JOURNAL: gambitt (Jeff Heller)

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  • AWA Pro Deadline (continued from Quu's journal) 2002-08-02 15:08:01 AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    That is all. 
  • Otakon Part 3: Sunday & other stuff and junk 2002-08-02 01:53:46 ...wha? Oh yeah, I didn't finish yet.

    Sunday was completely uneventful. No, really, nothing happened. Nothing exciting anyway. Though witnessing the contest results with an audience of over 100 was nice. Packed house when that happened.

    Anyway that morning we all woke up at 7:30 again just to torture ourselves. This time, though, got ready, packed everything up (for me it was just one hippie-ish-looking bag on my back and an Otakon bag in my hand), then went to Burger King for breakfast. Nature called so I skipped breakfast (a nice little sign outside this place saying, "No restrooms in this facility" influenced that decision) so I was off. Actually spent ten minutes in the center bathroom reading the Newtype. What do I think of that issue? Too bad there was toilet paper in the stall, that's all I have to say.

    Before the contest results there was the AWA video pack compiled by Quu. Kiss is Still a Kiss was on it, and of course following it was my commercial I made for AMV.org about a year ago :P. The response this time around was a cheer. Yay.

    So for the next hour I basically sat in front of Video Ops looking for Nate. So was Pat. He found him first though and got the car ready. Half an hour later, I go for a Snapple. Ten minutes later I come back, and twenty minutes after that Pat finally spots me. Well, ok, Hsien spots me and I'm pulled like a dog on a leash to the escape pod and off we drove, southward to NC again.

    ------------

    So, where am I now? Well, against my parents' wishes I'm still at Nightowl's, editing video and finishing DDR. I might actually try and work on something for expo, but I won't give any details. Neither will I say anything about Nate's work. Let's just say it's good to be working again and expect to see the fruit of Nightowl Pictures labor (aka 36 hr editing sprees) at AWA. Hell, I actually have a 75% chance of going there. Can you imagine? Three cons in three months, two within a week. I must be sick. Nah, just devoted to erasing BAAF from my memory.

    So after looking at the schedule for AXNY, I still hate the idea of BAAF part 2, but the seperation of BAAF as a film fest and AXNY as a con is nice. $60 for AXNY and $10 for BAAF sucks. Press pass good... AX sucked this year, though, so can AXNY save the industry-run con's downfall? I sure hope not. Long live fandom! Oh, and can we PLEASE have a decent con at the Javits Convention Center? That thing's insanely huge and very comfy and oh my god there's a giant room, perfect for dealers. Wishful thinking. Oh well. If they ever do move to Javits, then I'll pay $60.

    Oh yeah, I dun like Caldwell much anymore. Nate showed me Run Lola Run. The next day I bought the DVD. Now I want all traces of that music video out of my head. Beautiful movie, folks. 
  • Otakon Part 2: Saturday 2002-07-31 13:52:04 My fellow club members love to torture themselves needlessly. Why, you ask? Because we got to the hotel room at 2AM and yet for some god awful reason they wanted to wake up the next morning at 6:30. This was my face: >..< WHY?! Anyway, we settled on 7:30 and *tried* to sleep. Having six people in a deluxe double in the Radisson was a brilliant idea. It was close, it was comfortable, and it was big. My sleeping apparatus was a very fluffy chair with footrest. Made an excellent bed. Just so you know, I am notorious for being able to sleep *anywhere*. I mean, I've slept standing once or twice. Anyway the alarm rang at 7:30 as planned and I was ready to go at 8. Never takes me long to wake up. Everybody else was moaning and groaning for obvious reasons, but we finally got ready to go at 9:30. They went to get breakfast at the Days Inn when I realized the music video panel was at 9 and not 11 (which I previously thought), so I rushed over there.

    The panel bared similar resemblance to the Shoujocon AMV panel a week before, and I don't just mean Scott Melzer being a good speaker in it. Topics, jokes, videos, basically the norm for a panel. I did get some clarity out of it, though. You see, I'm still under the impression that I am a drooling AMV fanboy that would get down on his knees and friggin kowtow to AMV gurus. Well, I met Will Millberry, Vlad, Legionair (very cool guy), Omar Jenkins (also a very cool guy), Yosho (again), Hsien, Scott Melzer (again), MeriC and VegettoEX (again), and SVA's sys. admin. of computer art (otherwise known as Steve on the first DDR project), and I didn't buckle in shock or faint or anything. I wasn't surprised that these people acted like human beings, I was surprised *I* acted like a human being. Seriously, though, it's just that simple.

    And now for a moment of pride. Nightowl and I had made about 12 copies of our AMV CD with quickly-designed cover (thanks for the compliments!), and I didn't really hand any out. I basically just sat in the front and held out the CDs without saying a word. I did have to hand out the last one but mostly it was either trading or just having people see the design that made me give out all the CDs. There'll be more for AWA, most definitely!

    So the 2nd DDR project prototypes were shown, seperate ooh's and aah's were said by everybody... then came ours with no sound (oops). The room didn't exactly fall silent but people were watching. Then came mine, but was turned off at the first section so no big reaction. No biggie, I *really* didn't want that shown with no sound.

    Oh right, so Nightowl wasn't there, but for those who were at the con, you know all about why he didn't show, heh heh heh. Went to dealer room again, oggled over new Eva Kubrick sets (exactly like legos) and saw the $13 in disgust. People, I can get these on Ebay for $5. $8 including shipping! You can do better than $13! Then I walked around some and bumped into Tim again outside the music video contest. Chat, chat, chat. Mike Wall (Yosho) shows up and we all decide to get some food. Where? Burger King. More chatting.

    The highlight of the day was Otakon's showing of the new Gainax series, Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai. No question. I had told EVERYBODY to see it. Club members, poor unsuspecting strangers, my left big toe, everybody. Who showed up? One person from anime club and Mike who, luckily, loves Gainax. The first episode, of course, had them both staring at me like "Umm... I thought you said this was hilarious." Then came episode 2, 3, and 4. The place was exploding in laughter. And if not, they were visibly freaked out (Munemune does a good job of scaring people). The only problem were the subtitles. Thanks, guys. Mind giving us friggin magnifying glasses? I sat in the sixth row and I still had problems reading it. Also, how come fansubbers don't take the hint from #animedivx and put subs INSIDE the letterbox? That's what made my EoE copy so wonderfully easy to edit!

    So afterwards Mike and I scoped around the con, took pictures of cosplayers, hissed at bootleg AMV-CD dealers and checked out the art room. Nice stuff, gotta say. Then I ran into Tim again. Chat, chat, chat. You notice a pattern here? Anyway we both had plans to go to the almighty Corbo Bash but wanted food. Enter Vlad, Scott, and Pat. We all went to eat and went over the present state of AMVs and the future of fandom, both looking quite bleak. Then it was off to the party.

    Pat's a good guy, even under feather torture he wouldn't give out who won until 11:00PM on the dot. Winners were announced, drinks were had, DDR was played, and I finally met the guy in Hsien's avatar, paizuri. Very cool. Also met Jason (RYS), Alan (dji, who I need to apologize to for looking so weirded out when he complimented me on my work. Sorry, man ^_^;), Nick Corbo, and... umm... more people. See, this is why I don't drink often, folks. I have terrible memory to begin with! Needless to say I was barely a contributor to the party (well, except for keeping Nightowl company. Even drunk he can bash out a mean DDR dance. The guy is insane), so I left shortly after.

    That was a strange night. I think the lack of good sleep from the night before made me leave early because as soon as I got back to my room I was out. Nobody else was in the room, mind you, I got there first, but even then I didn't wake up when my roommates got in, and these people are LOUD. Seven hours later, the alarm rang.

    Sunday's travels coming up. If you're expecting some major action or suspense or drama, you're reading the wrong journal.  
  • Otakon Part 1: Thursday/Friday 2002-07-30 18:47:19 I've learned many things from this convention, mostly on how to attend a con while not working for it (and not overpaying for crap in the case of BAAF). Apparently, most of the fun comes from not being part of the con at all, but doing things with whoever you're there to be with.

    I came up to Baltimore with Nightowl, eight hour drive, with Quu and a friend of his, slept on and off, chatted when applicable, basically just got to meet the server god. Also a nice MP3 collection (and Illusion rocks my tiny little world). Now when we got to MD, I was supposed to be in touch with the people I was staying with. I got major nervous when they didn't call the entire day. Not to mention I wrote down the wrong phone number so I couldn't call either. At 11:30PM, thankfully, they called me and told me they hadn't even left Jersey, and these people were supposed to be at the hotel by 7PM! I ended up sleeping in Nightowl's room since I wasn't going to wait for my friends to arrive just so I could sleep in a room. Hell, they actually arrived at 3:30AM! I apparently made a smart decision.

    I also did well in pre-registering instead of winging it. The registration line was terrible, but for me it took ten minutes (happy dance). They also had the AMG Movie picture as one of the choices. That was a no-brainer. I love that image. I even have the wall scroll (GORGEOUS!). Yeah so I spent that day... um... I think I was walking around. Oh yeah, met with my anime club (finally) at a Burger King... yes... the infamous Burger King... it closed at 7PM one day because they ran out of meat. Then went to dealer room line, which is so damn easy to cut in case you were too busy to notice eight people going in front of you. My first giant dealer room experience... and I spent about... five minutes in there. I'm a terrible fanboy.

    Yeah, so after that, did something then went over to the Otacafe and watched some karaoke before getting a call to meet (censored)'s ex in her and (censored)'s hotel room for a "present." Yeah, keep thinking that, it gets funnier. So I get ready to go there, leave the convention center and bump into (censored) and Tim Park! (censored) is funny with introducing me to people. It's not just, "This is Jeff," it's "This is Jeff Heller, gambitt on the .org, member of Nightowl Pictures, 'Numb' was his brainchild." Intimidating? Tim turned out to be such a great guy to chat with. We kinda met under weird circumstances, though. See, back to the story, after I met with them we went over to (censored)'s hotel room and basically sat through what must have been an hour and of half of the most awkward conversation. My present was a Mondrian-style cup&plate. I love Mondrian.

    So, after that, hung out with Nightowl for the rest of the day, I think. I know we saw Otakudom together, and... I met more AMV creators... uhh... went to the dealer room with him and shared a touching moment together as we both oggled over signed "Groundwork of Eva" and "FLCL" books. The Eva ones were signed for $80. The FLCL one, though... $75 not just for a signature, but a friggin drawing of Haruko and... and... he signed "Gainax" on the inside. Dude, I flipped.

    Can't remember much of Friday after that, I know he left to do something, and I went to see the AMV contest which, by most accounts, had nothing to run home to Mom about. Decent entries, though, even some tough decisions in some categories. Lesse... oh yeah, watched MAT3k. Funny. Someone in there I met with my club members and went off to sleep.

    I'll write about Saturday soon. I kinda have to try remembering it. No, I didn't drink at Corbo's party, but I was there. Heh. 
  • DDR and NC 2002-07-23 12:31:57 Turboneko: Can't wait to see that DDR track! Good luck with it, I'm currently losing my head over it. Oh yeah, how'd that picture come out? Is my purple STAFF sash that annoying? Also, in case anyone else is reading this, those guys have Turboneko shirts! Awesome!

    But, no, really, DDR is killing me. I'm so close to being done, and I know it, but it's just... not... ending... I know I'm gonna be a drooling madman at Nathan's place after Otakon praying for an end to it all while After Effects takes its SWEET ASS TIME rendering my motion-blurred, frame-blended arrows.

    Hehe... at that panel the question was asked as to what programs people used for AMVs. Premiere, Final Cut, etc. I said After Effects. Yeah, I'm a dork. But hey, I'm a dork with bright flashy arrows!

    Doncha think it's funny that I actually believe someone's reading this? I'm, like, being gullible to my own joke. Wait, maybe someone is reading this... *paranoia*

    I think I'll go work now and stop scaring you people. 
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