Vividcon 2016 Con Report (Part 1)
So I'm back from Vividcon 2016 and as always, I had an amazing time. It was probably the weirdest Vividcon I've ever been to (personally) and an emotional roller coaster throughout but I had a lot of fun and it was wonderful to see so many friends again (even though I missed others who weren't there). There were so many incredible vids this year and I am constantly amazed by the creativity, brilliance and talent of the vidding community and so happy to be a part of it.
I tried remembering everything as best I can but if I made any mistakes, feel free to correct me! This goes for anything as I'd always like to improve :)
So I drove in with one of the Minneapolis cars on Thursday since I had been staying with
bessyboo the week before Vividcon and we left at 4:30am to make sure we got in for Bessy's appointment. I slept most of the trip in the car with
bessyboo,
platinumvampyr and
war_kitten and got about 5-6 hours of sleep which was the average most nights at Vividcon. When we pulled up to the hotel around 12:30pm, I saw
bradcpu,
elipie,
milly,
jetpack_monkey and possibly others and I hugged them all in the lobby and then we sat down and chatted a little. I remember greeting
par_avion,
bironic,
killabeez,
morgandawn,
kerithwyn and others I'm forgetting. I remember talking a little with
absolutedestiny about my CVV vid and I was happy to hear he liked it :) It was great to see
lola again after we had a fun Escapade together and we went up to check into our rooms...only I entered my room to find someone already there apparently due to some hotel tech issues so Lola was kind enough to let me put my stuff in her room. Later when retrieving my things, I was able to say hi to
cathexys via Skype who said some nice things about my vids :)
Next I went to lunch at House O' Meat with
kiki_miserychic,
elipie,
ohvienna and
hollywoodgrrl and we had fun talking about vids, fandom and various things. Then I talked in the lobby a little with
bironic and
par_avion and then left to go watch some of the women's individual all around gymnastics livestream with
vonniek. We had to wait a little while until we could get the stream working but it was fun to talk with Vonnie while we waited about fandom and gymnastics and other things. Then I went down to registration around 7 where I hung out with a lot of different people. In particular, I had good conversations with
bradcpu,
alibisandwine,
thisiskis,
ghost_lingering,
bironic,
isweedan,
fan_eunice and
jarrow (who I was happy to hear was looking forward to my CVV vid) while enjoying the pizza party which seemed to work pretty well. At one point I talked to
deejay and she gave me an awesome "Rise Up" Hamilton button that made me happy. Then I headed over to the Mystery Vid Party in
revolutionaryjo's room and got to say hi to her,
lunate8,
butterfly and others. It was fun for a little while but then I was feeling a little sad due to some personal stuff and left to take a walk and talk to a friend of mine about things who helped cheer me up.
After I went up to hang out with
bradcpu,
elipie,
hollywoodgrrl,
kiki_miserychic,
milly (and baby) and
ohvienna. We had fun talking and laughing about stuff but somehow got a noise complaint (?!!!) which
kiki_miserychic handled beautifully lol cause it was BS. At some point, we all went to bed and once again, I woke up too early so I used the time to work a little more on my panel (more on that later). After I went down to breakfast and I don't remember exactly who I talked with but I think
jmtorres,
cherry and a couple others. I went up to the registration table at 9 and got to greet
sdwolfpup with "Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, Sir?" which was fun and she was wearing the perfect Burr shirt for it. I talked to a few other people and then it was time for moderator training which was pretty simple. After that, I headed over to the Welcome to Vividcon/Auction Vividcon and before it began was happy to get to talk to
khaleesian who I had seen before at Escapade/NYC hangouts but it was good to see her at her first VVC.
I can't remember exactly who I was sitting next to and talking to (sorry!) but I LOVED getting a chance to watch New Frontier on the big screen and it was just as amazing as I remembered. I really loved the change to put the Auction vids first as it was a good way to get excited about new vids to see them first when everyone was there and excited. It was a fun show full of great vids and then after that I went to One Hour Vid which I was really excited about as I've wanted to see a panel similiar to that for awhile.
astolat had loaded up her computer and hard drive with sources and brought along the song, "Telephone" by Lady Gaga while
killabeez took suggestions from the audience on possible clips to put on different lyrics. It was really fun to be in the room (where it happened!) full of fans having fun brainstorming multifandom ideas and
astolat was able to lay down about 6 clips or so and it was really cool to watch them with everyone as our ideas came to life. I know at one point we talked about time remapping in a way I hadn't done it before and that was really cool (I really need to upgrade my Premiere version). After the panel, I talked a little with
astolat on the way back to our rooms about doing an Iron Chef Vividcon panel thing as I was happy to hear she was interested in doing that as well.
Next I went downstairs to have lunch with
winterevanesce and while I was waiting, I was able to give
heresluck a hug and thank her for my amazing Jefferson Funk vid that she made for me and talk a little about that and New Frontier. Then Kitty and I walked over to my favorite Thai restaurant where we had an awesome time talking about vids, video editing as a career, Festivids and our fandoms which was a lot of fun and it was great to get to know her better. I went back to the Merlin panel and beforehand got to talk to
butterfly a little more where we talked a little about Person of Interest, femslash and our fandoms. In the Merlin panel, we watched a vidshow of Merlin vids and then talked about what ways fans transform the Merlin canon and why it's spawned so many vids which was interesting to hear about. I know at some point on this day, I talked with
destina a little about House of Cards and wished I had a little more time to talk with her later in the con. Next up I went to The Writing on the Wall panel where we talked about different ways to use text in vids while watching a selection of vids that used text and discussed them.
I left the panel with
lola and we went up to have dinner (sushi and leftover pad thai) in her room. It was really great to have a long conversation with her (and sometimes her roommate
isweedan who was watching some Olympics) about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, vids and vidding fandom, my panel and feeling nervous about it, books and our vidding plans for the future. Then we went down to the Premieres line where I talked briefly with
nestra trying to get her some Hamilton stuff and
pipsqueaky. For Premieres, I was sitting next to
winterevanesce which was perfect because I was really excited to see both of her vids which were great and gave me allll the feels and I could squee at her a little in between vids. I thought Premieres this year was really strong technically and all the vids were great but I have to admit that this was one of the years where I had a tough time finding vids that I strongly emotionally connected to (a combination of music, fandom and style) and as a emotions based vidder/vidwatcher (INFP here), it was more difficult to watch because of that. I particularly appreciated
barkley's Football vid for making me cry with the live chorus of voices reminding me of my sports feels,
elipie for making a hilarious Sims vid that was the best Premieres con vid experience as we were all crying with laughter,
winterevanesce's Never Wake Me Up vid for reminding me of all my childhood fantasy and wonder feels and
killabeez for joining me in bringing the femslash with her adorable Jessica/Trish vid.
It's always fun getting a chance to talk to the vidders about their vids after they show and in particular I remember talking with
barkley,
hollywoodgrrl,
lola,
heresluck,
sisabet and
ohvienna who gutpunched me with her amazing Leia vid. I headed to Vividcon Trivia where I was put in a group with
cherry,
moonling,
renenet and
taraljc where it was fun to combine our knowledge to successfully answer most of the questions with a special shoutout to
taraljc who helped out a lot with the superhero questions. We did in fact win and then after talking to some people I'm forgetting, I headed over to
deejay's Hamilton party where I grabbed some snacks and had a lot of fun talking to the people there while watching Hamilton. It was particularly great to enjoy the show with
sdwolfpup since she's been such a huge Hamilton fan on Twitter and we got to watch/sing Wait for It as well as all the other songs. I was impressed we managed to make it through the entire thing and also had fun talking with
alibisandwine,
thisiskis and
isweedan. There wasn't enough Hamilton references all weekend so I was super thankful to
deejay for hosting the party that gave me lots of feels.
I went to sleep late but yet once again woke up early because my brain decided this VVC that 7:30am was a good time to be up. At least in this case, it was fine because I needed to work on my panel and rewatch a couple Premieres vids again anyways. This year was the first year I had ever done a panel before (I did In Depth Vid Review with
laurashapiro a couple years ago but that was more of a group thing) but at TGIF/F (multi-fandom femslash con), I had the idea to do a ship vids panel since I love ship vids and have made a lot of them and I like to try to push myself to do new things at Vividcon. My panel was at 4pm which I was thankful for since it was pretty late so I had more time to prepare but also led to me being pretty nervous about it throughout the weekend as public speaking terrifies me (I am getting nervous/shaky just writing about this). I had worked on some notes for the panel before the con but some stuff came up and I wasn't as prepared as I hoped which made me more nervous. That being said, there was basically no way for me to be as prepared as I wanted to be because I'm really insecure about sharing my vid thoughts in a group setting especially in a setting like Vividcon where I greatly admire all the super smart people around and it's terrifying to talk about vids not knowing if I'm saying anything remotely interesting or helpful. Basically, the panel activated all my bad perfectionist impulses and since I couldn't figure out how to make the perfect panel in thoughts, organization or process, it was making me super nervous and emotionally freaked out and I just wanted to run away and not have to go through it.
Anyways, that was some background that hopefully will help explain some of the later events of the day. I went downstairs and took a walk/musical introversion session before breakfast and then ate Leslie Knope approved waffles with
fan_eunice,
sisabet and someone else I'm forgetting but it was nice to talk a little with them. Then I went up to Vid Review where I took notes on a really great Vid Review that had some really interesting interpretations and was led by the hilarious duo of
jarrow and
sisabet. I was bummed to miss the Vividcon Classic LKBV show as that is one of my top vidshows ever when I saw it at my first Vividcon but it's always worth it to go to Vid Review and get some of the vidding talk I'm always desperate to hear. After that, it was time for lunch when I had to do some more prep for my panel and when it finally hit me that the panel was actually happening which led to a really bad emotional freakout. The panel nerves combined with some personal stuff just led to a really toxic combination in my brain and IDK if I've ever felt so shitty at Vividcon, like I was having a breakdown, which was tough because it's my happy place (my safe place if you will ;)).
Thankfully, I was able to talk to
bessyboo in her room who was able to comfort me and talk me off the edge which really helped, she is an awesome friend <3. I was too nervous to eat so I went up to my room and listened to some music, meditated and texted a friend and that helped enough to get me to focus on preparing for the panel. I did go down to the Star Trek panel where I talked a little more with
butterfly but tried to get a little panel prep stuff done when vids weren't playing. I did go to the vidshow room to see my premiering vid, Suffer play and it was super fun to see it on the big screen as well as to see a few other kink vids before it. I was going to stay during the panel but then decided to go back to my room so I could focus more on working on my panel and dealing with my nerves which were still freaking me out. I was bummed to miss the rest of the Star Trek panel and What's That Noise?! panels but I could barely focus on them anyways and sometimes you have to miss programming at VVC that you wish you could attend. I was able to get enough done that I didn't feel completely fucked up over it and I had enough notes that I thought there'd be enough to talk about it. Thanks to
talitha78,
klb, others at Vividcon and everyone on Twitter who helped encourage me, it was very much appreciated.
Finally it was Time and I walked to my doom (I kid, I kid but...not).
bessyboo helped me set up the computer tech just in case there was time to watch some ship vids and I tried to prepare myself as best as I could. I had a little intro prepared with a Hamilton quote (of course) and then went through various topics relating to ship vids. Thank you again to everyone who came and to everyone who spoke as well, I really really appreciated it and thank you to
lola for helping out with writing. I can't really say how it went, it wasn't a total disaster at least and I got through it and I hope there was some stuff that was interesting to people. It's just tough because I generally feel like I can tell how good or bad a vid of mine is on some level but I just had no real idea with the panel and it made me feel super uncomfortable. I doubt I'll do another panel again, at least in that format (maybe I could do prep for someone behind the scenes or something someday) but at least I learned what my VVC limits are and can now say I did it. Anyways, I was glad when it was over and that people came over and said nice things to me about it and I could finally relax and not worry about it anymore. It was good to talk a little with
rhea314 and
revolutionaryjo about The Raven Cycle after the panel as well.
TBC here
This entry was originally posted at http://anoel.dreamwidth.org/164301.html. Comment count:
Comment wherever you want.
I tried remembering everything as best I can but if I made any mistakes, feel free to correct me! This goes for anything as I'd always like to improve :)
So I drove in with one of the Minneapolis cars on Thursday since I had been staying with
bessyboo the week before Vividcon and we left at 4:30am to make sure we got in for Bessy's appointment. I slept most of the trip in the car with
bessyboo,
platinumvampyr and
war_kitten and got about 5-6 hours of sleep which was the average most nights at Vividcon. When we pulled up to the hotel around 12:30pm, I saw
bradcpu,
elipie,
milly,
jetpack_monkey and possibly others and I hugged them all in the lobby and then we sat down and chatted a little. I remember greeting
par_avion,
bironic,
killabeez,
morgandawn,
kerithwyn and others I'm forgetting. I remember talking a little with
absolutedestiny about my CVV vid and I was happy to hear he liked it :) It was great to see
lola again after we had a fun Escapade together and we went up to check into our rooms...only I entered my room to find someone already there apparently due to some hotel tech issues so Lola was kind enough to let me put my stuff in her room. Later when retrieving my things, I was able to say hi to
cathexys via Skype who said some nice things about my vids :)
Next I went to lunch at House O' Meat with
kiki_miserychic,
elipie,
ohvienna and
hollywoodgrrl and we had fun talking about vids, fandom and various things. Then I talked in the lobby a little with
bironic and
par_avion and then left to go watch some of the women's individual all around gymnastics livestream with
vonniek. We had to wait a little while until we could get the stream working but it was fun to talk with Vonnie while we waited about fandom and gymnastics and other things. Then I went down to registration around 7 where I hung out with a lot of different people. In particular, I had good conversations with
bradcpu,
alibisandwine,
thisiskis,
ghost_lingering,
bironic,
isweedan,
fan_eunice and
jarrow (who I was happy to hear was looking forward to my CVV vid) while enjoying the pizza party which seemed to work pretty well. At one point I talked to
deejay and she gave me an awesome "Rise Up" Hamilton button that made me happy. Then I headed over to the Mystery Vid Party in
revolutionaryjo's room and got to say hi to her,
lunate8,
butterfly and others. It was fun for a little while but then I was feeling a little sad due to some personal stuff and left to take a walk and talk to a friend of mine about things who helped cheer me up.
After I went up to hang out with
bradcpu,
elipie,
hollywoodgrrl,
kiki_miserychic,
milly (and baby) and
ohvienna. We had fun talking and laughing about stuff but somehow got a noise complaint (?!!!) which
kiki_miserychic handled beautifully lol cause it was BS. At some point, we all went to bed and once again, I woke up too early so I used the time to work a little more on my panel (more on that later). After I went down to breakfast and I don't remember exactly who I talked with but I think
jmtorres,
cherry and a couple others. I went up to the registration table at 9 and got to greet
sdwolfpup with "Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, Sir?" which was fun and she was wearing the perfect Burr shirt for it. I talked to a few other people and then it was time for moderator training which was pretty simple. After that, I headed over to the Welcome to Vividcon/Auction Vividcon and before it began was happy to get to talk to
khaleesian who I had seen before at Escapade/NYC hangouts but it was good to see her at her first VVC.
I can't remember exactly who I was sitting next to and talking to (sorry!) but I LOVED getting a chance to watch New Frontier on the big screen and it was just as amazing as I remembered. I really loved the change to put the Auction vids first as it was a good way to get excited about new vids to see them first when everyone was there and excited. It was a fun show full of great vids and then after that I went to One Hour Vid which I was really excited about as I've wanted to see a panel similiar to that for awhile.
astolat had loaded up her computer and hard drive with sources and brought along the song, "Telephone" by Lady Gaga while
killabeez took suggestions from the audience on possible clips to put on different lyrics. It was really fun to be in the room (where it happened!) full of fans having fun brainstorming multifandom ideas and
astolat was able to lay down about 6 clips or so and it was really cool to watch them with everyone as our ideas came to life. I know at one point we talked about time remapping in a way I hadn't done it before and that was really cool (I really need to upgrade my Premiere version). After the panel, I talked a little with
astolat on the way back to our rooms about doing an Iron Chef Vividcon panel thing as I was happy to hear she was interested in doing that as well.
Next I went downstairs to have lunch with
winterevanesce and while I was waiting, I was able to give
heresluck a hug and thank her for my amazing Jefferson Funk vid that she made for me and talk a little about that and New Frontier. Then Kitty and I walked over to my favorite Thai restaurant where we had an awesome time talking about vids, video editing as a career, Festivids and our fandoms which was a lot of fun and it was great to get to know her better. I went back to the Merlin panel and beforehand got to talk to
butterfly a little more where we talked a little about Person of Interest, femslash and our fandoms. In the Merlin panel, we watched a vidshow of Merlin vids and then talked about what ways fans transform the Merlin canon and why it's spawned so many vids which was interesting to hear about. I know at some point on this day, I talked with
destina a little about House of Cards and wished I had a little more time to talk with her later in the con. Next up I went to The Writing on the Wall panel where we talked about different ways to use text in vids while watching a selection of vids that used text and discussed them.
I left the panel with
lola and we went up to have dinner (sushi and leftover pad thai) in her room. It was really great to have a long conversation with her (and sometimes her roommate
isweedan who was watching some Olympics) about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, vids and vidding fandom, my panel and feeling nervous about it, books and our vidding plans for the future. Then we went down to the Premieres line where I talked briefly with
nestra trying to get her some Hamilton stuff and
pipsqueaky. For Premieres, I was sitting next to
winterevanesce which was perfect because I was really excited to see both of her vids which were great and gave me allll the feels and I could squee at her a little in between vids. I thought Premieres this year was really strong technically and all the vids were great but I have to admit that this was one of the years where I had a tough time finding vids that I strongly emotionally connected to (a combination of music, fandom and style) and as a emotions based vidder/vidwatcher (INFP here), it was more difficult to watch because of that. I particularly appreciated
barkley's Football vid for making me cry with the live chorus of voices reminding me of my sports feels,
elipie for making a hilarious Sims vid that was the best Premieres con vid experience as we were all crying with laughter,
winterevanesce's Never Wake Me Up vid for reminding me of all my childhood fantasy and wonder feels and
killabeez for joining me in bringing the femslash with her adorable Jessica/Trish vid.
It's always fun getting a chance to talk to the vidders about their vids after they show and in particular I remember talking with
barkley,
hollywoodgrrl,
lola,
heresluck,
sisabet and
ohvienna who gutpunched me with her amazing Leia vid. I headed to Vividcon Trivia where I was put in a group with
cherry,
moonling,
renenet and
taraljc where it was fun to combine our knowledge to successfully answer most of the questions with a special shoutout to
taraljc who helped out a lot with the superhero questions. We did in fact win and then after talking to some people I'm forgetting, I headed over to
deejay's Hamilton party where I grabbed some snacks and had a lot of fun talking to the people there while watching Hamilton. It was particularly great to enjoy the show with
sdwolfpup since she's been such a huge Hamilton fan on Twitter and we got to watch/sing Wait for It as well as all the other songs. I was impressed we managed to make it through the entire thing and also had fun talking with
alibisandwine,
thisiskis and
isweedan. There wasn't enough Hamilton references all weekend so I was super thankful to
deejay for hosting the party that gave me lots of feels.
I went to sleep late but yet once again woke up early because my brain decided this VVC that 7:30am was a good time to be up. At least in this case, it was fine because I needed to work on my panel and rewatch a couple Premieres vids again anyways. This year was the first year I had ever done a panel before (I did In Depth Vid Review with
laurashapiro a couple years ago but that was more of a group thing) but at TGIF/F (multi-fandom femslash con), I had the idea to do a ship vids panel since I love ship vids and have made a lot of them and I like to try to push myself to do new things at Vividcon. My panel was at 4pm which I was thankful for since it was pretty late so I had more time to prepare but also led to me being pretty nervous about it throughout the weekend as public speaking terrifies me (I am getting nervous/shaky just writing about this). I had worked on some notes for the panel before the con but some stuff came up and I wasn't as prepared as I hoped which made me more nervous. That being said, there was basically no way for me to be as prepared as I wanted to be because I'm really insecure about sharing my vid thoughts in a group setting especially in a setting like Vividcon where I greatly admire all the super smart people around and it's terrifying to talk about vids not knowing if I'm saying anything remotely interesting or helpful. Basically, the panel activated all my bad perfectionist impulses and since I couldn't figure out how to make the perfect panel in thoughts, organization or process, it was making me super nervous and emotionally freaked out and I just wanted to run away and not have to go through it.
Anyways, that was some background that hopefully will help explain some of the later events of the day. I went downstairs and took a walk/musical introversion session before breakfast and then ate Leslie Knope approved waffles with
fan_eunice,
sisabet and someone else I'm forgetting but it was nice to talk a little with them. Then I went up to Vid Review where I took notes on a really great Vid Review that had some really interesting interpretations and was led by the hilarious duo of
jarrow and
sisabet. I was bummed to miss the Vividcon Classic LKBV show as that is one of my top vidshows ever when I saw it at my first Vividcon but it's always worth it to go to Vid Review and get some of the vidding talk I'm always desperate to hear. After that, it was time for lunch when I had to do some more prep for my panel and when it finally hit me that the panel was actually happening which led to a really bad emotional freakout. The panel nerves combined with some personal stuff just led to a really toxic combination in my brain and IDK if I've ever felt so shitty at Vividcon, like I was having a breakdown, which was tough because it's my happy place (my safe place if you will ;)).
Thankfully, I was able to talk to
bessyboo in her room who was able to comfort me and talk me off the edge which really helped, she is an awesome friend <3. I was too nervous to eat so I went up to my room and listened to some music, meditated and texted a friend and that helped enough to get me to focus on preparing for the panel. I did go down to the Star Trek panel where I talked a little more with
butterfly but tried to get a little panel prep stuff done when vids weren't playing. I did go to the vidshow room to see my premiering vid, Suffer play and it was super fun to see it on the big screen as well as to see a few other kink vids before it. I was going to stay during the panel but then decided to go back to my room so I could focus more on working on my panel and dealing with my nerves which were still freaking me out. I was bummed to miss the rest of the Star Trek panel and What's That Noise?! panels but I could barely focus on them anyways and sometimes you have to miss programming at VVC that you wish you could attend. I was able to get enough done that I didn't feel completely fucked up over it and I had enough notes that I thought there'd be enough to talk about it. Thanks to
talitha78,
klb, others at Vividcon and everyone on Twitter who helped encourage me, it was very much appreciated.
Finally it was Time and I walked to my doom (I kid, I kid but...not).
bessyboo helped me set up the computer tech just in case there was time to watch some ship vids and I tried to prepare myself as best as I could. I had a little intro prepared with a Hamilton quote (of course) and then went through various topics relating to ship vids. Thank you again to everyone who came and to everyone who spoke as well, I really really appreciated it and thank you to
lola for helping out with writing. I can't really say how it went, it wasn't a total disaster at least and I got through it and I hope there was some stuff that was interesting to people. It's just tough because I generally feel like I can tell how good or bad a vid of mine is on some level but I just had no real idea with the panel and it made me feel super uncomfortable. I doubt I'll do another panel again, at least in that format (maybe I could do prep for someone behind the scenes or something someday) but at least I learned what my VVC limits are and can now say I did it. Anyways, I was glad when it was over and that people came over and said nice things to me about it and I could finally relax and not worry about it anymore. It was good to talk a little with
rhea314 and
revolutionaryjo about The Raven Cycle after the panel as well.
TBC here
This entry was originally posted at http://anoel.dreamwidth.org/164301.html. Comment count:
Comment wherever you want.