Friday, July 19, 2013

Thursdays Panel List - San Diego Comic Con

Okay, let me run down a quick summary of Thursday at Comic Con San Diego.  We were a little bit slow getting started on the day, so where just a little bit into the wave of humanity.  We parked at the Petco Park garage on 10th and ended up all the way up on the roof, the 9th floor.  So, we're going to try to get be a little earlier today. (I worry about not being able to find convenient parking and ending up on the far side of the moon.)  We'll see if we make it. 

Then, breakfast at the Broken Yolk (good food), which had been taken over by TruTV for one of their programs.  Their marketing people were pushy and aggressive, so it almost made it a negative experience.  I don't mind the marketeers, they are just folks trying to make a living, but in the last two years here at Comic Con I have seen them approaching Tijuana levels of aggressiveness, which is kind of irritating. 

After breakfast, we headed over to Comic Con itself and started the day.  In short order, this is what I did all day:

Panel 1 - Room 2:  "Don't Tell Your Story, Show It", a panel for writers, with a presentation by Maxwell Alexander Drake (http:www.maxwellalexanderdrake.com) which was a pretty good panel (good enough that I took notes).

Panel 2 - Room 2: "Point of View: What's The Point?"  Same room, same presenter, same quality.  I would definitely recommend this author as a teacher - good presentation style and good information.

Panel 3 - Room 5AB: "The Pitching Hour".  Bad panel.  I managed to stay for about twenty minutes, during which I strained to hear them as no one was talking into the microphone and the people running the room had the doors open.  Then, what I heard was basically crap - not all panels are created equal.  In this panel, for the portion that I was there, three successive speakers basically told the attendees not to try pitching because they had already heard everything and any ideas that the attendees might have, well, they had already had and their ideas were better.  Too many good panels at Comic Con to waste time, so I ducked out.

Panel 4 - Room 9: "Insights for Independent Creators" - This was exactly what I expect of a panel - six presenters, diverse points of view, explaining difficulties to be encounters and encouraging folks to try anyway, good attendee interactions, including the panel listening to attendees when it was apparent the attendee knew the subject matter.  Well spent time.

For there, I wandered around a bit, looked at the various throngs of people, and then headed down to join Tony in Hall H.  The line was very reasonable and I got it with minimal delay and only a thousand yards of yellow rope row hiking. 

Panel 5 - Hall H: "Entertainment Weekly: The Visionaries."  Excellent panel.  Three directions - Alfonso Cuaron, Eric Webb, and Edgar Wright.  Very enjoyable, very engaging.

Panel 6 - Hall H: "Divergent, Ender's Game".  A pair of excellent movies and good panels with the cast and production people (including Harrison Ford during the Ender's Game panel).  I definitely want to see both movies and the panels were very enjoyable.

Panel 7 - Hall H: "The Zero Theorem".  The next movie by the genius that is Terry Gilliam.  Terry was not there, but had a video presentation and was represented by members of his team and his daughter.  Followed up with a ten minute clip.  This is going to be yet another awesome Terry Gilliam movie.

Panel 8 - Hall H: "Trailer Park".  Typical trailer park fare, enjoyable, but mostly trailers that I had seen before. Honestly kind of felt like it was just thrown together as an after thought.  The room was mostly in turmoil at this point as people came in, so it was interrupted constantly by people with the flashlight app walking up and down the aisles and having poor light discipline.

Panel 9 - "Showtime: Dexter".  The end of an era.  I remember the early panels of Dexter, off in smaller rooms (as did some of the cast and production people). Now, they filled Room H with some great memories and some heartfelt thanks and emotional moments.  It was great to be there and, just for the pure connection and emotional content, this is exactly where Comic Con excels.

Well, that was the day - it was a long one - dinner was a convention center hot dog (not recommended by the way).  We closed Hall H out and then headed by to the hotel, where I had a spot of room service (an excellent corn chowder and a sandwich, with onion rings).  Then, I crawled into bed, read a bit and fell asleep.  Now, Friday morning, we're up - Tony is just coming out of the shower and we're going to make a run back down to Comic Con for another day of fun.

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