Hi everyone, as a former Cosplay contestant/participant and audience member, I want you guys to know that other cosplayers, fanime attendees and staff who didn't participate or even watch this year, feel your pain. The issues with the masquerade were brought up several times during the closing Q & A session and there were a lot of notes taken.
I remember last year being the last year for many veteren masquerade staff. It is inevitable but when life gives you babies, you make lemonade right? Opps lol.. I mean move on in life you know? I'm surprised they didn't implement many of the working structures and guidelines used before in past years.
The first flag for me was not having that part on the Fanime website that let’s participating teams sign up into a page where they can write down their information. Sign up information was conducted by email (which gives the opportunity for groups to miss information). It also makes it difficult to implement changes and updates.
The second flag was the lack of information about masquerade in both the Fanime program book and pocket book schedule. No time was mentioned in the program and the masquerade wasn’t anywhere in the booklet. This issue was brought up several times during the closing Q & A.
Another flag like everyone mentioned before was the time CS started. Many attendees thought it would start much later than 5:00 pm. I, myself, was used to attending/performing around 7:00pm. I can see the strategy as to why it may have started earlier as maybe they wanted to end early so people can still enjoy the B&W ball (unfortunately, it still ended around 10pm ish which is the normal time it has always ended).
Other things I noticed/heard about:
- The lack of tier levels (such as beginner, advanced etc). Everyone was clumped together and from what I’m gathering, this is not a positive thing. As a performance group, we focus our shows more on performing than construction (just because we lack the experience in construction but have been dancing, singing, doing theater since we were young). If we were to clump the categories together, the general level of competition and difficulty for the masquerade assumingly then increases, thus putting competitors under the impression of both categories, however that is what "Best in Show" is suppose to be and remember, there is only ONE Best in Show is it's only for one winner/one group anyways.
- The unfairness between groups – both in rehearsal and during the competition. From what I gathered, during rehearsal, it was still conducted in performance order (numbers 1 to etc) on a first come first serve basis, however, now this is my suggestion, maybe there should be a limit to how many times a group can go up and rehearse on that stage because even going in order is time constraining and it’s impossible to go through that list as many times as a performer wants. From my past experience, I was barely able to get in two stage uses during rehearsal. With the band cutting in like it did, even more so are the constraints for people.
- The lack of experience with the host – now, I keep hearing from people, there ARE NO EXCUSES and maybe in this situation, I can understand that (being that he’s had experience from stage zero). Still, cut him a break guys! He didn’t have a script and thinking off the top of your head to improv is hard. I think with more training, and having more than one host, we can definitely make it work in the future.
@ bisouspapillon – Strobe lights should never have gotten through the civic doors because there are strict rules about having lights especially rotating lights on cosplay. Someone should have have caught them before they got inside. HOWEVER, I think this is where the "loop" in the ruling comes in. Lights cannot be turned on/used/working on the cosplay if its ON THE CONVENTION FLOOR and since the civic technically isn't the convention itself, I guess this is where the miscommunication comes in. I think we need to make this rule more clear but I'm sure this rule was in effect SINCE before this year. Past years, I remember being advised about lights over and over again prior to Fanime. The rules were always clear on the website. For this year, if it was part of their CS cosplay, it should have been mentioned in that group's email that lights were going to be on their cosplay and it should have been caught by staff months prior to Fanime so the group can adjust. I don’t work on staff or anything but I apologize for that experience. Again, some staffers will catch it, some won't. That's normal.
@ Sakaki – I’ve watched that skit over and over and although it can be debatable if the skit is in “bad taste”, being we’re in a family friendly environment, there is nothing blatantly inappropriate with it. He still had his clothes on, it was jazz/hip hop dancing with no grinding or excessive expression of certain body parts/areas, and honestly, Fanime’s had past masquerade performances more suggestive than that (look up Fanime 2012 Megaman LMFAO and Fanime 2010 Super Yaoi Brothers). As a note, the Megaman skit was later disqualified but the Super Yaoi Brothers won an award.
Sorry this post may be TL:DR status but I definitely want to apply to be staff/volunteer in this department being that in order to move forward, we will definitely need more hands on deck.
For those who feel the same, I encourage those, with experience or not, to help out if you could with this section of Fanime. Helping the new staff of CS will all the more make Fanime better in the future.
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Topic: Cosplay feedback (will not effectively reach staff if you don't use form) (Read 13327 times)