MetroCon: Amano's World Press pass

[SQ]

Hey all, I've got a press pass to MetroCon: Amano's world for this week.

Was wondering if any of you had any opinions on what should definately be covered(aside from amano himself, obviously).

Suggestions appreciated, because I like having a plan beforehand.

The ultimate goal of the docs for MetroCon though, is to be featured at MetroCon itself for PR, or for film festivals.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Lone Wolf]

I'll help, like I told u I would.

[SQ]

And thanks. Here's what happened, for all those interested.

:C Poor Twistsy get well soon 'n' stuff.

Metrocon sucked, well the mini one that was held this weekend did.

And that's where I come in. And BOY do I have an AWESOME story to tell you guys.


Firstly, Metrocon: Amano's World itself did indeed suck. It was small and catered to only cosplay, the AMVs were shit, panels were boring, etc.

BUT.

I got in for fu-ree. Why? I had a press pass(I told you all this before, but everyone seemed to love ignoring me when I posted it).

Saturday was alright, I got a commission done of my gaia character from "Kitsune", and it was cool(Although she messed up the tail. How come nobody can get the tail right? I even drew her a reference! :gonk:) but whatever, it's fine, it was only 10 bucks.

Sunday was mostly waiting.

Waiting, waiting...

Then, at the last moment...

YOSHITAKA AMANO PRIVATE INTERVIEW.

Yes. I, and two other people who don't go on Gaia, Got to interview Amano. Privately. And I got it all on camera. HOSNAPZ.

Defining moment in my lifetime.

And, AND, you know what made it better? Not even twenty minutes after that interview, I won a full-paid scholarship to Ringling school of art and design's week-long summer workshop. Materials included. Since they offer film there, I'm totally [hopefully] getting one free, awesome-tastic video camera.

Oh. MAH. GAWD.

And on the side, I used my VIP extravagance to get a T-shirt autographed before everyone else. But I'm going to sell that on ebay, since I've recently moved to an all-ramen diet and am STILL low on cash for school.

So I'm selling the amano autographed t-shirt to fund my education. I think that's a good enough reason. Expect that on ebay a week or so from now.


Uh, other than that, there's some iffy shit going on about what rights we have to post the interview or it's transcript, but they did say I could post pics of the interview in the meantime. I'll do that later, in my journal.

And I have internet now. Like. Just now. Yeah.

So that was my weekend. I totally would've said it was a very bad waste of a weekend if the amano interview and/or the scholarship winning didn't happen.

Sucks for bunnyhop, assuming you actually had to pay to get in. XP

Except for you guys the pics will be posted here, since the journals here kind of. Well... Suck.

[Minion]

what ya should cover? get an interview with roy harms about this:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... 9&start=15
no contest winners got their prizes sent

[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 fuck 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 fuck 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.)

[SQ]

here's the more info + pics bit.
(quoted from journal)

----

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-ass 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 fucking 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.

[Orwell]

Congrats on the scholarship.

Can you speak about your impressions of Amano? Amano's world sounds like a prententious prick who knows how to milk the fanboys for every drop. A impressive capitalist, if his online store is anything to go by.

[SQ]

Amano's World wasn't the name AMano thought of. It was either Roy's or "mom"'s.

His exhibition, named "Think Like Amano" in new york, though, someone asked him why it was named that in the Q&A session and he said it's not supposed to be "think like amano" it's supposed to mean "Think like you", like for me it would be "Think like SQ" or whatever.

Somesort of Metaphor, or something like that. Anyway, amano himself seemed really nice and shy.. I made a post somewhere about it...

As for what the interview was like, and what Amano was like...

Amano is very shy and even though he has come to the states he either can't speak English very well, or prefers not to, because he carries a translator with him everywhere.

One of our questions was "What was the funniest thing that has ever happened to you during a project?" And he told us something so funny...

That question was actually at the public Q&A(at the time we didn't know if we'd get the interview or not, so we asked the one question we REALLY wanted an answer to), so I will host video of that and put it in my journal, with a big-ass long essay of everything that's happened.

But in short, Amano's funny, lucky(he got into the industry by accident!), and very quiet and shy.

All of our questions had nothing to do with final fantasy, because we wanted to be original. In fact, our first question was "Did you like acting in the movie 'Red Rose Hotel'?" Many people don't know Amano has even acted at all. He played the Mad Scientist in that movie. I haven't seen it myself, but the way he answered the question was very humorous.

Amano has a lot of funny stories to tell, and he is very nice. Sometimes I think people walk over him because he is so nice. He loves drawing(obviously) and unlike most people during an autograph session who will just sign their name and be on their way, Amano would spend an extra 3 - 5 minutes drawing something for most people's autographs(whether they were VIP or not).

Although I can't really say what he's like, since I didn't have a casual conversation with him or anything. XD