Back in summer of 2010, I happened up a trailer to "Four Days of DragonCon", a hour long documentary that aired on Atlanta's PBS station, Public Broadcast Atlanta (PBA) over this past labor day weekend.
For those who don't know DragonCon, it is a multi-genre convention held in Atlanta since 1987. Imagine 30,000+ folks jamming four hotels in downtown Atlanta celebrating sci-fi, anime, comic books, video games anything and everything !
Every convention I went to in 2009 for my book project, someone would always ask "Did you go to DargonCon ?!?". No, I haven't :( but I plan on fixing that at DragonCon 2011 !
Jack Walsh is one of the guys behind "Four Days at DragonCon" turns out he was a Facebook follower of "Cosplay in America" so I hit him up for some questions !
Let's start off with the first question which is : How did you even decide to do such a documentary in the first place ? What was the stone that caused this avalanche ?
I had done a short feature on DragonCon in 2004 - a five minute piece for a magazine show called "This is Atlanta" that I produce for Public Broadcasting Atlanta, the local PBS affiliate. Since then, my co-producer Gordon Ray and I had talked about how there was a bigger story there, especially since D*C was expanding every year. But it was the biggest secret that so few really knew about; we would still talk to people in Atlanta who had never heard of DragonCon. It was a completely wasted storytelling opportunity. None of the other stations in town ever did anything substantial on it. It was maybe 30 seconds of b-roll of the D*C parade accompanied by a brief stand-up from one of the hotel lobbies, and that was it. That's their D*C coverage year after year. Generally, it was dismissive in tone and only showed that D*C was a parade of nerds in costumes. Gordon and I work in a style that eschews voiceover narration in favor of constructing a story solely from the words and pictures we gather from the subject, so we knew we could do a better job representing the many layers of the con. Also, almost all of what we do is hyper-local. This is the one Atlanta subject we could think of that would be of interest outside of the city and even the region. We knew from the start that this was our one chance for national distribution to other Public Television stations. We'd always kicked these ideas around, but one day we went to lunch with the intention of discussing another project; we came back with the basic plan for "Four Days at Dragon*Con" and immediately pitched it to our boss.
I'm surprised there'll be some folks who haven't heard of the con. Four hotels, a parade, 30,000+ attendants ? How did you personally find out about DragonCon ?
When you put it into perspective, sporting events in downtown Atlanta regularly draw that many people. Hell, there was a volleyball tournament recently that drew 40,000. Volleyball! And, God knows I'm not aware of every sporting event that goes on in town, so there you go. Of course, they don't dress up like stormtroopers...
I can't remember how I first heard of DragonCon. I may have had inklings of it when I lived in Athens, GA. But, the first year I lived in Atalnta, 2003, there was a guy I met on a GI Joe comic message board that was coming in for DragonCon. He was coming with a big group decked out in Cobra trooper garb, so I thought it would be a sight to see. I went down and hung out one night. That's when I had the "holy crap! So this is DragonCon..." moment.
How would you describe DragonCon to folks who haven't had the opportunity to see in person ? And what exactly is a "So this is a DragonCon" moment feel like ?
I think DragonCon is best described by one of the cosplayers we interviewed: as "Nerdi Gras." It's a carnival-like environment of all things geeky complete with costumed celebrants.
My first "so this is DragonCon" moment came at a time in my life when I was reconnecting with some of the geeky pursuits of my youth (action figures and comic books, mainly). I think it was in reaction to the pressures of adulthood - getting married, looking for a new job after moving to a new city, etc. So, DragonCon kind of made that escape seem less embarrassing.
I think the more impactful "so this is DragonCon" moment was when we came to shoot the documentary in 2009. At that point, I hadn't been to the Con in five years. The increase in scale was unbelievable. It was "damn, this is almost a critical mass."
How did you go about tackling such a large con ? I personally haven't seen the documentary yet but did you follow a group of folks through a con ? Is there an underlying story line ? And how was the production of the film itself ?
We tried to find several costumers before the con. Our plan was to film them working on their costumes in the run-up and then check in with them several times during the con. One of the costumers, Miracole Burns, introduced us to several others. Also, we had bet on Steampunk being the really big thing in 2009, so we wanted to spend a little time documenting that. A guy Miracole introduced us to knew another guy who knew some other guys and so on and so forth. We made some contacts at a local SPunk meetup group and ended up filming a SPunk propmaking group, the Penny Dreadfuls, as they got their gear ready for the con. In the end, we had a pretty good group of talented costumers to work with. One of them, a friend of mine from Athens, Georgia, we had filmed before and during the con got cut out completely. It was just too many people to juggle.
All of the pre- and post-con interviews and filming were done by myself and my co-producer, Gordon Ray. At the con, Gordon and myself did much of the filming. We were also lucky enough to have freelancer (and talented documentarian in her own right) Melody Weinstein. Melody hit all the major events we couldn't get to, did whatever man-on-the-street interviews she could grab, and filmed many of the cosplayers we had interviewed earlier. A fourth camera op, Jonathan Titus, just roamed around getting b-roll of anything interesting. Some of us had production assistants at times, but frequently shot solo. It was a pretty lean, low-budget operation.
We knew from the start that DragonCon was more than just a big nerd-fest, and that the real appeal of going was the big community that develops there every year. People like to go in costume or to see the stars, sure, but the main reason is the accepting atmosphere. People don't really get to nerd out in public much 361 days out of the year. This is four days of immersive escapism without judgement; as diverse as DragonCon is, whether you like sci-fi, comics, anime, fantasy, gaming or whatever, the real draw is to hang out with people who share a similar passion. So, that is what the story really builds toward: an exploration of the DragonCon community (with a lot of fabulous costumes along the way, of course).
lol, I met Miracole Burns and her husband at a convention in Miami. I tell you the con world is more closer to 3 degrees of separation ! Y'all must have shot hundreds of hours of footage, how did the post production detail go ? How long did it take, were there story lines you developed and threw out ? I could only imagine how long it took to log all the footage in !
Speaking of Miracole, yeah. It's a small world at the Con. I've met one of the costumers in one of the sample photos you have up. Brandi Burns. I think she's from around here. We have some mutual friends.
We interviewed Miracole and her husband both. We'd thought we'd maybe pursue a thread about romance at the Con (they met at DragonCon) but we didn't go very far with it. We just tied it into the larger "community" aspect.
We shot less footage than you might think (or so I've been told; I thought we shot a ton!). We did a little more than 100 one-hour tapes, but not all of them were full. I estimate we had a little more than 80 hours of footage. I logged and captured most of the interview footage myself so I could kind of keep track of what was discussed and by whom. At the same time, Gordon captured all of the b-roll. I laid out the story using the interviews and then, once the narrative was established, I filled it out with the footage. We were done shooting within two or three weeks after the con in September of 2009, but we didn't begin to sift through everything until March of 2010. We sent the project off for close captioning in mid-August. So, posting took about 5 months.
Now, I'm doing some minor re-edits for the national broadcasts. Some things we covered that didn't make it into the original cut, like the robot-building challenge, are being worked back in. But, I might have to cut them back out, depending on how many underwriters we get for the national version. It's a weird process I've never had to deal with before.
So I understand there's a chance that folks all over the US may have a chance to catch "Four Days at DragonCon" on their local PBS station ? What's the situation with that ?
"Four Days at Dragon*Con" has been picked up for national distribution by American Public Television in April of 2011. But, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to play on your local PBS station. It's up to individual stations to pick it up and to show it. If you'd like to see it in your neck of the woods, contact your local PBS station and request it. Be sure to specify "Four Days at Dragon*Con" distributed by "American Public Television." Find your local station here
Thanks Jack ! Hopefully I'll see you at DragonCon this year !
