Match Game: Audio Tapes Cut

[kevin_standlee]

Tonight after coming from from BASFA, I copied the one piece of Match Game music I did not yet have on tape from CD to tape, that being the "Plug" music that we play under commercials. And we will have commercials! Our sponsors include the Hollister in 2008 bid (Chris Garcia delivered to me a bag of Casa de Fruta stuff today), Emerald City (copies of issue #129 to all players), and, pending agreement in the next few days, Cargo Cult Books, which will provide a $20 gift certificate to one winner. (I haven't yet decided how to determine which game has which prize.)

An interesting cultural distinction between the US and UK came up while I was discussing the commercials with cherylmorgan. I think that having a commercial break in between each game, with one of the sponsors getting a 30-second commercial read by our announcer, will add some "realism" to the game and show that we have our act together. Cheryl suggested that if we tried having commercial breaks at a British convention, the fans would be furious at us for the crass commercialism, even though all the sponsors are "in the family" (a hoax Worldcon bid, a Hugo Award-winning 'zine, and a dealer who is a former Worldcon chair).

Meanwhile, back to the tapes. Already on tape is the Main Title music (using a custom remix of the title from the Classic Game Show Themes CD so that there are enough "whomps" up front to allow announcer Eric Larson to introduce the panelists), and the continuous "Think" music.

The CD that Andy gave me has a couple of other variations of the "think" music, and if I had sound editing software handy, I might have tried creating continuous loops of it to put onto other tapes, but I don't have time for this, so we'll have to use the relatively boring "think" music that just plays the loop.

I have the boom box and various audio cables (in case BayCon program tech do end up getting us a small sound board into which we can push the sound, rather than having to rely only on the boom box) now set up by the rapidly-growing pile of "send to BayCon" stuff.

Meanwhile, big thanks to bigblued, who produced the very nice animated GIFs of the Match Game SF logo!

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Aside from generating the ambiance of a 70s game show, the comercial breaks are good for keeping the audience occupied while the contestants swap out and the host reviews their names and the upcoming questions.

British cons and ads ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... I think Cheryl is wrong about the ads.

Certainly we've been talking about producing an Orbital DVD (3-5 minutes perhaps) that can be stuck on the projector in the main hall of other conventions while they are clearing one programme item and loading people in for the next one.

Re: British cons and ads ...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It's possible that the attitudes are changing and that Cheryl is thinking of an older, more conservative and "hyper-fannish" approach. As you probably know, we used "slide show" ads prior to all of Interaction's major events. These were a series of advertising (and other) slides that played on the projection screen during the event load-ins. We sold those ads, and the money we raised, while not huge, was enough to fund some extra "nice to have" functions, mostly "backstage" stuff that most attendees would not have noticed but which made all of our events run more smoothly. (Example: snack food backstage pre-Masquerade, which allowed the staff and partcipants to be able to get a bit to eat rather than having to run off and find food during the setup period, when time is at a premium.) Also, the slides gave the audience something to look at during the otherwise dead "load in," like at a movie theatre.

The slides didn't go quite as smoothly as I wanted, for technical reasons. On one event, the slides got stuck rather than running continuously. (I think this was due to porting from Windows PowerPoint to the Mac version for that one event -- the Mac version apparently didn't recognize the "run continuously" command in the slide deck.) On another, we accidentally hit the "show all" instead of "show Closing Ceremony" button. (All of the slides were in a single file, with a separate slide show programmed for each of the five major events. That was because we sold slides per individual event as well as all-event packages, and also because there were "editorial" slides tailored to each event. Still, we didn't hear too many complaints aside from one internal complaint that I'd rather not discuss here and with which we dealt as well as we could.

On the other hand, comparisons with Worldcon may not be valid, on account of the perception by some "traditionalists" that "Worldcon is a big American convention that sometimes is held outside of America, so nothing that happens there has any bearing on Real British Conventions."

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

While I was an avid Match Game viewer in the 60's and 70's, honestly the only think I remember about this game show is that Gene Rayburn was the host. Funny, because I can at least remember the premise for dozens of other game shows ...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I must have watched a lot of episodes myself. The 60s version was completely different from the 70s version; however, I had no problem remembering the game mechanics. What surprised me, when I started researching for this, was how many different variations the game had, from the original 60s version through various additions to the Bonus Round added to try and jazz up the game.

It's pretty clear that the magic of Match Game isn't the game itself, but the interaction among the panelists. This is probably why the attempts to revive it have not worked; they haven't hit on the right mix of panelists.

It was late....

[bigblued.livejournal.com]

And I had too much coffee. http://bigblued.com/laconiv/mgsf.pdf

Re: It was late....

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That is fantastic! A huge improvement on what I did. I'm very impressed, and I will almost certainly use it. Thank you so much!

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

I think that "commercials" are a good idea. They add a bit of interest during an otherwise "dead air" time.

[miramon.livejournal.com]

Actually, I seem to recall we did ads of the sort you describe at Confabulation (the 1995 Eastercon) in order to break up the Moose TV item. I don't recall civilisation ending, though I suppose it might have done.