Celebriel reports on LOTR Dragon Con 2006 programs: Wow, how to summarize four wonderful days of LOTR and other fantasy/sci-fi franchise madness. It’s impossible to attend everything of interest, but where else can you hear fans, writers, and scholars passionately debate The Dork of the Rings, whether Dumbledore is really dead, how Star Wars Episodes 1 to 3 could have been made better, and how the portrayal of dragons, from Tolkien’s Smaug to Paolini’s Saphira, has evolved. Not to mention listening to Emerald Rose, watching sword fighting displays, learning how to apply costume prosthetics, and meeting the amazing Kiran Shah. [More]
Category: Original TORn
Celebriel reports on LOTR Dragon Con 2006 programs: Wow, how to summarize four wonderful days of LOTR and other fantasy/sci-fi franchise madness. It’s impossible to attend everything of interest, but where else can you hear fans, writers, and scholars passionately debate The Dork of the Rings, whether Dumbledore is really dead, how Star Wars Episodes 1 to 3 could have been made better, and how the portrayal of dragons, from Tolkien’s Smaug to Paolini’s Saphira, has evolved. Not to mention listening to Emerald Rose, watching sword fighting displays, learning how to apply costume prosthetics, and meeting the amazing Kiran Shah.
Saturday starts with the Dragon Con parade, which this year attracted about a thousand costumed participants. The Lord of the Rings was well represented as usual, under the banner of Arms of Middle Earth. New this year were two Corsairs (“The Pirates of Middle Earth”), and Young Sauron.
Saturday afternoon Tim Richardson, director of The Dork of the Rings, together with cast and crew members, discussed the making of their outrageously funny parody, which held its world premiere at Gen Con in Indianapolis in August. Co-director Jack Peterson, who bears an amazing resemblance to Peter Jackson as he appeared a few years ago, also attended and took questions from the audience. They also showed their making-of documentary, The Making of Muddle Earth, and discussed the challenges of making an epic film on a budget of about $30,000, especially given the amount of food consumed by co-director Jack Peterson. Randolf the Wizard, played by David Kiefer, roamed the halls talking about the film and posting for photos. At last count, he’d spoken to or been photographed with over a thousand fans.
The Dorkers were joined on their Monday panel by Kiran Shah, who introduces the film on DVD. Jack graciously invited Kiran to stay in his bathtub whenever he needed a place to stay, and to stay as long as he wanted. Questions were a mix of serious (mostly for Kiran) and parody (mostly for Jack). Jack also filmed some interview footage with Kiran. The Dork of the Rings was screened at 1AM Sunday morning, but I was already busy editing parade photos and missed it. More at: http://www.rpstudios.net/dorkoftherings/front.asp. Questions? Feedback? Email dianeroone@aol.com.
Celebriel forwards a link, sent to her by Arymetore, to the one minute CNN segment on DragonCon. Look for Emerald Rose playing at An Evening in Bree here! [More]
Ashlee & Rachel Scott write: Dragon*Con 2006 has come to a close after four long days of fun and excitement. Dragon*Con can be a success if you follow these three words: Divide and Conquer. With a 100 plus page program featuring dozens of guest and activities to enjoy, for newbies to Dragon*Con, like ourselves, it can be a bit overwhelming navigating through thousands of fans trying to get from one location to the next. Thanks go out to Ghost Hunters Steve Gonsalves and Bryan Hamois for rescuing us from the crowd and helping us find our way to the Ghost Hunters programming track or we might still be lost! [More]
Ashlee & Rachel Scott write: Dragon*Con 2006 has come to a close after four long days of fun and excitement. Dragon*Con can be a success if you follow these three words: Divide and Conquer. With a 100 plus page program featuring dozens of guest and activities to enjoy, for newbies to Dragon*Con, like ourselves, it can be a bit overwhelming navigating through thousands of fans trying to get from one location to the next. Thanks go out to Ghost Hunters Steve Gonsalves and Bryan Hamois for rescuing us from the crowd and helping us find our way to the Ghost Hunters programming track or we might still be lost! Dragon*Con is extremely subjective since it’s not humanly possible to attend everything you really want to see. That’s where the “divide and conquer” come into play. A teleporter for future Dragon*Con’s would be extremely helpful since we did miss things we had planned on seeing simply because we were not fast enough to get from one location to another in time.
Regardless, we’re thrilled with what we were able to catch, plus we were able to spend time with some of our favorite people, such as LOTR’s Kiran Shah and Dean Haglund (Langley, one of the ‘Lone Gunman’ from the X-Files). Talking with “Night of the Living Dead” Director George Romero was a real treat, as was finally getting to meet the incredibly friendly “Ghost Hunters,” our favorite sci-fi show. Ghost Hunter Grant Wilson never failed to make a face at our camera. Favorites such as Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Andromeda) went out of his way to embarrass us, you’ll see more of that on our documentary. And, it’s always wonderful hearing Emerald Rose perform. There were many interesting sci-fi/fantasy programming tracks to attend, including several LOST and Tolkien track programs. Elfstone, the Gandalf trivia challenges and improvs were especially fun. Our own LOTR fan films were screened at the Tolkien track on Friday and Sunday, plus we had a Monday panel, which was a lot of fun. Even if Monday’s crowd looked like a remake of “Dawn of the Dead” with all those worn out, zombie like people!
The evenings were unique unto themselves, with costumes galore and thousands of fans. Music and fan films could be found just about everywhere at anytime of the day or night. TheOneRing.net was one of many fan booths there, in addition to the dozens of dealer and vendor tables. There was the Dragon*Con parade and Masquerade Ball, and the Evening at Bree was entertaining and lively with costumes, music and dancing all evening long.
Dragon*Con had it all from Star Wars to Stargate and even a Miss Klingon Beauty Contest! Now there’s something you don’t see every day! The most amazing memory of the weekend for us would definitely be dinner with Kiran and our “Dork of the Rings” friends. It was just a relaxing evening laughing and telling stories. Rachel and I finally had the chance to tell Kiran how much his guest appearance on the X-Files has terrified us our entire lives! Kiran is hilarious and friendly, and we hope anyone that’s seen him in Chronicles of Narnia, Star Wars, the LOTR trilogy or any of his other numerous films has a chance to meet him one day. He’s more than just an actor and stuntman, he is also an incredible mime and illusionist himself. We look forward to working with him one day.
Everyone there brings home with them different experiences, but one thing is certain we all had a wonderful time even without food or sleep. We spent the entire weekend filming for our own Dragon*Con documentary so watch for that in the coming weeks on our website at: www.marsproductions.net For now, here are some pics for everyone to enjoy!
Kel writes: The Prancing Pony Players performed their LOTR-themed variety show twice at L.A. Con IV, the 64th World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon 2006). Audiences in the Spaceport Lounge were transported to Middle Earth as P3 performed a half-hour show celebrating Tolkien’s trilogy with poetry and parody songs. You can view photos, lyrics and videos, and listen to MP3s from the performance here. Find out more about the Prancing Pony Players at their website, bucklandblues.com.