| Manifest Report, Scotty |
[22 Nov 2007|04:37pm] |
Yeah. Huh. It turns out it's been a while.
My last entry was just before Manifest. I've had a Manifest report half-written for a while, but it's lost all relevancy now. Last year I had separate entries for my comments on the running of the event, my personal experience of the event and the balls-up that was volunteers. This year it's all squished into one entry, and you're getting the crib-notes version rather than the full one.
I shaved off my beard for a Manifest cosplay. This was a team effort- it took me and Jen about an hour, if I remember correctly. I was looking forward to the reactions I'd get at Manifest, but in the end the reactions I got from people at uni were much more entertaining.
The cosplay was Shirō from Fate/Stay Night, for really no reason other than that Jen makes a near-perfect Rin. (Jen's eyes are brown, not green) I commissioned the top through Mon. I've got mixed feelings with how the whole thing turned out - I would have liked a cheaper / lower quality piece, but Mon wanted to uphold a standard of quality. That's her choice, and I think I got a fair deal for my money, but the product wasn't quite what I would have been happiest with. Mon was easy to deal with and responded quickly to emails. On the other hand, my first and most important condition was that the commission was to be kept secret, or a secret as can reasonably be expected. I explained that it was important that people not find out I'd be cosplaying Shirō, because I didn't want people to know about me shaving my beard off until they first saw me. I wasn't happy, then, when I found Mon had listed the cosplay publicly on the Dorset LJ. She took it down within a day of me sending her an email about it. I don't know how long it had been up there for. When I asked her to provide some assurance she'd be more careful with this sort of thing in the future, she declined to do so, saying basically that the way she worked was the way she worked.
In the end I wouldn't go back to Mon if I had something to commission. I don't think there's a dramatic shortage of people who provide this sort of service, and personally I'd go to someone else if only out of a desire to shop around and try different options. If you've got something that you want kept secret until it's revealed (and I don't think it's that strange a request in cosplay commissions) I'd have to recommend going to someone other than Mon. If whatever you want commissioned doesn't need to be high quality (and carry the price associated with that) again, Mon is probably not your best choice. If, on the other hand, you're looking to commission something you want to last and don't need confidentiality, I can at least say that Mon was easy to deal with and I had no complaints with the design of the top.
It's not a terribly positive review, but then I can't say my experience was terribly positive.
The Thursday before Manifest was my birthday. We had dinner down at Rosebud.
On Manifest Friday I was a little worried about finding Nic (who was staying the weekend with me) but he was only four place back in the line. Also right there was Steph. Steph had awesome pants.
The line took about an hour. This is probably the upper limit of how long one should have to stand in the line. I hear the line hit over three hours on Saturday. Poor bastards.
The problems with rego are pretty obvious, and there are a few solutions. I expect that others have argued them out well and truly by now, so I won't go over my ideas in great detail. I will say, however, that I think it's time to drop the personalised badges.
Advantages:
• Badges could be produced much earlier, moving some work work out of crunch time and into an earlier part of the year,
• Non-unique badges may be cheaper than individually printed ones,
• Badges will look better, not requiring design to have to include the name text,
• On the day (OTD) badges could just be handed over - no separate lines for A-K/L-Z or whatever, many stations can work in parallel, no searching for the right badge. Massive line speed-up.
• Badges could be mailed out to pre-regers, removing many of them from the lines entirely. Again, massive line speed up. Lost badges would still need to be dealt with, but this is little different to how lost confirmations were dealt with this year. Mailing them out does, however remove the need to check ID for those badges.
Disadvantages:
• You're required to guess how many badges you need before you even get your pre-reg numbers in, meaning you have to guess more conservatively and order more badges than you need. Manifest still has to order more badges than the need under their current system, but that's only for OTD badges.
• It's easier to scalp non-individual badges. In the end, people have always and will always find ways to game the system. You can do various things to reduce this, but there has to be a point at which Manifest decides it's not worth the return on the effort expended. It's not like Manifest is desperate for the money of the handful of scalped badges.
• Names on badges are used to identify people you've only ever spoken to on the internet. Often attendees will be from interstate or simply have never met, and named badges make it much easier than walking up to random strangers and asking them who they are. This used to be important, but with the high density of mobile phones these days, I don't think it matters any more. Notably, this year and last year suffered from tinsy, unreadable text for the names and it didn't seem to phase people too much.
• People like to keep their badges as a memento of the event. Named badges make them more valuable as keep-sakes.
• Named badges give you an advantage in dealing with security problems. On the other hand, events world-wide deal with security problems all the time without individually tagging attendees.
And a few other things, but I think those are the major advantages and disadvantages.
On the badges, I think they're approaching the ideal. They were really good last year, and better this year. The big upgrade is that they were double-sided this year, meaning you didn't constantly have to flip it over to flash at volunteers et cetera. I've mentioned the tinsy name text - in fact I didn't like much of the text at all. I loved Biccy's art and the black strip with sponsor logos was a classy way of getting them on there.
The Programme Book this year is half A4. It makes it an easier format to carry around and whip out to refer to. I really loved the cover of this year's programme book. Casandra Lovell (heartofglitter) has a clean version up in her DA, but I think it's not the full-sized version. There was a print in the art show room that (I think) had more detail.
Lovell has it up under CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0. I really doubt Manifest has given her the rights back to the work. It's natural to assume that an artist can do what they want with their own work, but the conditions of Manifest art competition entry are in stark contrast to reasonable expectations and this has been a long-standing sore point with me. (It's one of the main reasons I left) Artists should be treated like people, not just some resource Manifest can greedily exploit. Manifest requires winning artist to sign over exclusive rights to their work for a period that extends two years past the end of the convention. (With the one exception that an artist "is permitted to display the winning image on their website(s).") Why Manifest would require such comprehensive and exclusive rights to somebody else's work long after the convention is done has never been explained or justified other than that it's to prevent an artist somehow tarnishing Manifest's image.
The problems with IP extend beyond the art competitions, though. There's a clause that was snuck into the Attendees Code of Conduct (which you have to agree to to attend the event) that Manifest put there so they didn't have to bother asking for permission to use people's photos as part of their advertising. Manifest has never (as far as I'm aware) actually used this right, they just take it from all attendees for the hell of it. Even if this were acceptable (and it's not - if you'd like to use someone's photograph, you should damn well ask the photographer) the clause is too broadly worded. It means, for example, that Madman can't use any of the Hare Hare Yuki dance video without the Manifest committee getting together and specifically voting to hand back their rights to the video. Manifest may have done this, or Madman may simply have ignored the bullshit and used the footage anyway.
The problems with IP go on, but it's all been said before and Manifest continues to show no intention to change the way they do things on this scale.
While the programme book is smaller this year, I don't think it's as well-designed. The small format makes it easier to reference, but this is what the Quick Reference Card has been for. The quick reference card is gone this year, leaving only the programme book as reference. I am glad to see the spelling has been fixed (last year were were given a "program book") but I'm not a fan of the text on the cover going in two directions.
The schedule was easier to find quickly this year, being right up the front (not buried away on page 15) It was probably easier to read than last year's for the average person (though I really like last year's) but suffered by having only one column of time (making it difficult to figure out when things were happening in Theatre C on Saturday, for example). A little more care in the time column would have really helped. It's the little details that can throw you. The time in each row, for example, was when that row began, but the number was much closer to the bottom of the row than the top, making it look slightly like the time represented the line between rows.
There are a few mistakes that bespeak thinking like a committee member and not an attendee: Did we really need to know that the Cloak Room will be the Cloak Room for all of Saturday and the Cloak Room for all of Sunday? Why put that there? Why not also put Chocolates and Drinks there if you're going that far? More useful would have been opening and closing times for rego. But Chocolates and Drinks and rego aren't theatres or rooms - the schedule isn't a schedule so much as it is a resource utilisation graph for the committee pretending to be a schedule for attendees.
There appears to be some confusion over theatre and room names. Manifest has generally used it's own names for theatres and rooms in the past couple of years, but this year the Melbourne uni nomenclature is mixed in. For example, the main events theatre is referred to in the schedule and on he map as "Main Events" but the main anime theatre (last year called "Alternative") is referred to as "PLT". For a Melbourne uni student or a veteran of many Manifests, the mixed naming isn't a big problem, but for newbies trying to find "Eco G07" is probably not as helpful as trying to find the "Oztaku Drawing Room"
I haven't got much to say about the scheduling itself. I do notice, though, that this is the first year in a while Manifest has had less than 100 hours of anime running. This year it was down to about 80 hours (from about 120 hours last year) That's a very big drop but is hopefully only a glitch. 80 hours is still a huge amount relative to the other anime conventions, but anime is popular at Manifest. I didn't do any study this year, but in previous years it was usual for almost 50% of the attendees to be sitting in a theatre watching anime at any one time.
Twice missing now from the programme book was a Peppa-chan comic. Kirin (I think) put together some awesome stuff last year (or maybe the year before) that missed the deadline by a day. It was meant to appear in the next programme book. Biccy has been doing Peppa-chan comics for the website this year and I was under the impression that something similar would end up in the programme book.
We'd missed the Friday AMVs, so we walked down to Copland to help with the set-up. Nic and I gaffered some cables down, but a lot of the equipment was already done. (Jen wasn't all that able to help in this regard given the length of her skirt)
Reflecting once again that Manifest has trouble learning from previous years when the co-ordinator changes, the sound board was in an even worse place than last year. Last year I complained that it was down the front of the audience where you could see it and be distracted by it. This year it was right up "on stage".
The reasons this is bad are the same as last year - it's a distraction, it's dangerous to have all the equipment and wiring where people are moving about and it means the sound guy isn't hearing what the audience is hearing. Most of all, though, there's a magic to a stage. You're shouldn't let the audience see the strings.
Again there was no general-purpose micing of the performance area. Dan had a number of fixed mics, but their only purpose seemed to be to sit around and get whacked buy overly-enthusiastic cosplayers. Rocket mics may require a little more thought than radio mics to set up, but this is the use they are deigned for.
Somethign else that bothered me was the positioning of the camera. It's a bad angle. It was a bad angle last year, too. Moving it up a couple of rows (even if that means losing a seat or two in front of it would allow for much better video on screen and streaming to the other theatres.
FRUiTS Fashion was, I think, more enjoyable than either the Saturday or Sunday cosplay. It was also pretty much the only thing happening on Friday. Dani's MCing keeps getting better - she's now quite an acceptable MC, though not a great one yet.
I had figured we'd head out for dinner with whomever was going. (As there's usually a group going and what do I know for places that are good in the city?) but it turns out the group going had booked a restaurant. I must have missed the notice or something. Nic, Jen and I tottered off and had junk food instead.
After a quick dinner of KFC, we wandered back up to the uni. The only thing happening at this point was the karaoke, which is treated pretty casually by all those involved. This may or may not be a good thing - often members of the audience are simply chatting while somebody is singing. How rude you think this is is a matter of taste. I think people should be a little more respectful, but I also suspect they would be if confronted with a performer of outstanding talent.
Saturday began with a pretty casual morning. The three of us got our brains in gear, had some breakfast and puttered off to the uni. It felt quite odd not to be there at before crack of dawn. I think we got there at about 10:30.
The line at this point stretched literally farther than any of us could see. That's a long line. Rego on Friday was an unpleasant experience - I am more than a little glad I didn't have to pick my badge up on Saturday.
Our first stop was the traders' hall which was over in the union building. I was actually surprised how connected to the rest of the con the Grand Buffet Hall was. I remember it coming up in conversations about the venue when I was committee, and thinking that it would be too distant and hidden and that anything held there would be forgotten and impossible to find.
The massively long line actually helped the convention, as it pulled the centre of population toward that side of the Old Arts building. I wouldn't have been surprised if a simple thing like the line curving away from Old Arts (north instead of south) would have changed the dynamic sufficiently that there would have been more complaints.
The traders' hall was a bit crowded, but not so much that I felt it was excessive. If anything I felt that there seemed to be fewer traders than I expected. What I did like was that there was a pretty good range - there were standard anime traders but there were also semi-professional artsy groups. One table seemed to be dedicated to selling nothing but Copic markers and accessories. Another was doing shirts and things while you waited.
Nic opened his wallet to the first trader he passed, (or, well, didn't pass) buying gundam kits. Jen and I left him to it, promising that if we lost him we'd meet him at the karaoke that evening. We then (almost immediately) lost him. Later I realised that the karaoke was far too late an event to use as a meeting, as Jen and I needed to be well on the way to Gelong by then, and Nic was going out to dinner.
Jen and I bumped into Erin and Eleanor outside Eco&Comm, and made our way down to the AMV comp. We'd missed about a quarter of the entries, which was a little sad, because there were some really awesome ones in there. I'm happy with all the results of the competition except for the "Manifest's Choice" category, which I think should have gone to Birdman's "Two, Three, Fall". (Available here) This video and OropherZero's "Z for Zero" were neck-and-neck in the judging and had to go to a tie-break judge. They're both great videos for very different reasons, and so it was difficult to pick a winner in the category but in the end I liked Birdman's video more and was disappointed to see it didn't take the honours. I am mollified, however, by the fact my favourite video (jubjub2's "Game of Hearts") took out Best Drama / Romance in what was also a tight competition.
Mark still doesn't appear to have stuck any of the entries, winners, or even a list up on the website. As a previous webmaster myself I know that it can be more of a chore than you could imagine to get these things done after the event, but maybe someone could light a fire under his arse.
The Iron chef unveiling happened once again with pomp and ceremony that didn't quite get there. It's fun, but I think all the comic timing looks far better on paper than it comes out on the stage. Mark pulled the competitors up on stage - and it was a big group. Eight people all up.
The secret ingredient illustrated Mark's sadistic streak: Chefs had to use 10 seconds worth of the Naruto scanlations. That was cruel, man. The anime provided, though, represented a better selection than last year. Toki wo Kakeru Shōjo and Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru worked really well together. Murder Princess stuck out a bit, but the other two anime gave chefs enough to work with.
Jen and I hung about after the unveiling to help set up for the cospaly. Mark sent us off to set up the cosplay feed clients.
I hadn't paid any attention to how the feed was working last year, but I assume it's the same. Because I hadn't paid any attention to it, it didn't get the praise it deserved. It was way better than the TVs I hacked together in 2004.
The video was picked up from the same camera used for the in-theatre projector (again, on a bad angle) and the audio came from the soundboard. This was streamed out onto the university network. Client theatres picked up the stream with VLC (on the Mac, naturally, as the PCs were all firewalled to buggery).
Wood gave us a bit of trouble to set up - it turned out that the sound wasn't hooked up. Then the ethernet fell out as I was trying to get the sound plugged in.
Thank you to the random guy in the front row who handed over his iPod when I asked the audience for an MP3 player. When I brought the sound up it was clipping and I needed to find out if the clipping was on the feed, or being imposed in the theatre. It turns out that it was just Danni yelling into the microphone. I made fun of the guy's music choice, but it was mostly pro-forma jocularity.
PLT had Claymore still going when we snuck in to bugger with the computer. I had a pleasant chat with the volunteer running the theatre.
The cosplay was a bit of a drag. We stayed for a lot of it, but many didn't - the theatre was full at the beginning, but less than half full when we left. I have a few ideas of what's to be done about cosplay, but they're not formed enough to list.
We practically fluked running into Nic again, as Jen and I had to leave to head off to Geelong.
My Aunt's birthday was bollywood-themed. Mum had given me the idea (and ball) to go as a cricketer. A white sirt and white pants were easy enough to rustle up.
My cousin Teryll has a long and complex, erm complex about being the short. After taking shoes off and standing back to back, it was found to great consternation that Jen is shorter than Teryll. It's difficult to say whether Teryll is happy about this or not.
Jen and I couldn't stay all night. By fluke more than anything, just as we came through Melbourne, Nic had finished his dinner date and was about to get on a train home. We opened the door and he dived in the car as we drove past Flinders street station.
Sunday morning was more rushed than Saturday - I wanted to see Erin's AMV panel.
The panel didn't come together terribly well. Much of the first half was spent trying to get computers going, trying to find computers, trying to hook things up, trying to get the theatre electronics to come alive (nerd tip: some of the lectern controllers include reed switches that switch the system on when you open a panel. Carry a magnet with you for when you can't open and close the thing because you don't have the key.)
I think that the problems were symptomatic of a greater issue with manifest panels - there's basically no organisation. Andrew has done it for a few years, but he doesn't do much other than ensure there's a theatre and post a note asking for panels. I think there's a lot of room for growth in quality and organisation of the panels.
We tried to keep Erin's panel going by asking questions. This worked reasonably well, going to show that you should always have a backup plan. It wasn't a complete loss, but I hope the panel is run again next year.
Next we were utterly lost trying to find the Hare Yuki Dance comp. It wasn't starting when we expected it to, so we went off to North Court, where it apparently might have been. As we wandered around, we met up with Hattie, Jen and Milleh, but missed the dance-off.
Again, cosplay wasn't great. My favourite heckle came on Sunday, though. A cosplayer got up in fantastic rock god get-up. Guitar and everything. I think the character was named "Yowie"or something. She didn't have a skit, so just stood there. Someone from up the back yelled out "Freebird!" I don't think many people got it, but I had a good chuckle.
The AMVs were excellent - as usual, Mark knows his stuff.
For reasons I don't quite understand, I'd been made a judge for the Iron Chef AMV competition. After feeling like an arsehole for having to tell people the judge's row was reserved (then giving up and telling Erin to do it) we settled down for the AMVs. I remembered the first year's Iron Chef AMVs. For 24 hours' effort, they weren't bad.
So when the first AMV was shown, I was very impressed, as it blew away the first year's efforts. I think I gave it a 7 out of 10. This proved to be problematic, because it was one of the weakest videos. For the following videos I had to give things like nine, nine point five, nine point three... I had nowhere to go.
So my judging basically became null and void,as I pretty much gave everybody the same thing. I tried to say insightful things. I don't know if I managed it. Once I gave up, said "I have nothing interesting to say" and passed the mic on.
My favourite was this one, which didn't win. I tried though. He got a 10/10 from me.
I stayed around for the closing ceremony. I think Sian announced 4800 attendees, but I might be mis-remembering the number. That would be consistent with the growth rate, anyway.
The plea for committee was quite impressive. It's a big change in the way MOC pimps itself out - last year Manifest meetings became secret and closed. They've been much more accessible recently. I think the major reason Manifest lost committee members was its growing distance from the clubs, and this plea seeks new members from the community directly. How that works out will be something to see for next year.
Other little things:
There was no theme for Manifest this year, or at least none I could discern. To be fair, Manifest's use of its yearly themes has been pretty week, but I like the idea of a theme for the event.
The committee was apparently placed under Anti-swearing rule. Fuck off. Civility cannot be enforced.
Things running over schedules: very, very easy to fix. When something is going long, you stop it.
I'd support a blanket ban on smoking anywhere near Manifest. Or at least near the lines. I wasn't happy about having to put up with people smoking nearby while I was stuck in the line.
Samurai Pizza Cats Marathon = awesome.
There have been some changes in terms of committee entering competitions, which is good. It looks like this might just be a use of old rules, rather than a conscious decision to ignore Manifest's policy.
The CFA and SES remain an utterly wonderful, and under-appreciated part of the event.
I really didn't like the band. They made walking into Eco&Comm unpleasant. A large part of this was that the lead singer sounded like she was eating the microphone.
I met someone who was the fan trader co-ord. I can't remember her name, but she seemed sweet.
I checked out the fan traders for badges, but was disappointed by the range. I did come away with a range of art stuff, but would have spent more if there were badges.
I thought about going to the AGM - I'd like to hear the treasury report to find out what Manifest's retained earnings are for this year, preferably broken down by major department. More out of curiosity than anything else, but it would probably just make people defensive and shirty.
All up:
An utterly enjoyable weekend, because I got to spend it with Jen. AMVs were the highlight, and cosplay was a little disappointing. A strange but quite dramatic drop in the number of anime hours shown.
All up, I'd driven 480km in the weekend.
On Monday mum, dad, Eleanor and I went up to Ballarat for Scotty's funeral. There's not a lot I have to say about that. The eulogy was good, and this made the funeral much more personal than Cathy's. (Cathy's had been a few weeks earlier at the same place with the same celebrant.)
They call them "silent keys". Granddad's callsign was VK3ARU.
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