NDK 10: Video Rooms

Being the new Video Coordinator for Nan Desu Kan, I spent the majority of my time not in the video rooms but rather running between them. With the way the convention is arranged at the hotel, we have two video rooms on the mezzanine level on one side of the hotel and one larger video room on the opposite end of the hotel on the ground level. The hotel is probably an eighth of a mile long, and I walked back and forth between the rooms perhaps a hundred times during the convention.

I arrived at the hotel around 10:30 AM on Friday. My plan was to help my staff set up the video rooms, hauling equipment from the truck to the rooms and connecting and testing everything. It didn’t turn out this way. I learned pretty quickly why my predecessor never helped set up the video rooms. It’s not because she didn’t know how or that she was lazy; there was too much else to be done.

I had to track down the DVDs that we were going to show during the weekend, find or buy anything that we were missing, and work out staffing problems. I was prepared to do more of the same from previous years but the work turned out to be anything but.

We eventually got our little problems worked out and two of the rooms opened on time, the third missing the 2:00 deadline by just five minutes. This was unprecedented, I’m told. In most of the previous years, at least one video room always opened over an hour late.

Once things got going, everything ran smoothly. We didn’t have any equipment meltdowns (again, a first). With few exceptions, we started titles on time or just shortly after the times for which they were scheduled, which is ideal.

We had quite a few special events held in our video rooms. These included the wildly popular AMV Hell 3, Super Fanboy Attack! by the Custodians of Otakudom, Mystery Anime Theater (basically MST3K with a bad anime movie), and the annual Insane Counting Contest. By far the most exciting (if not the most packed) event was the showing of Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa. We showed the movie in two of our three video rooms at midnight on Saturday night and nearly packed them both.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see any of the aforementioned showings because I was too busy helping to get them set up or working crowd control to keep the doors from being crowded because more people wanted to watch than could fit in the room.

Two of my favorite events that we held were the AMV Overload and AMV Coordinator Playlist Favorite events. The first of these was basically showing a bunch of AMVs that were good but not quite good enough to make the cut into the main AMV contest (there were 136 submissions and 32 openings). The second event was the showing of the personal favorites of NDK’s AMV Coordinator, Scottanime. The room was beyond packed for the two full hours of these events.

There was also an industry panel hosted by Lance Heiskell of FUNimation. I missed this event (we had it scheduled opposite the AMV events) and from what I’m told, it was a spectacular panel. I heard a lot of laughs from the room and quite a few people told me they had a great time. I originally didn’t expect it to go over as well as it did. Knowing how good it was, I’m hoping Lance comes back next year and runs another panel so I can be there.

And finally, there was an experimental panel featuring the voice actor Darrel Guilbeau. He provided the voice for the main character in Overman King Gainer and he wanted to have a panel about what goes into dubbing anime. He first introduced himself and then we played an episode of Gainer, after which he wanted to do some Q&A. Unfortunately, the audience wasn’t as participatory as Darrel had hoped and things kind of fell flat. We played another episode of Gainer and again he tried to do some Q&A but the audience didn’t make a peep. It was really unfortunate because Darrel was a great guy and I know he had a lot of interesting stuff to talk about. Because the Q&A didn’t really pan out, we decided to play two more episodes of Gainer and a few of the fans went to talk to Darrel while the episodes played. They got a good discussion going with the seven or eight of them, so I’m glad it wasn’t a bust. I guess it just goes to show you how introverted a lot of anime fans really are (I’m no exception here). In hindsight, I could have really helped this panel just by asking a couple of questions myself. I’ve seen other panel hosts either start the discussion or continue past a dull spot with their own question and maybe if I’d spoken up I could’ve sparked the questions from the attendees.

I’m not even covering 10 percent of what went on during the convention in the video rooms, but I’m happy to say that everything went so well on the whole. Several of my staff members (many of whom have been working the video rooms twice as long as me) told me this is the best year they’ve had working in video, and that made me very happy.

Next year, we’re going to get an earlier start on our preparations and the stress level will be much lower. I see nothing but good things happening in the future of the NDK video rooms.