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Westercon 74 Event Videos Posted
Jul. 19th, 2022 08:37 pmWestercon 74's Events are now all online. The distinction between "Events" and "Programming" is that "Events" were everything that happened in the Main Hall and on the Main Stage in the Tonopah Convention Center (TCC) while "Programming" was everything else, including the online and hybrid items (TCC Blue Room) and non-recorded in-person items in the TCC Gold Room, the Belvada Hotel Nevada Club and Safe Rooms, the Mizpah Hotel 3rd Floor Conference Room, and the Mizpah Club Ballroom. (The Mizpah Hotel and Mizpah Club are separate buildings, something that appears to have confused some people although we tried to make this clear on our maps both online and in the Program Book.) Not all Events were necessarily large: Kuma's Korner was definitely small-scale. Here's the link to the Events playlist on the Westercon 74 YouTube Channel:
You should be able to click on "Watch on YouTube" to go have a look at the playlist and pick and choose what you want to watch.
Inasmuch as I had all of the recordings that Lisa made of all of our Events, I spent much of my nights and weekends since we got home from Tonopah editing the videos for uploading. Because Lisa was busy being head of Hospitality, she couldn't actively record the events using the large camera, but instead set up the medium-sized camera on the upper level of the hall facing toward the stage and simply set it to recording. This meant that most of the recordings including a lot of extraneous before-and-after material, except in the case of the Closing Ceremony, where Lisa forgot to start the recording before I started the Closing Ceremony. (That is why I appear to be backtracking during the ceremony: I was repeating things that I'd already said before the recording started.) In addition, because she wasn't standing there, she couldn't shoo people away from in front of the camera, and the medium sized camera is so unobtrusive that many people didn't even realize it was there, unlike the big Panasonic P2, which is a Large Professional Real Video Camera like they use on Television and hard to overlook. The Closing Ceremony came perilously close to being continuing coverage of the back of one member's head.
Another issue with the recordings is that because we had to leave the area in front of the stage open because it's the only way to get to and from the ramp to the upper level. You'll see people walking to and fro throughout the events. Also, the beverage coolers from Hospitality are in that area as well. Consequently, most people in the room were sitting above, behind, or to the sides of the camera. This gave the mistaken impression that there were only ten or fifteen people in the room, which was definitely not the case. I took a still photo of the audience during the Closing Ceremony that I put at the beginning of the video that gave a much more realistic view of the audience.
The items in the playlist are chronological as they happened during the convention:
I'm pretty happy with these videos, and I'm glad we recorded all of the Events. I designed the Opening and Closing Title videos, and I'm quite proud of them; indeed, I started working on them three years ago, and I had the plan from the beginning to list every member (whether they attended or not) as a "cast member" within the framework of the "Wild, Wild Westercon" being a four-act drama. Besides, once I found that recording from The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra &emdash; they get their royalty from YouTube for it; we're not pirating anything &emdash; I wanted to build a presentation around it. Anytime my spirits flagged during the run-up to the convention, I watched that video and I always felt better listening to that arrangement of the Wild Wild West theme.
Recordings of the Programming items in the online and hybrid track are still pending. Our head of Program Operations tested positive for COVID-19 on the day after the convention (she's now showing that she's tested clear, and she's recovering), but this has undoubtedly slowed down her getting her recordings into the necessary shape to upload to the Westercon 74 channel. When those recordings start going online, I'll make new announcements in the usual places like our website, Twitter, and Facebook.
You should be able to click on "Watch on YouTube" to go have a look at the playlist and pick and choose what you want to watch.
Inasmuch as I had all of the recordings that Lisa made of all of our Events, I spent much of my nights and weekends since we got home from Tonopah editing the videos for uploading. Because Lisa was busy being head of Hospitality, she couldn't actively record the events using the large camera, but instead set up the medium-sized camera on the upper level of the hall facing toward the stage and simply set it to recording. This meant that most of the recordings including a lot of extraneous before-and-after material, except in the case of the Closing Ceremony, where Lisa forgot to start the recording before I started the Closing Ceremony. (That is why I appear to be backtracking during the ceremony: I was repeating things that I'd already said before the recording started.) In addition, because she wasn't standing there, she couldn't shoo people away from in front of the camera, and the medium sized camera is so unobtrusive that many people didn't even realize it was there, unlike the big Panasonic P2, which is a Large Professional Real Video Camera like they use on Television and hard to overlook. The Closing Ceremony came perilously close to being continuing coverage of the back of one member's head.
Another issue with the recordings is that because we had to leave the area in front of the stage open because it's the only way to get to and from the ramp to the upper level. You'll see people walking to and fro throughout the events. Also, the beverage coolers from Hospitality are in that area as well. Consequently, most people in the room were sitting above, behind, or to the sides of the camera. This gave the mistaken impression that there were only ten or fifteen people in the room, which was definitely not the case. I took a still photo of the audience during the Closing Ceremony that I put at the beginning of the video that gave a much more realistic view of the audience.
The items in the playlist are chronological as they happened during the convention:
- Friday: Opening Ceremony, followed (separate recording) by Question Time for the Utah in 2024 Westercon bid and for Westercon 75 Anaheim. Also included is the "Opening Title" video of the Wild, Wild Westercon as shown at the Opening Ceremony, uploaded on its own in case you want to hear it without the audience reaction from during the ceremony.
- Saturday: Match Game SF, in the only time that we've recorded an entire show from beginning to end. This was a great stage setup, but we probably should have moved the camera over a bit to the left to show the contestants. We couldn't move the contestant's table that much because they have to be able to see the panelists.
- Sunday Morning: Westercon Business Meeting and the separately recorded Committee of the Whole on 2024 Westercon Site Selection. Because the Committee of the Whole is nominally a committee of the Business Meeting, it meets separately and we recorded it separately. The Main Meeting effectively was in recess while the COTW was meeting.
- Sunday Afternoon: Kuma's Korner Stuffed Friends Gathering. This was the shortest of the Events, and the video that Lisa recorded was quite short, so I padded it out with still photos of Kuma and his friends getting their pictures taken. Many of Kuma's friends sat with him in this location holding their own panel discussions during the rest of the convention. Lisa built all of the furniture for Kuma and his friends. The carpet on which they were sitting with the bears-and-moose pattern is from our bathroom at home, and we originally got it at Lowe's. A larger sized one is in our bedroom.
- Monday: Closing Ceremony. As with the Opening, I included the closing titles as a separate recording so you can watch it without the audience reaction if you wish. By the time I got to this one, I was also getting the hang of some of the video editing controls in Premiere Pro, so I could do things like insert some photos of the Alien Autopsy Party and the last move-out photo as part of the end of the recording. I also learned how to do some zooming and panning here to get closer to the stage.
I'm pretty happy with these videos, and I'm glad we recorded all of the Events. I designed the Opening and Closing Title videos, and I'm quite proud of them; indeed, I started working on them three years ago, and I had the plan from the beginning to list every member (whether they attended or not) as a "cast member" within the framework of the "Wild, Wild Westercon" being a four-act drama. Besides, once I found that recording from The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra &emdash; they get their royalty from YouTube for it; we're not pirating anything &emdash; I wanted to build a presentation around it. Anytime my spirits flagged during the run-up to the convention, I watched that video and I always felt better listening to that arrangement of the Wild Wild West theme.
Recordings of the Programming items in the online and hybrid track are still pending. Our head of Program Operations tested positive for COVID-19 on the day after the convention (she's now showing that she's tested clear, and she's recovering), but this has undoubtedly slowed down her getting her recordings into the necessary shape to upload to the Westercon 74 channel. When those recordings start going online, I'll make new announcements in the usual places like our website, Twitter, and Facebook.
