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View Full Version : Help Needed! Do you have good ideas? Do you want to help out? Check here!


atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 12:17 PM
As many of you know, the Southeast Scapers are going to be doing our very best to Scape 40,000 at DragonCon (in Atlanta) over Labor Day Weekend. We have a fan table and a suite funded by the Farscape Webmasters Association.

Here's the situation:

Farscape is part of the American Science Fiction TV track and was not abundantly blessed with panels this year. We have 4 cast members coming to DragonCon :woohoo: (Wayne, Ginny, David, and Paul) and they will have 2 panels (one on Saturday and one on Sunday). Other than that, there's just 1 "official" Farscape panel, which is a miniseries speculation panel on Friday night.

We have our suite which is basically a living room, a bedroom, and an adjoining bedroom. This is my plan for it. The adjoining bedroom is going to be where we are showing episodes throughout the convention. I'm going to be focusing on self-contained episodes from S1 and S2 for the most part, but I think I will show the We're So Screwed trilogy and Bad Timing over Saturday and Sunday late night (Midnight to 2am) so that people who missed the cliffhanger (or have just learned about Farscape) will be able to be ready for the mini.

The other bedroom (which is actually attached to the living room), I'm planning to make the "Contamination Chamber". We will have a DVD with whatever trailer(s) we can get playing in that room. You watch the trailer, you get an "Irreversibly Contaminated" button (which will only be available in the suite). I want every frelling Klingon, Stormtrooper, Hobbit and anime fan, etc. to come to the suite and see the trailer(s) then walk around the con with an Irreversibly Contaminated button.

The living room will be the Scaper lounge. It's not a huge room and can only fit up to about 20 people. It has a sofa area plus a dining area (no kitchen). In this room, we'll be showing things like music videos, bloopers, DVD extras, etc. This is the place where scapers (old and new) can come to chill out, chat about the show, etc. This is also the room where we'd like to be able to schedule some supplemental programming since there's not much officially being offered.

What I need is ideas. What would be good programming to offer? It can't be something that brings in lots of people becuase we don't have room for lots of people, but we want interesting stuff to provide the Scapers with something fun as well as to entice casual Scapers and newbies.

Here are some ideas so far:

Aeryn's shower -- we can do a little party to celebrate the wedding and baby -- great for shippy discussion (no presents, just talking and some light munchies)

Fan fic discussion -- any Farscape fic authors coming? Any fic fans coming? We've got the room if y'all want to have a discussion group

Vid discussion -- any music video afficienados coming? There are people who'd love to know what goes into making a Farscape music video. Any volunteers?

Vid contest -- we have a number of vid authors who are sending DVDs of their work. We'd like to have a small contest (nothing too elaborate because it wouldn't be workable in a convention situation). Now we need to come up with a format for having the contest -- it will probably need to be something ongoing over the course of Saturday and Sunday with paper ballots that can be tallied after a certain amount of time. Any suggestions on how to do this?

Trivia contest -- we've had luck with trivia contests before. The thing is, we need ideas on how to do it in the suite. We expect a lot of turnover at the suite -- people will come up, stay for 15-30 minutes and then head out again to other events. We need to structure a contest that we can fit into this kind of scheduling. Again, probably something on paper (like our chainmale trivia contests online), maybe with multiple rounds. I don't know. We need some kind of genius breakthrough on this.

Costume contest -- again, something that has to spread over multiple days. This will certainly be a polaroid-type thing. Come to the suite, we take a pic, people vote over a certain extended period of time and we tally the votes up at the end to determine the winner.

What else? What are good ideas of what you'd like to see in the Scaper lounge?

We will not be having major parties at the suite -- it's just too much money and the suite is not big enough to host them. We ARE, however, hosting the Saturday night party in the main DragonCon con suite. We will have 3 hours of major prime time (9:30p - 12:30a) visibility (it's also the DragonCon ice cream social) where we'll be distributing Scaper swag, showing music vids, bloopers, and probably the campaign vid from 4.5. Other than that, we will have food (munchies) available in the suite and we will (if we can get volunteers to staff it) keep it open from 8:00a (Breakfast with Moya) to 2:00a.

We also have a couple of outstanding assignments we could really use Scaper at Large help with:

1. I would really, really love to have an exciting spoiler photo album available to people at table (and in the suite if possible). This involves searching out all the spoiler pics that are available and printing them out in the highest quality available on an inkjet printer. Pics need to be big enough to be easily legible as well as high quality and that's not really the easiest task in the world. It's time-consuming and I don't have the time to do it. Anybody out there willing to volunteer?

2. We need trivia questions -- easy, medium, and hard. Another time-consuming task that could use multiple volunteers.


This is a big event and I'd love to get as much help from the community as possible! So please, if you have a good idea, post it here -- if you have a really GREAT idea, PM or e-mail me (don't want to tip off the other fandoms so they snurch it! ;) ).

LiLOrion
07-25-2004, 12:45 PM
1. I would really, really love to have an exciting spoiler photo album available to people at table (and in the suite if possible). This involves searching out all the spoiler pics that are available and printing them out in the highest quality available on an inkjet printer. Pics need to be big enough to be easily legible as well as high quality and that's not really the easiest task in the world. It's time-consuming and I don't have the time to do it. Anybody out there willing to volunteer?



If I have someone that could work with me to search out the pics, my new printer is pretty good with the whole printing out pictures thing. :) And I have photo paper left over from something else I was doing.

The problem is going to be finding high res pictures. Most pics on the net arent high-res and the print quality wont be all that great. Downloading high-res pics for me wont be a problem cause I have a cable modem now. And like I said, if someone is willing to help me with the searching out process on the net...I'll download them and print them out for you.

LiLOrion
07-25-2004, 12:48 PM
Oooo, should we include still images from the new trailer that will be on the net in the next week or so and the original teaser that was put out not too long ago?

And maybe that other opening scene bit thats floating round here somewhere, that I'm having a hell of a time opening...or is that going to be TOO spoilerish?

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 01:07 PM
Thanks LO!

This will be a spoiler photo album, so any spoilers out there are fair game! And they don't have to actually be HIGH res, just good enough. ;) I did a very small spoiler thing for SciFi Summer which didn't have many pics because we had only just gotten the first ones from farscapeworld.com by that time, but some of the pics were only about 1" x 2" and were really pretty useless when printed. That's what takes the time . . . finding the pics that will be big enough and good enough to make it worth using ink and paper to print them.

We'll have the trailers running in the suite, so it's not necessary to have lots of pics from them (although that's not a problem, just not necessary since it's more work), but some of the good publicity stills can probably be found in at a fairly good size.

Whatever we can get will be fine - I'm going to try to figure out a good way to display them. I may be able to do a PVC pipe thing so I can have them posted like on a bulletin board rather than in a scrapbook -- that would make it easier for multiple people to view them at once.

The ideas just keep swirling of more and more ways to spend every second of my time between now and Labor Day. :P

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 01:09 PM
If anyone in the UK would be willing to make color copies (or scan and print in color) of some of the UK mag articles with pics and send them to me I would be eternally grateful.

I'm putting together recent press clippings and it seems like all the good articles are coming out in UK mags and we may not get them here soon enough.

akimbo
07-25-2004, 01:15 PM
Hey I think grapeshot has the starts of an album she's bringing to GenCon - or did she tell you about it already.

ETA: and njak has some pictures she printed out of the stills from the mini. I don't know what happens to them when she disassembles the board.

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 01:39 PM
Nope, hadn't heard of those yet. Still, we can never have too many pics. ;)

LiLOrion
07-25-2004, 02:10 PM
So I'll find the "posed" pubilicity pics first. I actually think I saved all them to my computer, but I never checked the resolution on them and I have no idea how they will print, but I'll test them out.

Then I'll snatch up the ones that are basically stills from the mini. If I can get my work finished today I'll have a free day tomorrow to search round the web for them. :D


O....and how big do you want them? 8x10 (if they print out clear enough), 5x7, etc.? Cause first you said scrap book, then you mentioned something about PVC pipe.

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 02:21 PM
So I'll find the "posed" pubilicity pics first. I actually think I saved all them to my computer, but I never checked the resolution on them and I have no idea how they will print, but I'll test them out.

Then I'll snatch up the ones that are basically stills from the mini. If I can get my work finished today I'll have a free day tomorrow to search round the web for them. :D

Woohoo!!!! And remember, DragonCon is not until the first weekend in September, so there is a little bit of time. . .


O....and how big do you want them? 8x10 (if they print out clear enough), 5x7, etc.? Cause first you said scrap book, then you mentioned something about PVC pipe.


Bwahahaha. . . welcome to the wild and wacky world of atlantagirl's brain. I'm actually getting to be pretty good with PVC after making banner stands for SciFi Summer. Now in the past hour or so since I first thought of it, I've already started expanding the idea -- how cool would it be to construct something like a voting booth out of PVC. I can put cloth drapes around it and you have to open the drape to go inside and be "contaminated" by the spoiler pics. PVC is uber cheap -- it's just putting it together (plus the potential space issues).

In any event, it's not really relevant to size. 8x10 would be AMAZING! If you can print something out at that size I will bow down to your brilliant ability to search out high res pics! :bowdown: 5 x 7 would be perfectly fine (and really very good) 4 x 6 would also be fine. 3 x 5 and smaller would start to become problematic but might still be do-able if it's a particularly good pic or a particularly important spoiler.

Whatever you can find, I'll make it work in whatever medium I end up displaying them (I'm really liking the spoiler booth idea at the moment). hehehe

DRD2001
07-25-2004, 03:11 PM
About Aeryn's Baby Shower. A suggestion. Why not ask for baby gifts. For 99 cent you can get baby shampoo, powder, rash ointment or a bib. Anything that is brought can then be given to a local women's shelter or an organization that helps unwed mothers (possible hint ;) ). It would allow you to have an outreach into the community, who might just ask "Who are these Scapers".

I thought njak's dart board was a great idea. So how about contests like the dart competition, pin the tail on the Moya, Aurora Chair Twister (space permitting), scavenger hunt etc...

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 03:18 PM
Great ideas as always, DRD2001!

About the gifts . . . I had thought about using this as a way to get things for a local charity but I was thinking that, logistically, it's a lot to ask of people coming for a convention to remember to pack a baby gift (or to try to find one in a strange city while they're trying to enjoy the convention). It's a wonderful idea, but I was just afraid no one would have a gift and they might feel uncomfortable coming to the shower if they feel like everyone will have a gift and they don't. What do the rest of you think on this point? Would you be willing to bring a gift (if you're coming?), if not, would not having a gift make you less likely to attend if gifts are mentioned? Inquiring minds want to know.

And absolutely, I've been trying to think of good games. The only issue there is, I need help making them. I'm swamped between all the existing DC preparations plus the t-shirt fundraiser (well, and RL :rolleyes: ). If anyone would like to volunteer to create some cool party games, I'm ALL FOR IT!!!!

I did find an eyeball pinata at Party City that I considered getting for the shower. Okay, so it's not exactly baby shower-related (but it's not like anyone would feel very comfortable hitting a baby pinata) but it's very Farscape related and weird enough to be worthy of comment.

GREAT IDEAS! KEEP 'EM COMING!!! My brain has dried up. :(

DRD2001
07-25-2004, 03:34 PM
ag, you could always say something like "Shower gifts are not necessary, but if you would like to bring one, any we collect will be donated to the local women's shelter."

Hee Hee Hee, I've got a game. Farscape Truth or Dare.

Dares like run through the concourse yelling "I'm Scorpius' love child.", "I've got a Havey in my brain and I can't get him out" or "Don't make me tongue you." Or dares like having a conversation with Harvey in a crowded elevator, asking a vendor if they sell mollusks or doing Granny's bellydance.

KozmikBloo
07-25-2004, 03:39 PM
ag, you could always say something like "Shower gifts are not necessary, but if you would like to bring one, any we collect will be donated to the local women's shelter."


I like this idea.
:)

AnnieBW
07-25-2004, 03:54 PM
PM me with an address, and I'll send you a DVD of my vids. John and I were considering going, but we're probably going to visit a friend in NYC over Labor Day weekend. She'll need cheering up after a solid week of Republican invasion. :D

LiLOrion
07-25-2004, 03:57 PM
...but it's not like anyone would feel very comfortable hitting a baby pinata


:roflmao:



I do like the spoiler-booth idea though for the pics.

atlantagirl
07-25-2004, 04:52 PM
ag, you could always say something like "Shower gifts are not necessary, but if you would like to bring one, any we collect will be donated to the local women's shelter."


What about this. . . instead of asking people to schlep an actual gift, we ask people to make a small donation at the shower (people online could donate as well). All donations will go to "My House" (http://www.myhouseweb.org) a local Atlanta charitable care facility for newborns who are ready to leave the hospital but have special needs and nowhere to go (hmmmmm, makes me think of Baby Crichton already). It's a wonderful charity, but they prefer contributions of money rather than supplies so they can get whatever they actually need.

What do y'all think?