Vividcon 2015 Con Report (Part 1)
Here is my long delayed con report (part 1) from last year's Vividcon. I wrote it down the week after Vividcon but needed to make some edits and forgot to post it. I didn't remember everything so apologies if I missed writing anything down.
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I arrived at the hotel around 11am and in the lobby saw![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
par_avion and serrico. We talked a little as they prepared to make a Trader Joe's run as serrico had never been in a Trader Joe's and I proceeded to wax poetical about it. There was no one around once they had left so I decided it was a perfect time to get in a workout in the hotel gym. After that I met up with elipie, bradcpu and originally kiki_miserychic but then she left because she hates us (not really). I was starving so I ordered takeout of my favorite pad thai from the place down the street and had a great conversation with bradcpu walking there and back. Back at the lobby we were joined by settiai and we talked about the vids we had made for Vividcon and the vids we were excited about. bradcpu told me he made a House S5 vid for Premieres so I was super excited to hear about that and we talked about House and House/Wilson :)
bradcpu and elipie had to leave and then I talked a little more with settiai before heading up to my room to put my stuff away. There I talked a little with my roommate, par_avion before heading back downstairs. I met up with bradcpu (I remember we discussed American Ninja Warrior) and milly and walked over to Spuntino's where elipie, jetpack_monkey, cherryice and kiki_miserychic were having lunch and talked about the things we were excited about. After that we headed back to the hotel and I helped out a little with con setup before going downstairs and hanging out with arduinna, therienne, gwyneth and Mary. We talked a little about vidding and our current fandoms and then I went to help fan_eunice and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vagabondage carry up their stuff to their rooms with kiki_miserychic and milly.
I went to the lobby where there a big group of people and got to say hello to everyone. I remember getting to meetneery and hear about her experiences as a first time German attendee, I talked with cherryice about her experiences getting to the airport and showed her my LA Zoo giraffe pictures (they weren't out when she went there). I was able to help organize a House O' Meat dinner and a group of 11 of us headed into the restaurant where they were nice enough to accommodate all of us at one big table. I was near neery, cherryice, bironic and tencel and we all shared some fun discussions. After that I went to registration where I got to hug bessyboo and enjoy checking out the con program to see all the different fandoms people had vidded. We eventually had a big Billy & Billie discussion ie squeefest with elipie and kiki_miserychic and had lots of fun talking about stepcest. I was surprised to see dualbunny at Vividcon as I had recently seen her posting her California pictures but was glad she was able to attend and got to talk to her, absolutedestiny and a couple other people. I also saw cathexys and were had a nice conversation and then I got to talk to futuransky about what she was up to. A little later astolat and cesperanza were there and I had fun talking to them.
Then I went to the Mystery Vid Party where we had fun watching vids off ofrevolutionaryjo's hard drive. I remember there was a fun multifandom dance vid to Shut Up and Dance and we were all like, it HAS to go in Club Vivid, we need to tell absolutedestiny for next year...and of course he already knew about it and put it in Club Vivid this year. We also watched this Mulan/Jon Snow vid which was funny and actually kind of worked. At some point, it got late and we left and I talked a bit to my roomies, par_avion and talitha78 before I went to go to sleep. At this point, I started getting sad and depressed about the Patrick Kane news and feeling the death of my ship was hitting me hard :( But I was able to fall asleep and actually get 8 hours of sleep which I wanted to get before I started getting less than six hours each night.
I went downstairs to get breakfast my usual five minutes before it closed (in my defense closing at 9am is pretty early. I had breakfast withcathexys, lolachrome and futuransky and I remember we had a conversation about growing up playing music in school. Then I went up to go to the Welcome and History of Escapade vidshow where it was nice to see some older vids I really loved like the Oz and "Us" vid for Highlighander. Next up was the Game Plan vidshow which I was really excited to see and I was the volunteer for the door to let people in. The vidshow was AMAZING (my fave of the con) and made me feel all kinds of sports feels from Smash having fun playing football, ice skating pairs in love, GERMAN FOOTBALL FEELS, Michael Jordan nostalgic competency porn (best sports player ever!!!), Chicago Cubs love (I don't even go here!) to cheerleading sparkle effects love. I talked a little to bradcpu, elipie and milly about the vidshow and then walked over to Spuntino's with grammarwoman, talitha78 and tencel to pickup lunch to take back to serrico's room. where had fun talking about fandom stuff.
Next up was the Survival of the Viddest panel where we talked about how to preserve vid files which I've been concerned about lately as I try to download vids and find some of them are gone. I was excited to hear that the AO3 vidding committee (looking for volunteers!) was working on starting a dark archive to keep vids from disappearing forever. After that was the BTVS: Nummy Treats panel which focused on the Nummy Treats mailing list back around 2002 and howsisabet and other Vividcon members got into vidding Buffy (mostly Spike) and they showed some classic vids and talked about the BandofBuggered forum and how it improved their vidding. I knew some of the information already but I loved the complete overview and getting to find more background about it (also Superstar is still AMAZING).
After that I went to the Make Mine Multi panel led byjetpack_monkey which was very relevant as I have a few multi vids I want to make in the near future and it provided a lot of good advice on how to tackle both big and small multi projects which helped excite me to want to make them. It was a two hour panel and after that was dinner where I went to the House O' Meat where I got to discuss all my German Football feels with barkley which was SO MUCH FUN! We talked about watching the World Cup last year, how she got into Borussia Dortmund, MARCO and the rest of these guys we can't help but love. After that I went back to my room to change into my outfit for Club Vivid. I went as Kimmy Schmidt from the Pilot and had her pink pants, yellow cardigan, purple backpack and sparkle shoes I had made myself. It seemed to go over well and there was some other amazing costumes from a group going as the Orphan Black clones, bironic as Bucky from Winter Soldier, bradcpu and milly dressed in Star Trek outfits, bessyboo's group going as My Little Pony ponies, deejay as Immortan Joe from Fury Road and many more.
I was determined to get more drunk than I had in previous years so I made sure to have a bunch of shots (with a touch of juice) throughout the night while drinking plenty of water. Club Vivid was as always AMAZING but feeling drunker definitely improved the experience. I don't remember a lot of specifics but it was SO much fun dancing with everyone. After Club Vivid, a bunch of us hung outside and I was able to introducejarrow and scribe to each other since I knew they both loved women's soccer and it arose a super fun conversation about the US women winning the World Cup along with bessyboo who we were trying to get more into it. jarrow shared his roommate and his's superhero equivalents to the USWNT which was amazing and basically talked about how awesome all the players were, the (sometimes canon) ships and the NWSL. heresluck came over at one point and talked to jarrow and I about Friday Night Lights and I was super excited to hear about their vidding plans for the show.
At some point, I went to check out the party ingeekturnedvamp's room where they were watching vids from the vidshows and I saw trelkez's great Merlin vid. A few people left because of tiredness and then I talked with geekturnedvamp a little about Meredith/Cristina from Grey's (they had watched my vid previously) and Alicia/Kalinda from The Good Wife which was a lot of fun. The last of us left, geekturnedvamp, tencel, someone else I forgot (sorry!) and I then watched the Hey Vid, Wanna Get High? vidshow and it was the perfect vidshow to watch at 2 am after drinking and dancing all night with all the pretty colors and beautiful editing and I saw a bunch of anime vids I really loved. We talked a bit more and then I headed back to my room around 3:30 am to get some much needed sleep. I woke up with only a small headache and a bit of quesiness which I considered a win and then went down to breakfast.
The first panel of the day was due South: 3 Fannish Waves which was led byscribe and sdwolfpup. They talked about three different time periods when Due South vids were made and the different genres vidders tackled and how it seemed many of the same kind of vids were made for each period with less differences than we expected. We watched some of my favorite Due South vids including Wonder of Birds, Goody Two Shoes, Istanbul (Not Constinople) and others which were fun to see all together. Then I stayed for the Life After Vidding panel where pipsqueaky and vagabondage talked about strategies for dealing with times when you're not vidding, from overcoming the vidding block to accepting that you need a break. It was an inspiring panel and I felt even more motivated to vid after it. Next I went to go get lunch at the Thai place forgetting that it's closed for lunch on Saturdays (every yea I forget!) but ran into jackiekjono on the way there and we went together to Spuntino's to have lunch together and were able to catch up talking about our fandoms, vidding and RL.
When I got back, I learned of the Vividcon Lock In where a few Vividcon members got locked into their hotel room but thankfully they were able to let them out around the time I got back from lunch. Next I went to the Stop, Collaborate & Listen vidding panel which was different than I expected with a little bit of discussion of positives and negatives of collaboration and then turned into an group exercise where vidders had sheets of paper describing the ways they could use help for their next vid (song choice, cheerleading, tech help, beta, etc) and others could have help sheets and volunteer to help. It was a bit tough for me at first because some of my projects are secret but it was really fun to walk around and talk with others about collaborating. Mostly it made me realize that I've been approaching vidding in too much of a solitary way and I need to make more of an effort to get more cheerleading and accountability in making the vids I want to make as in our community more than enough people are willing to help (I am definitely willing to do this in return as well!). I was super happy thatjarrow and laurashapiro (who couldn't make it but helped with the idea) had done the panel and am already planning on attempting more collaborations in the future.
After that I went to the Vidding Doctor Who panel led bymilly where she talked about some of the challenges of vidding Doctor Who and displayed vids that illustrated different ways of doing so even if not all of them were successful for people who didn't know Doctor Who. I did make a brief stop in Nearly New to see my Alicia/Kalinda vid as I was feeling super shippy for them and before I went in, had a nice chat with Allison about The Good Wife as I was excited to find another fan of the show. I had a LOT of feelings seeing my vid and then went back into the panel where I saw some great vids including Ghost by morgandawn and Blank Space by purple_fringe and such_heights. Next up was the Vidding as Media Literacy panel which had acafans paired with the vidders of the vids they showed in their classes and each one talked a bit about their experiences. It was interesting to discuss the way students saw vidding and vids as well as the questions about vidding canon and the vids included in that.
Finally I went to Wish You Were Here which played premieres by non-attending vidders as well as vids from supporting members and past members. It was a great show and I particularly enjoyed Uptown Funk bysuch_heights (there were happy tears!), The Girl You Like by dragonchic (amazing cutting!), All of Me by kuwdora (Fraser/RayK feels!), Crazy in Love by chaila (GONE GIRL FEEEELS!) and Never Look Away by fray_adjacent (Buffy!!). Then I went to have takeout dinner with cathexys, lolachrome and Allison where they showed me the women in coding vid from Wiscon and also saw the Amy Schumer video about women saying sorry all the time which is definitely something I need to work on. We also talked about academics, our fandoms and lolachrome talked to me about her book coming out. I know we talked about The Good Wife and Alicia/Kalinda since it's my current favorite ship and cathexys, Allison and I talked about UnReal which was a lot of fun.
We continued our discussion while waiting for Premieres to begin and I talked more about The Good Wife withlolachrome. Finally Premieres started and it was going great until there was tech trouble playing lolachrome's vid. I was trying to comfort her because I felt really bad and told her the story of how my very first vid that played at Vividcon (not a premiere thankfully) had tech trouble for 10 minutes and then we distracted ourselves by talking more about The Good Wife. Finally her vid successfully played...and then my vid in Premieres had tech trouble (after kiki_miserychic's AMAZING Cookie vid played). I couldn't stop laughing because it was the most beautiful, cosmic joke with us both right next to each other and after I had told my tech trouble story. But it was fine because immediately lolachrome distracted me by talking about Alicia/Kalinda and if there's anything I would love to do more than watch Premieres vids, it's talk about my favorite ship ;) Thankfully my vid's tech trouble was fixed quickly and then the rest of the first half vids played and they were awesome.
The Premieres vids of the second half were also amazing including the one-two punch of two of my favorite vids,astolat's Fast and the Furious vid and jarrow's The 100 vid which were just full of FEELS to watch for me. It was definitely a happier Premieres show...until we got to the one-two punch of SADNESS from bradcpu's wonderful House S5 vid that gave me House/Wilson feels while being super sad and then milly WRECKED me with her Hogwarts vid which made me nostalgic and miss the fandom while giving me a lot of Vividcon feels thinking of the hotel as Hogwarts and all the changes we've been through. I also LOVED barkley's soccer vid at the end which gave me happy sports feelings along with MARCO love. Afterwards I talked with some of the vidders who made vids who I enjoyed which is always fun.
W
I arrived at the hotel around 11am and in the lobby saw
par_avion and serrico. We talked a little as they prepared to make a Trader Joe's run as serrico had never been in a Trader Joe's and I proceeded to wax poetical about it. There was no one around once they had left so I decided it was a perfect time to get in a workout in the hotel gym. After that I met up with elipie, bradcpu and originally kiki_miserychic but then she left because she hates us (not really). I was starving so I ordered takeout of my favorite pad thai from the place down the street and had a great conversation with bradcpu walking there and back. Back at the lobby we were joined by settiai and we talked about the vids we had made for Vividcon and the vids we were excited about. bradcpu told me he made a House S5 vid for Premieres so I was super excited to hear about that and we talked about House and House/Wilson :) bradcpu and elipie had to leave and then I talked a little more with settiai before heading up to my room to put my stuff away. There I talked a little with my roommate, par_avion before heading back downstairs. I met up with bradcpu (I remember we discussed American Ninja Warrior) and milly and walked over to Spuntino's where elipie, jetpack_monkey, cherryice and kiki_miserychic were having lunch and talked about the things we were excited about. After that we headed back to the hotel and I helped out a little with con setup before going downstairs and hanging out with arduinna, therienne, gwyneth and Mary. We talked a little about vidding and our current fandoms and then I went to help fan_eunice and vagabondage carry up their stuff to their rooms with kiki_miserychic and milly.I went to the lobby where there a big group of people and got to say hello to everyone. I remember getting to meet
neery and hear about her experiences as a first time German attendee, I talked with cherryice about her experiences getting to the airport and showed her my LA Zoo giraffe pictures (they weren't out when she went there). I was able to help organize a House O' Meat dinner and a group of 11 of us headed into the restaurant where they were nice enough to accommodate all of us at one big table. I was near neery, cherryice, bironic and tencel and we all shared some fun discussions. After that I went to registration where I got to hug bessyboo and enjoy checking out the con program to see all the different fandoms people had vidded. We eventually had a big Billy & Billie discussion ie squeefest with elipie and kiki_miserychic and had lots of fun talking about stepcest. I was surprised to see dualbunny at Vividcon as I had recently seen her posting her California pictures but was glad she was able to attend and got to talk to her, absolutedestiny and a couple other people. I also saw cathexys and were had a nice conversation and then I got to talk to futuransky about what she was up to. A little later astolat and cesperanza were there and I had fun talking to them.Then I went to the Mystery Vid Party where we had fun watching vids off of
revolutionaryjo's hard drive. I remember there was a fun multifandom dance vid to Shut Up and Dance and we were all like, it HAS to go in Club Vivid, we need to tell absolutedestiny for next year...and of course he already knew about it and put it in Club Vivid this year. We also watched this Mulan/Jon Snow vid which was funny and actually kind of worked. At some point, it got late and we left and I talked a bit to my roomies, par_avion and talitha78 before I went to go to sleep. At this point, I started getting sad and depressed about the Patrick Kane news and feeling the death of my ship was hitting me hard :( But I was able to fall asleep and actually get 8 hours of sleep which I wanted to get before I started getting less than six hours each night.I went downstairs to get breakfast my usual five minutes before it closed (in my defense closing at 9am is pretty early. I had breakfast with
cathexys, lolachrome and futuransky and I remember we had a conversation about growing up playing music in school. Then I went up to go to the Welcome and History of Escapade vidshow where it was nice to see some older vids I really loved like the Oz and "Us" vid for Highlighander. Next up was the Game Plan vidshow which I was really excited to see and I was the volunteer for the door to let people in. The vidshow was AMAZING (my fave of the con) and made me feel all kinds of sports feels from Smash having fun playing football, ice skating pairs in love, GERMAN FOOTBALL FEELS, Michael Jordan nostalgic competency porn (best sports player ever!!!), Chicago Cubs love (I don't even go here!) to cheerleading sparkle effects love. I talked a little to bradcpu, elipie and milly about the vidshow and then walked over to Spuntino's with grammarwoman, talitha78 and tencel to pickup lunch to take back to serrico's room. where had fun talking about fandom stuff. Next up was the Survival of the Viddest panel where we talked about how to preserve vid files which I've been concerned about lately as I try to download vids and find some of them are gone. I was excited to hear that the AO3 vidding committee (looking for volunteers!) was working on starting a dark archive to keep vids from disappearing forever. After that was the BTVS: Nummy Treats panel which focused on the Nummy Treats mailing list back around 2002 and how
sisabet and other Vividcon members got into vidding Buffy (mostly Spike) and they showed some classic vids and talked about the BandofBuggered forum and how it improved their vidding. I knew some of the information already but I loved the complete overview and getting to find more background about it (also Superstar is still AMAZING). After that I went to the Make Mine Multi panel led by
jetpack_monkey which was very relevant as I have a few multi vids I want to make in the near future and it provided a lot of good advice on how to tackle both big and small multi projects which helped excite me to want to make them. It was a two hour panel and after that was dinner where I went to the House O' Meat where I got to discuss all my German Football feels with barkley which was SO MUCH FUN! We talked about watching the World Cup last year, how she got into Borussia Dortmund, MARCO and the rest of these guys we can't help but love. After that I went back to my room to change into my outfit for Club Vivid. I went as Kimmy Schmidt from the Pilot and had her pink pants, yellow cardigan, purple backpack and sparkle shoes I had made myself. It seemed to go over well and there was some other amazing costumes from a group going as the Orphan Black clones, bironic as Bucky from Winter Soldier, bradcpu and milly dressed in Star Trek outfits, bessyboo's group going as My Little Pony ponies, deejay as Immortan Joe from Fury Road and many more. I was determined to get more drunk than I had in previous years so I made sure to have a bunch of shots (with a touch of juice) throughout the night while drinking plenty of water. Club Vivid was as always AMAZING but feeling drunker definitely improved the experience. I don't remember a lot of specifics but it was SO much fun dancing with everyone. After Club Vivid, a bunch of us hung outside and I was able to introduce
jarrow and scribe to each other since I knew they both loved women's soccer and it arose a super fun conversation about the US women winning the World Cup along with bessyboo who we were trying to get more into it. jarrow shared his roommate and his's superhero equivalents to the USWNT which was amazing and basically talked about how awesome all the players were, the (sometimes canon) ships and the NWSL. heresluck came over at one point and talked to jarrow and I about Friday Night Lights and I was super excited to hear about their vidding plans for the show. At some point, I went to check out the party in
geekturnedvamp's room where they were watching vids from the vidshows and I saw trelkez's great Merlin vid. A few people left because of tiredness and then I talked with geekturnedvamp a little about Meredith/Cristina from Grey's (they had watched my vid previously) and Alicia/Kalinda from The Good Wife which was a lot of fun. The last of us left, geekturnedvamp, tencel, someone else I forgot (sorry!) and I then watched the Hey Vid, Wanna Get High? vidshow and it was the perfect vidshow to watch at 2 am after drinking and dancing all night with all the pretty colors and beautiful editing and I saw a bunch of anime vids I really loved. We talked a bit more and then I headed back to my room around 3:30 am to get some much needed sleep. I woke up with only a small headache and a bit of quesiness which I considered a win and then went down to breakfast.The first panel of the day was due South: 3 Fannish Waves which was led by
scribe and sdwolfpup. They talked about three different time periods when Due South vids were made and the different genres vidders tackled and how it seemed many of the same kind of vids were made for each period with less differences than we expected. We watched some of my favorite Due South vids including Wonder of Birds, Goody Two Shoes, Istanbul (Not Constinople) and others which were fun to see all together. Then I stayed for the Life After Vidding panel where pipsqueaky and vagabondage talked about strategies for dealing with times when you're not vidding, from overcoming the vidding block to accepting that you need a break. It was an inspiring panel and I felt even more motivated to vid after it. Next I went to go get lunch at the Thai place forgetting that it's closed for lunch on Saturdays (every yea I forget!) but ran into jackiekjono on the way there and we went together to Spuntino's to have lunch together and were able to catch up talking about our fandoms, vidding and RL. When I got back, I learned of the Vividcon Lock In where a few Vividcon members got locked into their hotel room but thankfully they were able to let them out around the time I got back from lunch. Next I went to the Stop, Collaborate & Listen vidding panel which was different than I expected with a little bit of discussion of positives and negatives of collaboration and then turned into an group exercise where vidders had sheets of paper describing the ways they could use help for their next vid (song choice, cheerleading, tech help, beta, etc) and others could have help sheets and volunteer to help. It was a bit tough for me at first because some of my projects are secret but it was really fun to walk around and talk with others about collaborating. Mostly it made me realize that I've been approaching vidding in too much of a solitary way and I need to make more of an effort to get more cheerleading and accountability in making the vids I want to make as in our community more than enough people are willing to help (I am definitely willing to do this in return as well!). I was super happy that
jarrow and laurashapiro (who couldn't make it but helped with the idea) had done the panel and am already planning on attempting more collaborations in the future.After that I went to the Vidding Doctor Who panel led by
milly where she talked about some of the challenges of vidding Doctor Who and displayed vids that illustrated different ways of doing so even if not all of them were successful for people who didn't know Doctor Who. I did make a brief stop in Nearly New to see my Alicia/Kalinda vid as I was feeling super shippy for them and before I went in, had a nice chat with Allison about The Good Wife as I was excited to find another fan of the show. I had a LOT of feelings seeing my vid and then went back into the panel where I saw some great vids including Ghost by morgandawn and Blank Space by purple_fringe and such_heights. Next up was the Vidding as Media Literacy panel which had acafans paired with the vidders of the vids they showed in their classes and each one talked a bit about their experiences. It was interesting to discuss the way students saw vidding and vids as well as the questions about vidding canon and the vids included in that. Finally I went to Wish You Were Here which played premieres by non-attending vidders as well as vids from supporting members and past members. It was a great show and I particularly enjoyed Uptown Funk by
such_heights (there were happy tears!), The Girl You Like by dragonchic (amazing cutting!), All of Me by kuwdora (Fraser/RayK feels!), Crazy in Love by chaila (GONE GIRL FEEEELS!) and Never Look Away by fray_adjacent (Buffy!!). Then I went to have takeout dinner with cathexys, lolachrome and Allison where they showed me the women in coding vid from Wiscon and also saw the Amy Schumer video about women saying sorry all the time which is definitely something I need to work on. We also talked about academics, our fandoms and lolachrome talked to me about her book coming out. I know we talked about The Good Wife and Alicia/Kalinda since it's my current favorite ship and cathexys, Allison and I talked about UnReal which was a lot of fun.We continued our discussion while waiting for Premieres to begin and I talked more about The Good Wife with
lolachrome. Finally Premieres started and it was going great until there was tech trouble playing lolachrome's vid. I was trying to comfort her because I felt really bad and told her the story of how my very first vid that played at Vividcon (not a premiere thankfully) had tech trouble for 10 minutes and then we distracted ourselves by talking more about The Good Wife. Finally her vid successfully played...and then my vid in Premieres had tech trouble (after kiki_miserychic's AMAZING Cookie vid played). I couldn't stop laughing because it was the most beautiful, cosmic joke with us both right next to each other and after I had told my tech trouble story. But it was fine because immediately lolachrome distracted me by talking about Alicia/Kalinda and if there's anything I would love to do more than watch Premieres vids, it's talk about my favorite ship ;) Thankfully my vid's tech trouble was fixed quickly and then the rest of the first half vids played and they were awesome.The Premieres vids of the second half were also amazing including the one-two punch of two of my favorite vids,
astolat's Fast and the Furious vid and jarrow's The 100 vid which were just full of FEELS to watch for me. It was definitely a happier Premieres show...until we got to the one-two punch of SADNESS from bradcpu's wonderful House S5 vid that gave me House/Wilson feels while being super sad and then milly WRECKED me with her Hogwarts vid which made me nostalgic and miss the fandom while giving me a lot of Vividcon feels thinking of the hotel as Hogwarts and all the changes we've been through. I also LOVED barkley's soccer vid at the end which gave me happy sports feelings along with MARCO love. Afterwards I talked with some of the vidders who made vids who I enjoyed which is always fun.
no subject
What the flip was I doing?!?!? I cannot remember. I'm stuck on the first paragraph of your con report.
no subject
Can't wait to see you again soon!