Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Match Game SF at Westercon has three planned shows:

Thursday 4 PM
Thursday 8:30 PM
Saturday 10:30 PM

Although it looks like we have the panelist situation under control, we still need help, because many of our "usual suspects" won't be in San Diego.

We need an Announcer. That's someone with a good strong radio voice who can read the opening and closing credits, introduce the contestants, and read the commercial messages in the between-games breaks.

We also need several Production Assistants. These people report to Lisa and do what she tells them to do, including collecting contestants' name sign-ups and helping contestants get their prizes.

( Working Conditions )

People working on the show get Lovely Parting Gifts automatically.

Write to me if you're interested.

Thanks be to Westercon 67 for letting us have Salon B/C from 7 PM onward for our 9 PM show, and for not complaining about our sound checks in the room immediately adjacent to the Masquerade in the main ballroom, separated only by an air-wall. Lisa and I went out for an early dinner, first going to the Cheesecake Factory in the City Creek Mall, but balking at how loud it was there and going over to the Food Court instead. I'm glad we got dinner because it was a long, busy, exciting evening.

( Scenes of Set-up )

The show went really well, and Scott counted at least 70 people (not including panelists and crew) attending at one point, which means more than that got to see the show as people cycled in and out for the five games we played. We gave away memberships to the next two Westercons — including the just-elected Westercon 69 in Portland. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and even travelswithkuma got into the act with a question about him.

After five games, and around 11:30 PM, we called it a night and struck the set. Scott also helped wonderfully with the tear-down, even taking the luggage cart back to the bell desk for us so that we did not have to go back downstairs and could instead collapse out of our costumes and into a relatively cool room.

Thanks again to Westercon 67 for adjusting their programming schedule to give us the rather large block of time (six hours in all including set-up and tear-down) to put on Match Game SF for Westercon. It's tiring, but satisfying. Also big thanks to everyone who made the show happen. We had a lot of fun, and I'm glad everyone enjoyed it.

We were too worn out after the show to hit the parties, and now we have to try and get some sleep before being up again for the Westercon Business Meeting at 11:30 Saturday morning. Fortunately, aside from officially receiving the results of Site Selection voting, we're not expecting any business, so this should be a short meeting. Fingers crossed.

Lisa has been packing the Astro with the Match Game gear for the past week now, as well as cleaning the van and otherwise preparing it to head to Salt Lake City for Westercon. Yesterday afternoon between the two World Cup matches, we drove over to Hanneman's Car Wash (the same people from whom we buy our propane) and cleaned the outside as well. After it dried, Lisa stowed it inside the garage. (Thanks to her hard work with shelves and our work moving stuff to the storage locker, we have room to park two vehicles in our two-car garage!) That way the van will stay relatively cool out of the sun until after sundown tonight, when we'll move it out front in preparation for final loading tomorrow morning.

We got our schedules from Westercon today, which confirm that Match Game SF will be on Friday night from 9 PM (time approximate after Masquerade) in Salon B/C. Only those panelists who were previously in Westercon's list of program participants are listing, which means a couple of you who are expected MGSF panelists aren't on the list. I hope you'll be there anyway!

Yesterday afternoon, I went up to the upstairs office (which is now habitable in the summer thanks to the swamp cooler repairs) and finalized the questions we'll be using. I used many of the questions submitted over the past few months, but kept a few of those we've used before. All of the show production gear, including the questions and prizes, is now packed in the Astro waiting for us to move out tomorrow morning. Aside from packing our personal luggage, we're ready to go.

It looks at the moment that we will be doing one show of Match Game SF at Westercon 67 in Salt Lake City, and that will be sometime on Saturday night. This coming weekend I will be setting up the question and prize packages for the show. Lisa is currently packing our voluminous tech gear into the Astro for our drive across Nevada next week. I still need new questions for Match Game, and if I don't get enough usable questions, I'll have to recycle old ones.

As a reminder, Match Game questions are not trivia questions; that is, there's no single objectively correct answer. They should have multiple ways to fill in the blank, and preferable be humorous. For example, "As he left the TARDIS, the Doctor said, 'That's the last time I let one of my companions play with my _____!'"

Comments screened on this entry so you can post proposed questions without other people seeing them. You can also direct message me on LiveJournal, or send e-mail to my username @livejournal.com. My regular e-mail address is my first initial, my middle initial (A for Allen), my last name, and @gmail.com

Thanks to those of you who have responded so far to my request for Match Game SF questions. I've been moderating the ones posted as comments to my LJ to keep them from being too visible to potential contestants. Keep sending me questions as you think of them. It's the one thing that's hardest about doing the show, really.

For those of you coming to Westercon, I'm also looking for production assistants, and furthermore we need an announcer because all of our usual deep-voiced friends don't look like they'll be there. If you think you could announce a game show, contact me and let's discuss it.

I should have done yesterday's entry about Match Game SF today and this one today, because I forgot to include the photo below that logically falls into the sequence of the production.

( Without You, I'd Be Talking to Myself )

This brings to an end my current series of posts about producing Match Game SF. I hope y'all found it interesting. I plan to bookmark this series for the next convention who asks about how we do the show and why we have so many strange requests. I'll point them at it and say, "Read this and look at the pictures and you'll understand better what we want and why we ask for it."

Continuing my look at how we put together Match Game SF, here's a picture of the panel working on answering a question.

( So Glad We Got the Whiteboards )

As I've said before, I personally find writing the questions the hardest part of the show. Writing is always underrated. Once the questions are printed and packed in their envelopes, my stress level goes way down.

Behind the cut is a photo of our Match Game SF set-up on Saturday night of Westercon 66, before people began to arrive.

( One of our Better Sets )

I have been trying to take pictures of all of our sets to show to convention Programming people who have not seen one of our shows but hear about this "Match Game" thing. Since fewer and fewer people have seen the original show, they have difficult visualizing it. More than once we have been given a room with a single head table, since all program items are talking head panels.

Honestly, as a conrunner myself, I can completely understand why a convention wouldn't be interested in carving out at least four hours of program time on an item that requires a complete room re-set. We need three head tables (two of them staggered oddly), plus two more tables for tech and for displaying prizes. It takes at least an hour (two is better) to set up the tech gear. We generally cannot rely on the gear on-site. At one convention the Super Tech Team insisted that we should just use their kit. Lisa just kept setting up her smaller kit that she knows how to work. We were 45 minutes into our show before the Super Tech Team found the power switch on their kit.

We also refuse to be the "Masquerade Half Time" show, after an unfortunate experience where we had been expecting to do at least three and optimally four games and instead were booted out after two games and told that there was something more important to go on after us. (In other words, because other things had run long, we had to be cut.) Honestly, there's so much gear in our show that we'd really prefer not to do it at all unless we're going to play at least four games. Even better turns out to be a four-game show early in the convention and a "late night" show late in the convention.

If this is too much for a convention to do for us, I have no hard feelings. Conventions are difficult. Programming/Events managers have to balance a lot of things. I feel no sense of entitlement. But if you do invite us, and provide us with the room and set-up we request, we'll work our tails off for you to entertain our fellow fans and give everyone a good time.

That was very possibly the best Match Game SF show we have ever done. The room was set up almost perfectly. (I say almost because it's nearly impossible to get double risers, which would have made it work better.) The room was completely full, more chairs were brought in, they filled up, SRO and people being turned away (I'm sorry about that last). Lisa says we had more than 100 attending before she lost count.

We did four shows, and the audience seemed sorry that we were done after the fourth was over. I am so happy with how it all turned out. Big thanks to Westercon for letting us do two shows and for making the room resets we needed, to everyone who came and played, to our panelists who were funny and good sports, and to the crew: Producer Bob Hole, Announcer Eric Larson, Lead Tech Lisa Hayes, and Technical Supervisor Kuma Bear (with help from Ba Bear tonight) and our production assistants whose names have now gone completely out of my head. Updated: Jim and June, per below. You made me look so good up there that I don't know how to thank you enough.

We took photos. However, we're utterly exhausted and too beat to pull them out of the camera and post them now. After breaking down the show and hauling everything back to the room, I briefly considered making a brief pass through the party floor, but realized that I could barely walk at that point and instead have been working on unwinding sufficiently to be able to go to sleep. Thank goodness we have no morning commitments on the final day of Westercon, because we must sleep in some on Sunday in order to recover from this.

I think I get a hint of why people who work in entertainment industries work as hard as they do, even if they aren't very well paid. The thanks I get from y'all who enjoyed the shows so much makes me know it's worth it.

A significant advantage of being the first item on the main stage at Westercon was that we had an extended period to get things set up at relative leisure. Consequently, setup went pretty smoothly with only what I might consider the "usual" sorts of small hitches. Earlier in the day, we realized that we'd forgotten the banners that we normally hang from the front of the table, so Lisa improvised by stringing together a bunch of the colorful MGSF show flyers to hang in front of the tables, and that worked well.

( On With the Show )

Thanks to Bob Hole directing our team of minions (production assistants), Lisa keeping the magic flowing behind the tech desk, and Eric Larson doing his usual sterling job as announcer, our first MGSF show in nearly two years must be considered a success. I was so happy that both Bob and Eric were able to attend Westercon; I know it was a bit of a financial strain for both of them, and I want them to know how much I appreciate it.

Westercon asked Lisa to provide the tech for the Opening Ceremony, so she ran a fixed microphone up to the stage and kept two speakers running. This worked just fine for Toastmaster David Gerrold to emcee the ceremony, along with co-chairs Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley with announcements and such. The Atrium, which had been comfortably full for Match Game SF was overflowing and completely SRO for the Opening.

( Best Seats Evar! )

David Gerrold introduced and bantered with the guests: Special Costume Guests John and Bjo Trimble, Writers Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge, Artist Eric Shanower, Small Press Special Guest David Maxine, and Radio Free Skaro (Warren Frey, Steven Schapansky, Chris Burgess). The co-chairs thanked the many generous donations that allowed Westercon to bring in guests, including grants from RCFI (Renovation) and CanSMOF (Anticipation) and many individuals, all of whom helped make Westercon 66 that much more Awesome.

( David Gerrold, Nicola Griffith, and Kelley Eskridge )

( Agent 66 Found! )

More photos are in my Westercon 68 Flickr Set. There will probably be more later as my time permits. The only reason I got these photos up on Friday was because I woke up earlier than I expected. It takes longer to process these things than I would like, but I've learned the hard way that just posting unprocessed, un-captioned photos is almost worse than not taking them at all.

The Opening Ceremonies ended before the fireworks at Cal Expo began with fans being given directions for where they could go to see the fireworks, and after the largest part of the crowd cleared, Lisa started to break down the tech.

Lisa was very happy to have been able to be the person who made the tech magic happen for people like David Gerrold and for Bjo Trimble, and for all of the other Westercon guests. She had the tech gear stored away fairly quickly (the tech set-up for Opening Ceremonies is substantially less ambitious than that of Match Game), and she and I got the gear hauled back to the room — even with a queue for the elevators — with enough time to go back down and outside to find a place where we could watch fireworks. The weather had cooled slightly, which would prove very convenient later. After the big show at Cal Expo (smaller shows in the area were visible from the party floor for some time thereafter), Lisa and I headed back to our room, had a small late supper (we'd had nothing but food bars, water, and soda since lunch), and spent about an hour going through the parties on the 12th floor before heading to the room, planning to turn in (relatively) early and get some sleep, as both of us were pretty tired and were looking forward to our middle day of Westercon, where our only commitment was not until 4 PM.