Shannon's Adventures for G4

Sometimes crazy last minute ideas pay off.

So, I wrote a blog recently about how real life sometimes gets in the way of writing. This post is about why.

My husband had the crazy idea to apply for Attack Of The Show's Viewer's Army two weeks before NOLA's Wizard Con while trying to put together an award winning group display for the Hearse Club at the World of Wheels convention that same weekend. I said that probably wasn't best idea, but he said he wanted to try because "what do we have to lose?"

(Our sanity was the answer.)

Our award winning club display

For those of you who don't know, I'm constantly struggling to decide if I want to be a writer or a
filmmaker (and in my head, I would be both). Any time I get to film, especially something professional, I jump at the chance. I love working a camera as much as I love pumping out 50,000 words in the month of November.

Kirk and I filmed little short videos about shooting Wizard Con. Well, he beat me out (which I understand because I'm painfully akward on camera) to host, and G4 sent us this awesome looking microphone and some crappy flip cams and press passes. (OMG! I got to be press! It was amazing!)


Well, I worked my butt off getting the hearse club set up, so I could spend my weekend filming.

So we get to the Con early, staring at the lines of people outside, and how we get to cut the lines cause we're press. Then 10 o'clock rolls around, the doors open and we begin filming.

And it was exciting! We were like mini-celebs. Everyone kept whispering "Look! It's G4!" and the very friendly and helpful Jerry, Wizard Con's publicity guy, came over and introduced himself. Said he'd arrange all the interviews for us.

So we got to work. We filmed lots of B-roll of cool con stuff and started pratice interviews with unimportant people. Some of the organizations like Krewe of the Living Dead and the awesome Krewe of Chebaccus.

Then, with the help of Jerry, we went after the celebrites. We got to meet awesome celebs like Kevin Sorbo (my fav!), Adrianne Curry, the guy in the Chewbacca suit from the original Star Wars, and Micheal Beihn. We got the chance to interview the super smart kids from the Walking Dead, Paul McGillan, and even Adam Baldwin, but they didn't make the segment. (Probably because two of them refused to sign release forms and the minors might have just been tricky.) It was entertaining to see how many of them didn't know who G4 was, but those who did were very friendly and chatted with us while the camera wasn't rolling. Adrianne Curry and Kevin Sorbo were the most chatty. (And I think Kirk has a new celebrity crush.)

Then there was all the cool non-celeb peeps we got to meet, like the 501st (a non-profit raising money for lukemia), the very awesome Daz 3D (who lent us a USB cord so we could dump footage), and the very friendly Star Trek band - Five Year Mission. We chatted with the best of the best for costumes and dropped in on some exclusive panels. Unfortuately, due to time, many of these awesome people didn't make the cut.

We scored some awesome free swag, and then ended up spending plenty of dough on various cool con things, like a signed copy of Chew. And my new parading bag.

As fun as this sounds, it was a lot of work. By the end of the day, we were so wiped, we came home and just crashed. But not before we called G4 to let them know we filled the cameras (a little bit of a stunner from what we gathered).

Then on Wedesday, Feb 8, our segment aired. I did not get to see it live because, well, I don't have G4 (unfortunately) and no one in my immeadate vacinity has it either. But when I did get to see the segment, I couldn't help but dance around the house going "Look it's me! Behind the camera!"

Plus, The ZBBC and Krewe of the Living Dead's Zombie Waldo Takedown publcity stunt totally made the cut.

So, anyway, if you want to see what I did, not just listen to me babble about it, check it out!