Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Westercon 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:

• 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.

Half of my day was spent working on Day Jobbe, as there was work on the custom database that I wrote and manage for my team at work that was misbehaving and that I needed to have working by the time things start tomorrow morning or we'll all be in the soup. I haven't gotten all of the bugs out of it yet, but after four hours (which I did log, although I'll probably not be able to recover them this coming week) I did get it so that it will work tomorrow morning.

So the second half of my day was also spent over a computer, albeit my personal machine, editing an episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories. I don't know how those other YouTubers manage to put out all of these videos multiple times a week, although I guess for most of those who I follow, it's actually their full-time job rather than just a hobby like it is for me. I'm managing about one minute of finished video per one hour of editing time, including making photos fit into the narrative. It's interesting to learn, but it's tiring.

The first day of spring? Well, it's sunny, but cold, and I had the fireplace running this morning. I may go to bed early today because it's warmer in bed.

Amtrak's California Zephyr is running daily again, which means that I don't have to try and figure out whether it's an Amtrak day or not, but instead can just check to see if it's running on time around 7:45 AM (westbound) or 4:45 PM (eastbound). Yesterday I saw a post on Facebook from someone who had left Chicago on May 28 on the westbound Zephyr, train #5, and I quipped that when they were passing through Fernley (about 30 minutes before Reno) to look out the left (south) side of the train and we'd be waving at them. Apparently they had an internet connection, because this morning I saw a reply from them asking if I would take a picture when they passed through and post it. I checked Amtrak's Track Your Train map, and the train was running pretty much on time, so I took my camera out to the tracks, intending to shoot a video of their train passing.

When I took my position, I saw that the signals at West Fernley were lit, as I would expect, but they were both red, which I did not. Soon a headlight appeared coming east. It was a Union Pacific freight train, possibly a "no-fitter" (too long to fit in a siding, so everything else had to get out of its way), holding the main. As luck would have it, it met Amtrak #5 right in front of me (I recorded it), but as the siding is on the north side of the main and I am on the south side, it meant I couldn't get the video of Amtrak or get a good picture of the train.

Amtrak coasted up to the signal. Even after the long freight passed, the signals did not clear. That gave me an idea. I quickly trotted back to the house, grabbed the rest of my camera gear (but not one of the tripods, because I didn't think I'd have enough time), and ran for the minivan. As I drove towards the underpass at the west end of town, I could see why Amtrak wasn't going anywhere: there was another freight train going east behind the first one. I stopped and briefly snapped a few photos of Amtrak from the north side of the tracks, then jumped onto I-80 and put the hammer down to get to Painted Rock Road (six miles west of Fernley), the next grade crossing and easy place to access the tracks. I got their ahead of the train, but only just barely, so all I could do was park, jump out of the van, turn on the camera, and shoot, without being able to frame it the way I would have preferred. However, I did get some footage and photos.

I've been trying to teach myself more about using Adobe Premiere, and this was a good opportunity to do so. I assembled the photos and video into a video about this morning's impromptu train chase, and posted it to YouTube:



I posted it as a reply to the person on Facebook, and I saw later that they saw it and liked it. I'm glad I was able to add something to their trip while also learning more about how to use Premiere. Now that I have a computer that has enough power to actually edit video, it's less of a chore to do this. The more I know, the faster I can pull the video from the big Panasonic camera after each WSFS Business Meeting and convert it to a reasonably-sized video that I can upload later the same day. While we do have the "proxy card" low-resolution video thanks to a donation from Detcon I, it would be better if I could just run the conversion after each day's meeting when we go to lunch, then upload the video after lunch. This is more likely than it has been in past years now that I have a decent laptop and also know that I should set the "target bitrate" down to only 1 mpbs instead of the 8 or 10 to which it was defaulting. Based on past experience, setting the rate too much higher just inflates the size of the file and massively extends how long it takes to upload without resulting in a significantly higher-quality video once YouTube has processed it.

While Lisa and I were visiting the Western Pacific Railway Museum last month, she shot a bunch of video to get more experience handling the big Panasonic camera. She also fitted me with a microphone so we could get good sound while I talked about trains. Lisa has edited the first set of video she shot during that trip, which was a series I improvised about UP business car 105, which is on display at the museum.

( Watch for the cameo by Kuma Bear )

I was mostly making this up after looking at the placards and using what I know about railroads. I'm sure I could have done better if I'd had an actual script and time to practice. Also, we did need to dodge the relatively few other people who were visiting that day. Because no trains were running and it was late in their season, there weren't many people around, but that's good for what we wanted to do.

Lisa says that she knows her technique isn't the best, but she's eager to learn more and just needs more practice.

We did have to reassure the people at the museum that, despite the professional camera, we were not shooting a "professional" video and only intended to post what we shot on YouTube. I don't even try to monetize my videos, as I see no point to it.

We finally got Fannish Inquisition videos for the seated Westercon and bids for Westercons posted. The Westercon Inquisition was two hours before the Worldcon one, and it's how we learned that the P2 camera's built-in microphone just won't pick up much of the ambient sound in the room, particularly for the people who don't know how to speak into a microphone. (I'm an exception, as is rono_60103.) For the Worldcon Inquisition, we were able to get a microphone line directly into the camera, and that worked wonderfully for the sound.

Because of worries about the new P2 camera, Lisa also was rolling the older Sony DSC-H2 on which she has been recording meetings and inquisitions for the past several years. Somewhat to our surprise, the tiny microphone built into the Sony was slightly better than the P2's microphone, so we used that as the source for these three videos. It wasn't great, but it worked. Unfortunately, due to a technical limitation on the length of videos on the Sony, it cut off before Denver finished. (Lisa forgot to cycle the Sony between presentations like she did on the P2.)

( As Expected, the Fannish Inquisition )

Lisa intends to roll both cameras at Worldcon as well so that we have spare recordings if the primary ones fail at any time.

We'd prefer to film from two different angles, including one from the head table; however, this would require extensive post-production editing for which I know we will not have the time. As it is, we'll probably be ripping lower-resolution recordings off the camera at 30-minute intervals and dumping the MP4 files straight to YouTube rather than including any titles, credits, or anything else. Given the interest in the 2015 WSFS Business Meeting, I anticipate that speed and good-quality sound (not necessarily video) is more important than any glitzy production values this year.