why someone would steal a memory card out of a video camera and not the video camera itself is a mystery all of us couldn't figure out. Upon getting the camera and purse back(the camera was lost, when he got it back there wasn't a memory card) we learned that there were more misplaced/stolen items this year at MetroCon than any other. Another sign about James. (Misplacing your $2000 camera? Dude.)
On Sunday, we got to the con around 9am. We didn't really do anything aside from wait. I think James got some more interviews and I got some more b-roll. We went to Amano's Q&A session, though(well, Loki and I did. James was too busy talking with some friends; another sign).
At that time, we were still unsure whther we were going to get the Amano interview because Roy was avoiding us(more info on that later), so at the Q&A panel, we decided we would ask one question. That way, if we got the interview, we'd still have material for it, and if we didn't get the interview, at least we got one question answered. The question we asked was "What was the funniest thing that happened while you were working on a project". You can stream that .wmv by clicking the image or download it
here. In order to get it under 1mb so you guys didn't have to wait too long, it's VERY shitty.
After that, Amano signed some more things.
See, throughout the convention, we had been asking Roy(the con manager; Mr. MetroCon) for the possibility of this interview with Amano. He kept telling us he would ask the agent if they allowed interviews at all. Long story short, he never did. And it wasn't because he was busy or he forgot.
After Amano's second autograph session, we ran up to the agent and asked for an interview. The only reason we had not talked directly to the agent before, when we had met him on Saturday, was specifically because Roy said he'd do it, and we didn't want to seem rude. But Amano was leaving soon and we all had agreed that we would get this interview now.
So we asked the agent, and he said Yes! We would get the interview right after the costume contest(which was about to happen right then).
So at that point, we decided to eat, since we hadn't all day(except breakfast).
When we finished eating, the contest was pretty much done. After it, they told us to wait outside the con staff room(Room 6). We did, and we waited.
About 20 minutes later, we had our interview.
That's Amano's translator, Amano himself, and then loki(who was asking questions) and Amano.
At this time I am not allowed to post the interview transcript or the video. I'm sorry. It will hopefully be shown at MetroCon 2007. =(
Right after that, we rushed to Clsoing ceremonies while Amano caught his plan back to Japan. I had bought a raffle ticket on Saturday for the AMano original artwork + Scholarship to Ringling school of Art and Design.
I got it.
OMG. Right? Yeah.
I got the full-paid scholarship for Ringling school of Art and Design's one-week summer workshop, materials included, for any class they offered(they offer film, too, which is the only reaosn I bought a ticket).
What's funny about this is I only bought one ticket. For five bucks. Squee.
But, all in all, I did not really like Metrocon. And although the people there are really awesome and fun to be around, we had a lot of bad expierences.
I went to a-m-v.org to post about my awesome amano interview and scholarship, and I was greeted by this:
This is my reply.
SQ
Roy is indeed a nice guy. He's funny, and stuff.
But if you want my personal opinion, I think it's all a ruse.
He doesn't take people seriously.
We(the other members of the group I was with) asked Roy throughout the weekend about the Amano interview, and he said he'd ask Amano's agent if they would even allow interviews at all. This was at 10:40am on Saturday.
No word from him, we continue contacting him throughout the day(personally), and he keeps saying he'll ask the agent.
Because he said this, when we personally had contact with Amano and his agent, we didn't ask for an interview, because we figured it would be rude and insult Roy somehow.
The only reason we got an interview at all was because on Sunday, we said ******** it, and asked the agent ourselves. This is how we got th einterview.
Roy never said anything to the agent.
At first(on saturday) I just figured he was busy, or forgot about us because he was stressed out. But there were plenty of times he was with Amano and his agent, talking casually.
We even asked Roy on Sunday, before the con even started(roughly 9-10am) about what was going on with the amano interview, and he gave us the exact same response.
Honestly, I think Roy kept blowing us off specifically because we were students, and not some awesome-fantastic press people.
I was unable to attend the AMV panel at 9pm on Saturday, because I had to cover whatever was in the ballroom at that time.
But when I went to the room later, they have this "MetroCon Jukebox", which is basically a touch-screen of stuff you can play.
I thought it was pretty awesome.
But when I went to look for AMVs, their collection was not only VERY small, it had hardly ANY good AMVs in it, and the ones they did have, they somehow managed to ******** up the quality.
My only idea as to how this happened? They downloaded them, did not contact the creator to ask for a higher quality copy, and just threw it in their system.
The way they catalog amvs is by "AMV - Anime - Music" so it was very hard to find anything by a specific creator.
Some things were labelled a little weird. Like "AMV vicbond007 Men in Black 2" and "AMV Animix" which had a duration time of zero(Actually, Euphoria, which was just the "AMV Anime Song" name, also had a duration of zero, which leads me to believe that the system can't really read XviD encodes all that well).
AquaSky's QuidProQ..(forgot the name) was there, and Aluminum Studio's "Blue Monday"(which was made in 1999!) was there also.
Not only this, but they allowed videos with subtitles, quality that would make a 1mb .wmv look good, as well as things with DivX logos, cartoon network, and even bootlegger logos in.
I asked Lone Wolf casually about "If there are so many Florida AMVers, how come one of you guys doesn't do an AMV Panel?"
He said he was going with Wonka to some out-of-state con, instead.
Now I see why.
I mean, with what they allow and how they categorize things...Yuck. I wouldn't want ot be associated with that, either.
AbsoluteDestiny's IWIWAL was also there, and that's the end of good AMVs there were.
Edit: Needless to say I won't be going to MetroCon again, even the normal one, unless it's for an actual, paying gig.
edit2: Ah yeah, Failed Expierements was in there, but labelled something so random I can't remember what it was.
(Vicbond's Shining collection was also there, now that I think about it.)
Pretty much speaks for itself. this is the thread:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=73133But regardless, I did have fun to some extent, even though there were times when I really thought I wanted to kill James.
I am supposed to help edit this doc as well, and after this, I think I am not going to hang out with James any more. He is not very responsible, and some things about him make me want to hurt myself for ever giving someone who speaks all chat-speak on myspace a chance.
Loki's cool, though.
![[Q]](https://a1cdn.gaiaonline.com/dress-up/avatar/ava/23/15/1f06246f41523.png?t=1465986572_6.00_11 "[Q]")
