Last week I left off talking about the making of our winning short "Dr. Who 45 years and Beyond." This week I'll pick up where I left off which was right around the deadline of March 15th 2009.
We had submitted our finished video to compete against what appeared to be 9 other entries. While we had fun making ours we thought for sure other entries like The Doctor's Destiny, The Evil Bubblebot and The Burning Giraffe had a better chance of winning than we did.
For a start, they all had a nice short narrative and were generally all very effective if not a lot of fun. While we had nice costumes and 'canon' Doctors going for us I thought the novelty of the short would wear thin.
Well I was soon to be pretty surprised! After some delays the voting finally commenced on May 15th right here on the blog. My friends and I felt pretty honored that we took the lead quickly and by the time voting closed on June 17th, we had won by a landslide. We felt pretty happy about that, until we realized having won, we had no idea how we'd approach hosting our own marathon.
There were to be a few more bumps in the road. Once I was contacted by Stacy about how to move forward I was told we were given carte blanche to come up with whatever we wanted. So many ideas were proposed and discarded. A Mock "Trial of a Time Lord" linking theme. Doctors introducing their favorite episodes in character. A Mock PBS Pledge Drive and even a Star Trek parody crossover were among those brainstormed and finally discarded for lack of time/resources.
I lucked out making contact with some fellow prop builders/cosplayers (such as Robert Kovacs and Paul Salamoff featured on tonight's show) at Gallifrey One last February who were all willing to help out, show off their cool wares on camera and talk about their hobby.
From here, I based the framework of our hosting which was presentational/educational on the series itself as the best route to go given our timeframe…
It occurred to me a lot of people watching the current series of Dr. Who may not have had much exposure to the version of the show I started watching way back in 1983 (on PBS of course) otherwise known today as the Classic Series.
This seemed a good opportunity to point out links to the show past and a solid way to go.
Originally 7 of our "45 Years" Doctors had agreed to appear on camera. But as we drew closer to the shoot date, Jury Duty, Illness and lack of funds (as many of us had attended San Diego Comic Con the week before) meant our First, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Doctors would not make the trip. So that left us with Aubrey, Van and myself — which was for the best as it meant focusing the material a bit more and not spreading it thin.
In the end it worked out and we got the studio shoot date settled. Aubrey, Van and I wrote up the scripts, got all of our costumes/props (plus the "45 years" backdrop) together for shooting, loaded up the car on an August Monday morning and made the drive up from Pasadena to San Jose! I'll write more about our trip next week.
In the meantime, for those of you who saw last week's segment, I can confirm your suspicions by saying: Yep, that was me in the 'Revenge" Cyberman costume. I assembled that outfit over about a period of a year for Comic Con 2008 and Gallifrey One 2009.
Everything Aubrey said about the suit was true. Something he didn't mention is how HOT that suit gets when wearing it. I can generaly tolerate about 2 hours in the suit before I melt to death. (And that includes having a cold pack on my neck and two tiny computer fans whirring inside the helmet.)
The first time I wore the outfit I used a blue gel inside the eyes/mouth mesh to mask any semblance of my human face beneath. I didn't realize the gel would fog up on me after 20 minutes and render me blind! I needed 4 friends (dressed as the Doctors of course) to lead me around the convention hall for the rest of the time!
The original suit I made used velcro for the arm/leg tubings but this was a mistake as if someone brushed by me (or hugged me like one over enthusiastic fan did) they fell off rather easily. I have since fixed the problem with sewn on 'C' clamps but like any good costume these things take trail and error to get right.
You can take a second look if you'd like: http://blogs.kteh.org/doctorwho/2009/09/07/cyber-attack-on-kteh-narrowly-averted-by-the-6th-doctor/
I'm working on an Invasion style Cyber suit next. Wish me luck!
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