09.25.04

NDK 2004: A view from backstage

Posted in Convention Reports at 9:37 pm by mark

I’ve been going to cons for over 20 years, and working them nearly as long. I started as a grunt, running 16mm projectors, VCRs, and slide projectors, and showing miserable movies to empty rooms, then moved on to helping with sound and lights and video in main events rooms, then finally being in charge. This past spring I changed directions at StarFest, moving to help look after the guest stars, which was a refreshing change. This past weekend, I added a new role as MC of Nan Desu Kan.

It was a wild ride. For the first time we had, rather than a simple performance or two, an actual concert on Friday night. I’m used to doing things on a shoestring budget, with modest expectations and plenty of lead time; these guys showed up at the last minute, throwing thousands of dollars around and radically altering how we do things. They ended up renting an enormous truss full of stage lights, and tripling the number of PA speakers, and doubling the number of monitor speakers, and adding a spotlight. Then we had to have everything wired together early on Friday so there would be time for sound check and rehearsals.

I couldn’t have done it without my newly-expanded crew of four (five, if you include my wife, but sadly our baby-sitting plans fell through when my mother-in-law went hunting with my father-in-law, and my wife was mostly busy watching our son). I’d worked with two of them before, but two were new to Main Events; happily they had previous sound board experience, and I look forward to having them back next year.

The con itself opened with an excellent performance by MiraiDaiko, a local taiko group, consisting of four young women, that’s a spinoff from One World Taiko. I actually recognized one of the pieces they did, but the others were new to me; their whole show was energetic and well-synced, and I hope to see them perform again.

After that we had our usual “introduce all the guests” opening ceremonies, for which I simply introduced two of our directors (Kelly and Becca) and got out of the way.

Then… the most stressful bit of the whole weekend for us, the concert itself. As is usual with such things, the start time was delayed while people got seated and the performers did whatever preparation they do; I had to make several rounds of announcements, threatening dire consequences for anyone who dared tape or photograph the show (despite the fact that the record company droids were all doing so). Finally I announced the opening act, Kumiko Kato, and the concert began. She did her set, and I was able to introduce the headliner, AKINA. (They’re very particular about her name being capitalized like that.) She did several songs, mostly with a pair of backup dancers.

Both singers were young, cute, energetic, and talented, and the audience reacted really well; I’d say the only downside was that the total performance time was just under an hour, which seems short for such a huge buildup. On the other hand, there was no extra charge for the concert, and the audience got the whole light-and-sound extravaganza, so it all balances out.

After the show, the room emptied out fairly quickly; the record company folks were selling some merchandise, but apparently they had only some fairly expensive artbooks and DVDs, rather than a nice modestly-priced CD, which I expect would’ve been quite popular. The only remaining activity Friday night was Becca’s “Anything Panel,” which took the form of an extended informal chat with several of the guest stars, so I sent my crew home and manned the sound board myself until closing time.

First thing Saturday, we had yet another rehearsal, for Kumiko Kato, since she was to perform during a break in the costume contest. She had just received a new song the previous day, and ran through it several times; it was interesting watching her manager making suggestions for how to handle certain passages, in particular during the somewhat-repetetive closing sequence.

The room opened for the day at 10:00 with me introducing… me, for my “Japanese In One Hour (No, Really)” presentation. The room was remarkably full — in fact, there were more people there than for the voice actor panels that followed. Although it had been a year since I last gave the presentation, it went smoothly, and people seemed to be into it and asked several questions at the end. The next two hours were Q&A sessions with all five voice actors (Michael Coleman, Alex Carter, and the three brothers Michael, Brian, and Paul Dobson), first talking about how to get into voice acting, then about “finding your inner voices.”

After that, the “Anime Dating Game” returned to our stage. It had been a few years since these guys were at NDK… and though the teenagers in the crowd get enthusiastic, it’s kind of painful for us older folks to watch, so I spent some time out of the room. Next was a Q&A with AKINA, which was well-attended — she seems to have picked up some fans — and then the “Chibi Project,” which seems to be devoted to destroying cute anime toys in creative ways.

Then the same guy hosted a version of “Whose Line Is It Anime,” which I first saw done by Greggo, but since Greggo’s out of the game show biz, I suppose it’s fair game. Naturally, he recruited Kelly, who’s an old hand at improv, and he was trying to get three of the voice actors, but only persuaded two (Michael Dobson and Michael Coleman), so for a fourth… he grabbed me. Fortunately I was not totally unprepared, having had some informal improv training in the dim, dark past, so I dove in and did my best. The best bit was when Michael Dobson was doing sound effects while Kelly mimed washing the dishes; I couldn’t stop laughing.

The final event for Saturday was one of the biggest at the convention: the costume contest. It not only fills the Main Events room, but we simulcast it into the big video room next door. This was the time when I was really on the hot seat, both audible and visible to everyone, and a crowd that can be rough sometimes. Parts of the event went very smoothly, and I was able to crank through over 150 contestant and character names with gratifying efficiency. I got mixed up once or twice but recovered pretty smoothly, and (not coincidentally) I’m well-equipped to handle the pronunciation of Japanese names. There were also a couple of technical glitches, primarily feedback when people were too quiet and my crew tried to compensate with jacking the microphone level; next time there are things I can do to mitigate that, and we can do more practice ahead of time. This was worst during the cosplay portion of the contest, when hearing the contestants was most important; one of the groups, though, had the foresight to pre-record everything, including their voices, and was perfectly audible. (They were also perfectly insane, and wound up winning that portion of the contest with a Full Monty-type routine.)

I wound up inadvertently coining a buzzword for the con. When the first glitches arose, I described the weekend, tongue firmly in cheek, as yet another “flawless” Nan Desu Kan. Then, when the next problem occurred, I reminded the audience that we were flawless, and after a while, they were echoing the word back to me. It’s the sort of thing that could really have backfired, but thankfully the crowd took it in the spirit in which it was intended.

After the first two contest segments, we had a bonus: Kumiko Kato performed several songs, including her new one, giving us a nice distraction for the audience while the votes were being tallied. Then we had the masters’ competition, giving me a chance to read somewhat more extensive descriptions of the contestants and their costumes; this should’ve given plenty of time to get the award list in order. Unfortunately, it didn’t, and the audience had to cool their heels while I chased around trying to find out who had won what. The other big problem was that — just like last year — a particular entry, two extremely cute kids (ages about 3 and 5), dressed this time as Milly and Vash from Trigun, cleaned up on awards, including a judge’s choice award, audience favorite, pre-teen, and first place. Another young child took a judge’s choice and second place. That left only third place and masters’, plus some individually-chosen awards, to go to… everybody else. (I’m going to work with the costume contest guy over the next year to try to devise solutions to all these problems.)

Anyway, we finally got all the winners announced, and brought up the house lights, then left the stage lights on for a while for photo ops. I really wanted to swing by a house party afterward, but it was after midnight by the time I got the room closed down, and I had to be back by 8 AM to change the setup after the extra lights and speakers went back to the rental place, so I just crashed.

I actually made it back to Main Events before 8 AM on Sunday, and they were already at work, with the light truss down and the extra speakers packed. I took the old StarFest lights and put them up on trees… and then we ended up using them only for closing ceremonies, and we even could’ve done without them then. (This is because the hotel had totally redone the room lights since previous years, and they were much more suitable — couldn’t have predicted that. It’s moot from here on out, with the new hotel.) Then I found that one of my speakers had blown, but I was able to quickly rig the stage monitors to cover that half of the room, because there was no real need for monitors any more.

As usual, Sunday was much lower key than Friday and Saturday. The first thing was a Family Feud-type game show, but with anime clubs; some pretty tough questions, too. Then a couple hours with the voice actors, with some amusing bits, especially when Paul Dobson showed up (late) and sat in the audience instead of on stage, and asked several questions of the other voice actors. Next I had a couple more hours to geek out about Japanese, with, shall we say… less success than the day before. But I think out of those two hours, I can salvage one usable hour for next year. The greatest interest seemed to come from some of the practical demonstrations, so I’ll focus on those. The last thing before the closing ceremonies was a guy talking about the animation industry, and technology, for a couple of hours. He didn’t even want a microphone, and had a small group clustered around him, so there was basically nothing for my crew to do. I took the chance to roam around a little bit, and wound up chatting for half an hour or more with Alex Carter’s mom, who came down with her from Vancouver — she was a delightful conversationalist, actually! The most surreal moment was when somebody asked for my autograph. “What, are you serious?” I asked, and he was. So I signed!

Then we held the closing ceremonies, Becca handed the reins of the con over to the new executive directors, Jeremy and Amanda, and we finished up with the traditional Japanese clapping ceremony. With my larger crew, plus a couple of extra volunteers, it only took an hour to get my gear broken down and packed up. We kept out a speaker (the non-busted one!) and microphone for the dead dog party, so Becca didn’t have to shout as she gave out goodies to the staff — if anything it was too effective, since the hotel staff came by a couple times to have us turn it down! My badge was drawn to receive a Gundam model (which Owen has been eyeing covetously), a really nice Slayers artbook, and a little Japanese-language volume of Di Gi Charat that will be fun for language practice.

Finally it wound down, and I crammed my speaker into the truck, and managed to stay awake long enough to drive home.

My legs ached for the next two days, but on the whole I enjoyed it greatly, and I’m looking forward to next year.

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