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Wild Nights 2011 (con report)
14 years ago
General
Wow so where to start... i supose at the begininning :P
Wednesday afternoon i had
djauric show up at around 4 then we hung out watched a movie and worked on our sets for the con only to realise that we would be better off just staying awake and sleeping on the drice up since 
rangertheskunk was going to drive from dallas onward. That was how it was supposed to go.
We ended up leaving an hour late at 5:30am and picking Ranger up around 6:15, we got up to about 40-50 miles north of austin when his (thought to be healed) Mono decided to rear its head and cause him trouble breathing so we sped into waco at 85mph to get him to the er and looked at. Thankfully he was fine and after a steroid shot actually drove the rest of the way to Arlington.
He decided to stay there just to be safe and me and Auric went on to the con to arrive about 3 hours late. Once i arrived at the con my main concern was to get my computer stuff into the tabernacle before the impending rain happened and we made it just in time. Sorry to the folks i sort of rushed past while this was happening. at about 1am as i was thinking about showering and sort of meandering around chilling after A/V setup Jesus Ferret walks up and says "30 collage kids just drove up and were asking if this is the furry con and then they left" so now after last years incident im wide awake and i imedatly go to find Redfox so they can get Security mobilized, needlesss to say we were up till like 4am taking care of that crap. I don't honestly remember alot of the things from the con as to what day they were on, like i remember the fursuit parade opening ceremonies and a ton of other things but the con was such a blast and so busy that its a blur. there were only one or 2 sore spots at the con this year and most of them were internal A/V stuff and problems with communication. for instance ive seen alot of fur complaining about the fact there were 2 fursuit parades, Thats my fault, the person running the parade didnt notify me or the con photographer that it was starting and he ran it a full hour early. at that point i was like, "either do another parade or your con isnt going to have a video of it, i was only about to get 30 secs of footage of the first one". My only other real problem is mainly caused by lack of understanding of facts. People who run events like for instance, variety shows, need to understand that keeping the A/V crew in the loop at all times if vital, if an A/V person asks you something, then they need to know it. also A/V isnt magic, when you do your rehearsals is when we work out bugs on our end. In other words keep people in the loop. Dropping 2 thirds of the backing tracks for a show on the a/v crew 5 mins before the show and not labeling the fails with any identifying names doest work that way and will cause problems, it will stress out the people trying to put on a good show and make the orginiser look like an idiot. Sorry about that rant but lol W/E A/V is a stressful thing to do when people dont understand the importance of communication. im still upset that i didn't get a chance to help okie fix his backing track because he was rushed along. same with the video that were run, i had the equipment on site to work on them but the orginiser didn't feel the need to keep the guy running the sound board in the loop on things lol.
Anyways, now we come to Sunday. it started out like every other day of the con, with a bit of rain and some clouds. We went through the days events without indecent, i fixed the speaker we damaged during the dances the night before and i filmed drumming coons concert. then Draconis walks up and says he needs to get everyone into the tabernacle to make an announcement so I run a mic out and set it up and sit down to run the board, Draconis is about 90 seconds ish into explaining how people who have cell signal need to watch for people who got lost to call them when i hear a wierd sound, i though it was a far away ambulance at first then i heard a few people in the audience saying they heard a tornado siren, at that point i shout over Draconis and ask if anyone else hears it but Draconis ignores me until i cut his mic off in mid sentence and shout for everyone to shut up. just as we clearly hear the siren for the first time i hear Redfox over the radio saying everyone needs to be in the bathrooms taking cover now, from there it was a mad dash, we i grabed the cameras since they were allready on teh table in front of me shoved them in my waterproof bag and fliped the little breaker switch on teh sound rack then we bailed.
Once i got to the bathrooms and took assessment i decided there was no reason i shouldn't pull out the camera and just leave it rolling so i did and what can be seen in the footage is disturbing. i have at least 2 shots that show spinning trees, and one where if you look closely you can see what might have been the funnel through the treeline not to mention shots of some of the calmest most cool headed folks i know with "oh shit" faces that to me were the most frightening thing of all.
Once we got the all clear to leave the bathrooms me Draklor and Heros rushed to the tabernacle to batten down the hatches, i think we had things secured in under 5 mins just as the rain started blowing in. Thankfully the only things lost to teh storm as far as i know were 2 of the truss mounted lights. From there we evacuated the tabernacle as soon as we had gotten it as hunkered down as we could over to the mess hall just in time to find out we had a mesocyclone 5 mins from being overhead so we again sheltered in place this time in the mass hall, people hiding under tables and such. Thankfully we were spared aside from omfg flooding and im used to that since i live in south central Texas. by Monday the water had gone down enough to leave and we packed up A/V while 35 people stood around watching and only 3 or 4 offered to help us, and almsot all of them wanted us to hurry since me and Auric were going with the OKC caravan. from the con we went to a nice little diner in McAllister and had awesome food while we watched the sky turn black from a new super-cell.
We stood outside for awhile and watched then as if you threw a switch it was pouring rain so we got back on the road and had to drive straight through it. once we did pass through it we had smooth sailing over to OKC where we hung out with Skyler and Crys for a few hours before taking bunnyboy home and crashing at Polly Puma's place for the night. (thanks again Polly! <3) the drive home the next day was totally un-eventful and we made it back safe and sound
THE END!
P.S
Fursuit parade :D http://youtu.be/JJ4AmOx0Pmo?hd=1
Variety show should be out Tomorrow or Saturday! :D
Wednesday afternoon i had
djauric show up at around 4 then we hung out watched a movie and worked on our sets for the con only to realise that we would be better off just staying awake and sleeping on the drice up since 
rangertheskunk was going to drive from dallas onward. That was how it was supposed to go.We ended up leaving an hour late at 5:30am and picking Ranger up around 6:15, we got up to about 40-50 miles north of austin when his (thought to be healed) Mono decided to rear its head and cause him trouble breathing so we sped into waco at 85mph to get him to the er and looked at. Thankfully he was fine and after a steroid shot actually drove the rest of the way to Arlington.
He decided to stay there just to be safe and me and Auric went on to the con to arrive about 3 hours late. Once i arrived at the con my main concern was to get my computer stuff into the tabernacle before the impending rain happened and we made it just in time. Sorry to the folks i sort of rushed past while this was happening. at about 1am as i was thinking about showering and sort of meandering around chilling after A/V setup Jesus Ferret walks up and says "30 collage kids just drove up and were asking if this is the furry con and then they left" so now after last years incident im wide awake and i imedatly go to find Redfox so they can get Security mobilized, needlesss to say we were up till like 4am taking care of that crap. I don't honestly remember alot of the things from the con as to what day they were on, like i remember the fursuit parade opening ceremonies and a ton of other things but the con was such a blast and so busy that its a blur. there were only one or 2 sore spots at the con this year and most of them were internal A/V stuff and problems with communication. for instance ive seen alot of fur complaining about the fact there were 2 fursuit parades, Thats my fault, the person running the parade didnt notify me or the con photographer that it was starting and he ran it a full hour early. at that point i was like, "either do another parade or your con isnt going to have a video of it, i was only about to get 30 secs of footage of the first one". My only other real problem is mainly caused by lack of understanding of facts. People who run events like for instance, variety shows, need to understand that keeping the A/V crew in the loop at all times if vital, if an A/V person asks you something, then they need to know it. also A/V isnt magic, when you do your rehearsals is when we work out bugs on our end. In other words keep people in the loop. Dropping 2 thirds of the backing tracks for a show on the a/v crew 5 mins before the show and not labeling the fails with any identifying names doest work that way and will cause problems, it will stress out the people trying to put on a good show and make the orginiser look like an idiot. Sorry about that rant but lol W/E A/V is a stressful thing to do when people dont understand the importance of communication. im still upset that i didn't get a chance to help okie fix his backing track because he was rushed along. same with the video that were run, i had the equipment on site to work on them but the orginiser didn't feel the need to keep the guy running the sound board in the loop on things lol.
Anyways, now we come to Sunday. it started out like every other day of the con, with a bit of rain and some clouds. We went through the days events without indecent, i fixed the speaker we damaged during the dances the night before and i filmed drumming coons concert. then Draconis walks up and says he needs to get everyone into the tabernacle to make an announcement so I run a mic out and set it up and sit down to run the board, Draconis is about 90 seconds ish into explaining how people who have cell signal need to watch for people who got lost to call them when i hear a wierd sound, i though it was a far away ambulance at first then i heard a few people in the audience saying they heard a tornado siren, at that point i shout over Draconis and ask if anyone else hears it but Draconis ignores me until i cut his mic off in mid sentence and shout for everyone to shut up. just as we clearly hear the siren for the first time i hear Redfox over the radio saying everyone needs to be in the bathrooms taking cover now, from there it was a mad dash, we i grabed the cameras since they were allready on teh table in front of me shoved them in my waterproof bag and fliped the little breaker switch on teh sound rack then we bailed.
Once i got to the bathrooms and took assessment i decided there was no reason i shouldn't pull out the camera and just leave it rolling so i did and what can be seen in the footage is disturbing. i have at least 2 shots that show spinning trees, and one where if you look closely you can see what might have been the funnel through the treeline not to mention shots of some of the calmest most cool headed folks i know with "oh shit" faces that to me were the most frightening thing of all.
Once we got the all clear to leave the bathrooms me Draklor and Heros rushed to the tabernacle to batten down the hatches, i think we had things secured in under 5 mins just as the rain started blowing in. Thankfully the only things lost to teh storm as far as i know were 2 of the truss mounted lights. From there we evacuated the tabernacle as soon as we had gotten it as hunkered down as we could over to the mess hall just in time to find out we had a mesocyclone 5 mins from being overhead so we again sheltered in place this time in the mass hall, people hiding under tables and such. Thankfully we were spared aside from omfg flooding and im used to that since i live in south central Texas. by Monday the water had gone down enough to leave and we packed up A/V while 35 people stood around watching and only 3 or 4 offered to help us, and almsot all of them wanted us to hurry since me and Auric were going with the OKC caravan. from the con we went to a nice little diner in McAllister and had awesome food while we watched the sky turn black from a new super-cell.
We stood outside for awhile and watched then as if you threw a switch it was pouring rain so we got back on the road and had to drive straight through it. once we did pass through it we had smooth sailing over to OKC where we hung out with Skyler and Crys for a few hours before taking bunnyboy home and crashing at Polly Puma's place for the night. (thanks again Polly! <3) the drive home the next day was totally un-eventful and we made it back safe and sound
THE END!
P.S
Fursuit parade :D http://youtu.be/JJ4AmOx0Pmo?hd=1
Variety show should be out Tomorrow or Saturday! :D
From what I was reading the Sony image stabilization may indeed function better then the Canon regardless of what mode it's in. But the Canon also has it's strengths over the Sony. So yeah, as you said, they are very close contenders. I still need to get myself a solid video tripod. I've also been interested in a hand held image stabilization system since before the con as that would allow me to move around more without it looking rather crappy. We'll see how that goes though.
Your walking footage appears a lot more stable then mine would ever look even if I was holding it as still. But that's where those mobile IS rigs come into play.
Was my first real event getting to use this new camcorder so it's been a great test all around as I figure out things with it. It was a lot of fun. It has a lot more manual control then the Sony does, which also can add a certain degree of complexity to shots and requires good playing around with in order to learn. And I will learn it :)