The FedCon saturday

Saturday was probably the busiest day of the entire convention. A very tight programme, many fans around and thus, the DVD crew also had a lot to do. The day began a bit late for me since I still needed to buy something at the local hardware store. I arrived at the convention just at the right time for the photo shooting with Paul McGillion and Jewel Staite. Although there were so many Star Trek fans around, people stood in a long queue to get a photo with the both of them. While I was in the queue, I could already see how much fun Paul had during the session. Right before me, he lifted a woman on his shoulder for the photo, while she turned all red.
As it was my turn, I received a warm welcome by Jewel Staite. Paul McGillion however immediately spotted my Force Lance, grabbed it from my holster and started posing wildly. And again, the photographer was the one who suffered: "Can someone finally tell me what the hell that thing is?" - anyways, the result is a very funny photo:

As on this day, the convention was a lot more crowded, I took the chance to meet some fans and have a more detailed look at all the fan arts and merchandising products. I soon met a fan who was dressed up as a prior of the Ori from Stargate. It was a very authentic and impressive costume. However, if I were him, I would've felt uncomfortable after a while since every third passenger hailed him with the words "Hallowed are the Ori!". On the lower level of the convention, an entire division of the 501st gathered many photographers around them. It is definately one of the most impressive costume groups. After a while, the upper level of the convention was filling up with people. There was an immense queue that didn't allow you to recognize where it began and where it ended. The reason was a unique action for a convention: Robert O'Reilly and J.G. Hertzler were fully dressed-up as their Klingon roles from Star Trek, including the entire make-up. It was as if every fan wanted to get a photo with both of them during their session.

When I went downstairs, I suddenly met one of the guests who photographed me during the panel of Laura Bertram on friday afternoon. To my surprise, he was fully-equipped with an Andromeda costume. Despite the shorter hair, he was obviously intended to be Tyr Anasazi - with chain mail, Force Lance and Nietzschean bone blades. We took the chance to take a photo together and he told me that there would even be yet another Nietzschean woman around. This gave me the idea to plan a little action with us three for Laura Bertram's second panel on that very evening. Before we split up, we agreed to meet again during the panel of Jewel Staite, right before Laura's.
At 13, there was the second meeting of the Scifi-Forum members. Some have just arrived on saturday, so we had quite some more people to take a group photo with.

At 14, my shift on the mainbridge began, filming the panel of Dr. Hubert Zitt: "The Science of Star Wars". It was an interesting and fun panel, as he brought some humor into his explanations. For instance, he always doubted that a lightsaber could be made of photons - there would be no way to limit the length of the blade. So his assumption is that it consists of plasma. He mentioned that he already explained this issue once at an event and one day after that, the Wikipedia had changed the essence of the lightsaber from "light" to "plasma".
Furthermore, he gave us some interesting insight on technological development in our present.  He picked the R2-D2 holographs as an example to intruduce an already existing invention - the heliodisplay which does not need a silver screen, but instead projects animated images into free space. Mr. Zitt also pointed out a lot of the logical errors in Star Wars.

As in the afternoon, the first big autograph session took place, the programme in the mainbridge lacked the star guests, but was nevertheless very entertaining. After the panel of Dr. Hubert Zitt, our host Marc B. Lee introduced to us a lot of upcoming movie trailers. A special highlight was an exclusive making-of from the new Battlestar Galactica series - pointing out the musical compositions of the series. For the fans who came to the convention for James Callis, this was at least a nice BSG feature.
Then came the charity auction. Richard Arnold lead it with the aid of some assigned helpers. He had many autograph cards to give away, but also some specials like a phone in the shape of the Enterprise A, a large 'pirates of the carribean' banner and some original TNG props, like a Klingon decorative flag. While some of the items achieved large sales prices, the supposed highlight - a screen-worn TNG shirt of Marina Sirtis - changed its owner for just 15 Euros. Lucky for the new owner, bad for the charity.

After being on duty for a while, Christian and I (both at the right front camera) decided to use our buffet tickets to go and eat something. I personally was so fascinated by the convention that I almost forgot my hunger for two days. But now, I was finally really hungry. The buffet was very tasty and came at just the right time. After having finished our meal, we got right back to the mainbridge where one of the highlights started - the costume contest. The jury  consisted of Paul McGillion, Garrett Wang, Laura Bertram and Anthony Montgomery. Accidently, the stage direction fired the fog machine like at the beginning of every panel. The table with the jury was right in front of it however and within seconds, all four were totally occluded in a dense fog. 

The costume contest was as colorful as entertaining: Padme Amidala, two Klingon women fighting with Bat'leths, Vulcans and Enterprise staff, Kosh from Babylon 5 with an extraordinary costume, the terminator, a Nietzschean threatening Laura Bertram with her Force Lance and many more - everyone had good ideas for their performance and were skilled in making costumes. It was an entertaining and funny show. New this year: The Audience Award. Those who didn't dare going on stage could have numbers sticked to their costumes and people could vote for the best. As a big surprise, a person who didn't have anything to do with science fiction won this contest: A guy costumed as captain Jack Sparrow from pirates of the carribean.
However, he did really deserve this prize. Not only the costume was awesome and authentic, his acting was as well. His gestures and facial expressions were 100% Jack Sparrow and caused a lot of fun. Some impressions from the show:

A special event was the Star Trek hymn which was composed by fans as a tribute to the many jubilees being celebrated this year. Right after their appearance, it was Kate Mulgrew's turn. Although her facial expressions left her appear a bit strict, she addressed the fans with charm and a powerful stage presence. The highlight of her panel was a discussion about her opinion on the political situation in the USA - her home country. She has shown a very strong political attitude by calling the current administration the worst in the entire history of the USA. She gained an enormous applause for this, obviously a lot of fans were of her opinion.

Later in the evening, Jewel Staite appeared on stage. She was a hard contrast to Kate Mulgrew - more calm and reserved, but also very cute and charming. Despite the fact that neither Firefly nor season 4 of Stargate Atlantis have aired yet in Germany, the fans had many questions and made this an interesting panel - unlike what I had expected.
In the middle of her panel however, Laura Bertram came on stage with the words "may I crash your party?" earlier than expected and made this a double-panel. Both are actually friends and live in the same town. The expression "crash" portrayed pretty much how the panel developed from that point on - most of the questions were targeted at Laura. The fans however reacted themselves before it became too much and added questions that both of them could answer. 

As agreed upon earlier in the morning, I met with the two Nietzschean Andromeda fans during that panel. Our goal was to make the ultimate Andromeda running gag one of the FedCon as well. A bit nervous, all of us three went to the microphone spot that I used the earlier day. As I was partly on duty at that time, our camera assistant Connie noticed the situation and signalized it to our camera man - who of course zoomed right in on us immediately. As the spotlight fell on us, Laura Bertram noticed me and started grinning - just as if she knew something was gonna happen. There must be some truth about female intuition...
I began: "As you can see, we're three people at the microphone and all of us have the same question. So, we thought we'd ask this one - after - another". As you can imagine, all three of us said that last part with just one word in turn. Both of the acresses looked at each other and started laughing as we continued: "Have - you - seen - my - force - lance?" and we all held up our lances, accompanied by a war cry of the two Nietzscheans. The result was a tremendous laughter, including Laura Bertram. The only one who was looking pretty confused was Jewel Staite - she obviously had the same association with the Force Lance as the photographer earlier. So she looked at Laura in an interrogative way while she explained with an obvious intentional ambiguity: "Well - a Force Lance can basically exteeeend...."
Judging from the laughter, this was one of the highlights during this evening. A funny side-effect was that after this, people kept asking me about my Force Lance.

After the panel, the entire crew of the FedCon forum assembled on stage for a group photo, followed by the DVD crew. After some talk, we slowly moved towards the party which was also one of the major highlights during the convention. The piano bar was filled with celebrating fans and the foyer was as well. Anthony Montgomery entertained the fans with some live rap, while inside the piano bar, there was more electronic music. Several fans didn't change their outfit for the evening, so there was for instance a Stormtrooper with helmet on the dancefloor which resulted in some very funny scenes.

Our DVD crew was rather exhausted after the long filming this day, so all of us picked a corner sofa in the rear of the piano bar and relaxed with some drinks. That situation lasted for some time, until Dirk Bartholomä, Laura Bertram and Marc B. Lee arrived right there - they were in a total party mood and infected everyone around them. While Jewel Staite was sitting there and chatting with people, Laura Bertram was full of energy and struck us with her dancing skills. Marc B. Lee had his very own style which was a bit more funny. He got up - one foot on the sofa and one on the table and started to dance with some metal salad bowl on his head. Fortunately, our producer Rene had taken one of the cameras with him, filming those scenes. A welcome situation for Garrett Wang, who stopped by every now and then and fooled around with the camera. Most of us have stayed on the party until 3 or 4 in the morning. The scenes with Laura Bertram and Marc B. Lee are one of the things I will definately never forget. 

• Watch all photos from the FedCon saturday here