Filling In The _____s

[kevin_standlee]

I think I've completed everthing. That is, I've checked everything off of my preparation lists. That assumes I've remembered everything when I wrote those lists. Oh, well, with any luck, the things I've forgotten are minor.

One thing that I'd sort of wanted to do here at BayCon but for which I don't think I'm going to have time is to prepare an Audience Survey for people to fill out so that we could use the results as the basis for doing the Super Match in future shows. We don't do the Super Match (where contestants have to guess how a survey group filled in a blank) but instead jump straight to the Panelist Match (which we've rigged so that no panelist every gets selected more than once), but that's mainly because we don't have the source material and have never conducted the necessary survey.

This lack of source material, by the way, is why we don't do Fannish Feud either, although I'd enjoy performing it.

I've told folks who have asked me why we don't do any other game shows, "You write 'em and produce 'em, I'll perform 'em." One of the reasons we do Match Game is that it's relatively simple to produce. While we keep adding bells and buzzers (in this year's case, literally) to the show, in its simplest, stripped down form, it's not very complicated. Writing questions is the hardest part of the whole show, I think.

I'm not moving in to the hotel until tomorrow, as I'll be working a half-day or so in my office in San Mateo, then heading down the hill to the Marriott before (I hope) 1 PM.

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

No new lovely parting gifts, but it sounds like we'll likely have enough.

I've got somewhere a Powerpoint version of the Family Feud big board I did a couple years ago. It's not SF, but, hmmmm...isn't that a pretty flower....

[johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com]

You know, there are a couple of others that we might try.

Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me or Says You from NPR would be pretty easy to pull off.
Fannish Card Sharks would be hard. Fannish Hollywood Squares is doable, but with a few changes. Fannish Beat The Geeks would be interesting...

I'd love to do The Pyramid. THere's gotta be a way to make that happen...
Chris

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The main barrier to Squares is mechanical -- building the set. It's hard enough to get situations with a two-tier Match Game set. One place I would have loved to have tried doing it would have been using nine hotel rooms at the San Jose Doubletree, facing out onto the Promenade Deck, but the logistics would have been quite daunting.

Pyramid would be fun, too, and I think we could get the technical aspects to work if someone would write the questions.

[thebarpilot.livejournal.com]

(Re: 'Hollywood Squares' using nine hotel rooms as squares.)
That would be so. freaking. awesome.
Maybe at SiliCon...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it, though? But I start working through the huge logistical challenges of actually staging it and get the shudders.

Let's see:

Each of the 9 rooms would need a microphone, which means you have to get the microphone to the sound board. (That's either a heck of a lot of wires or lots of wireless mics, all subject to interference.) Then the MC and contestants (located, I guess, up where the projector for the Dive-In Movie sits) would need sound as well, which is three more microphones. And you need a sound system to handle those inputs plus any sound FX you want.

You would want a way to make the "squares" flash. Having someone flash the lights in that hotel room when the square is called would work, but needs a person on each light switch, and that person needs to be able to hear the game. Ideally, you'd have a control operator and radios to nine operators.

The rest seems easy by comparison. I can imagine making large X and O signs that could hang from the balconies. Maybe a high-powered data projector to handle the score display, which you'd throw up on the Dive In Movie wall overlooking the pool. You still have to write questions.

Urgh. It could be done, but the cost in equipment and people is vast. And the whole thing might get rained out, for that matter.