Sunday, June 9, 2013

May 2013 Entry



- Last time I said April was a busy month. May was as well. And this is late because June has been busy. Hopefully I can remember a good amount of May.

- I saw Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness. I enjoyed both a lot. Iron Man 3 had its moments, but I think it's my least favorite of the 3 movies. Star Trek was great. I'm not a huge Trekkie, but I did get some of the references and variations/changes of references. Definitely suggest those to anyone.

- A friend who became a teacher called me up for some video help. Since he was a first year teacher, the board wanted proof of how well he does in teaching. So I went to his school and sat in and filmed his first 4 periods of the day. A couple things I took from it.

1. Some kids have no respect. There really were a handful of kids that I could not imagine having as classmates when I was in high school.

2. The ones that really caught my eye were the ones that actually were interested in the subject matter and gave a lot of input. They had genuine interest and you could tell they wanted to learn. While they outnumbered the bad kids, those bad kids were awful.

And afterwards, I edited the 4 hours down to about 10 minutes. I went back to the school the next day to give my friend the video. My guess is that his superiors liked what they saw as he is teaching his first summer school session soon.

- The Game Fanatics had been trying to set up a tryout session for a few people we liked that were interested in joining the podcast team. We had them read some Fanatical Fives from the teleprompter to see how well they could do that. In the end, the tryouts were just a formality as we knew ahead of time we were going to add them to the team. They weren't all at their best, but like with Ryan and Charles, more experience will definitely show their strengths and qualities. The Fanatical Fives we filmed were still used for real videos. Not all are up as of typing this, but all have been introduced by now. Thank you to Kimberly, Walter, Rochellie, and Lance for joining the local TGF crew.


- It was a good thing we gained new TGF members when we did because we covered Comicpalooza. I have no idea how we would have been able to do any thing we planned without them. We were there all 3 days (24-26).

The first day, we were missing 3 members. And for the most part, we really had 3 since one came very late. AND for a good part towards the end, we only had 2 since one had to help man the Extra Life booth. Regardless, we got a good amount of interviews done. Unfortunately for me, my feet were dead halfway through the day. I walked a lot that first day. I was literally limping around the convention. We also had no idea how we were to go about doing the celebrity interviews we scheduled. I had quite a bit of frustrations that first day. At least it ended with some cool NWA live wrestling. Not bad for an indy promotion.

The second day, we were all there. We also learned that the scheduled celebrity interviews we wanted were not organized so if we wanted to get any, we were to approach them ourselves. That didn't work out since the few we tried told us we were to ask their managers or come back later or they wanted to research who The Game Fanatics were before being interviewed by us. Understandable. My feet were still killing me, but I did walk around a lot. I eventually ended up helping at The Kube's booth while trusting the others to get more interviews on their own. At the end of the day 2, I spent it resting my feet by helping at the Extra Life booth while the rest were covering the cosplay contest.

The final day was a little more chill. It did start with me and 2 others doing filming duties for a couple of friends getting married at the convention. That was definitely a great way to start the day on a high note. I'm a sucker for weddings. Congratulations to the newly weds (that's 1 of 3 weddings of friends I'll be attending this year). After that, it was back to work as 2 more joined us. It was a little easier since things were winding down. My feet were still dead so I sent the others to get interviews. I did some b-roll filming on my own, but retired to the Extra Life booth to rest. We ended the day filming the destruction of Cardhalla, a section next to the Extra Life booth where people built towers/structures out of used/donated Magic The Gathering cards. That was fun to watch. That lasted a couple hours. The clean up of all the cards took a couple hours itself. I volunteered to watch the Extra Life booth while the rest were cleaning up. When we were taking the booth down, I accidentally cut my thumb with a pair of scissors. So I limped to the first aid office and got that taken care of. Shortly after, I realized I lost my car keys. I went to 2 different lost and found offices and neither had it. Oh well, it will be replaced. Good thing I carpooled so it's not like I would have lost my car that day. Ended up eating at Auntie Pastos with Ryan and Jill after dropping off my stuff at home and getting the spare car key. On the car ride home, I actually felt good. Exhausted, but at ease.

Honestly, I didn't really enjoy my first convention. I was in work mode too much. I didn't take any pictures or spazz about anything. Plus my feet were just killing me. I need shoes that aren't flats for future conventions. It took almost the whole week after for the swelling in my feet to go away. There were great moments that happened, but I remember worrying and stressing a lot.

I did have one celebrity encounter on the final day. As I was going up an escalator, David Yost (Billy from the Power Rangers) was coming down the other side. I pointed at him and he greeted me back.

Me: Are you leaving?
David: I'll be back. Just going to get something.
Me: Alright. Cool. See you later.

And that was it, ha. But that weekend was so busy and crazy. I did edit the videos afterwards. There will be 15 total. Only the last one hasn't been created (as of typing this), but I gave myself a buffer of time since I scheduled them out nicely. Please check them out. I put a ton of work into it and the whole staff did great in getting interviews and footage.


- Super Metroid was available for 30 cents on the Wii U VC. Of course I picked it up and beat it. I was planning to do a 100% run, but things got busy. I had not played it since it originally came out on the SNES and it still holds up. Definitely one of the greatest classic games of all time.


I almost downloaded Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts since I was going to have a gaming drought. It's super tough, but I did enjoy playing it back in the day. I was debating between that and doing the 100% run for Super Metroid, but like I said, things got busy. I might buy it later (or will graciously accept it as a small gift, ha).

And I downloaded The Legend of Zelda: Oracles of Ages/Seasons (3DS VC) at the end of May. I started with Ages (figured to go alphabetical) and beat it in June. I also downloaded Mega Man X and beat that for the millionth time. Despite being busy, I cleared a few hours to beat the game again in one sitting.

 
I'm not a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. I played and beat the first one, but it didn't catch my attention like I thought it would. However, I will suggest for people to watch the GT Timeline of Kingdom Hearts. It explains everything, ha.


- I started uploading new WingedVoX Adventures videos. Like I mentioned last month, I'll probably just be doing one-shots for now on. I'm too busy with The Game Fanatics to do any extra editing. I did finish one a while a go (even before Season 3 of WVA was created) so that might be the last one you'll see this year.


- BoA!


- And that's it. Like I've said plenty times before, keep up with The Game Fanatics. We're growing and getting better.


Thank you for reading. Be healthy, be safe, be thankful, and be loved.


Take care.