Indie Ogden Special – Ogdenites at NYC’s ComicCon

The whole gang! Photo credit: Drew Tyler

Meet the dudes behind the live stream of NYC’s ComicCon! Professor Drew Tyler (left) was my professor my first semester at Weber State, when I took my News Writing class. He’s an engaging professor, who I learned a lot from!

“I love to give my students a window into the professional world, to let them know that what we study and learn in our classes really does pertain to the real world. Creating visual messages and digital content can be an enjoyable career. Between teaching at Weber State and flying to 4-5 conventions a year I’ve got the best of all worlds. The Department gives me a little freedom to explore what we call professional development, and being able to take a former student with me this year is a dream come true. “

Not only is he an awesome professor at Utah’s most awesome campus (in my opinion), he’s also been providing live coverage of ComicCon all week! ComicCon ended Sunday, and with that, the crew heads home after a long week of working. Check out a “sped-up” version of what one day working at ComicCon entails:

I can hardly believe how many people were there! Not to mention how much work goes into covering the event. Y’all should be proud, Ogden… This town is filled with some seriously talented people. I’ve been keeping up with the live stream all week, & I have to say I’m a little jealous of these guys. They got to interview Guillermo Del Toro (director of one of my FAVORITE films, Pan’s Labrynth), Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance), & of course Claudio Sanchez, lead singer of Coheed & Cambria, whose concept albums go alongside comic books he has made. That’s just a FEW of the highlights of people these guys got to talk to & stream live interviews of.

The boys even had some time for sightseeing, despite the long hours required at the ComicCon event. I can’t believe we have such talented people here in Ogden! It doesn’t surprise me too much, though, considering Ogden is home to many different kinds of people with many different talents.

Drew recently answered MORE of my questions after returning home from their long week in NYC. Read on, Ogdenites!

1. What was your favorite part about NYC’s ComicCon?

We all liked different parts of the Con, My favorite part was providing some quality content for 4 days straight. The crew enjoyed the work they did on the con floor. The costumes we saw and all the celebs we met were pretty cool too. But over and above, we really wanted to deliver solid content to anyone who tuned in. In the past We’ve filled our stream with sporadic interviews as they happened in the studio. So if someone tuned in, they’d be able to catch the latest news about their favorite comic or movie… but they wouldn’t get a flavor of the ‘Con.’ Super Heumann Prod. went in this year with the goal of sharing the ‘Con’ flavor, and my favorite part of this trip was doing exactly that. We brought the feel of the ‘floor’ up to the live stream. So this year if you tuned in, you would have gotten a lot more content and chances are you would have stay tuned in longer.

2. What was different about NYC’s ComicCon compared to others you’ve been to?

I didn’t make it down to the floor for more then 10 minutes, but from our view in the skybox it seemed like this one was a lot more crowded. Also at other Cons, I spend my time on the floor running from booth to booth to chase down interviews…and fighting crowds. This Con I stayed in the box and waited for our interviews to come to us. While my team ran the floor finding more unique content. The San Diego Comic Con is the mothership, and it will probably always be larger, simply because of its location. Hollywood puts a lot more into the SDCC than the NYCC. Also large publishers in the past have saved their ‘announcements’ for SDCC. This year we saw a few at NYCC, so it is certainly growing.

3. What did a typical “day-in-the-life” consist of while you were there?

We’d wake up early and walk the 6 blocks to the Javits center. Somewhere along the way we’d grab a breakfast at a diner or Duncan Donuts. At the Con we’d set up the studio, and the floor crew, Steve and Andrew, would run out and shoot a quick ‘intro’ piece specific for that day. Then we’d wait for our first interview of the day. We usually had an interview scheduled every 30 min of the day, but there were times we had 3-4 hr blocks with interviews every 15 minutes. We shot around 12-18 interviews a day, and another 4-5 pieces from the floor. When we were all wrapped for the day we would set up an overnight playlist to fill the live stream for the overnight crowd…(it worked 1 of the 3 nights we set it up.) From there we’d lock our skybox and head out to find food. After a nice meal we’d head back to the hotel and sleep. Last year we spent more time sight seeing and being tourists. This year we didn’t have much desire to see more, so we really just worked and ate. Our coverage was definitely our focus this year.

4. Does your crew have any interesting memories/stories from ComicCon they’d like to share?

Kevin Bacon was standing outside of our skybox at one point, one of the crew shook his hand… so I guess I’m down to 1 degree now.

At one point on Sunday while we were interviewing Willa Holland and Katie Cassidy from ARROW we blew a fuse and lost power to all of our audio equipment and the main video switcher, we finished the interview with the batteries in the cameras, and almost no lights.

I found it funny that several of our crew had no idea that we did interviews with Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, or Corey Taylor of Slipknot. I only really knew because I had the ‘show notes’ :)

Both years we’ve gone we’ve found some entertainment in dealing with the electricians Union. We don’t have many Unions here in Utah, so we found ourselves waiting for someone from the Union to come to our booth to help us run an audio cable down to the Con floor. Somehow when everything was packed up at the end of the show, we were waiting for someone from the Union named Anthony… they’re all named Anthony I think… to come pull down our mic that we had on the floor. Our audio cable was zip-tied down a stairwell and across the ceiling and out onto the floor. One of us got tired of waiting… and so with no ladder, just a tall person, a ‘boost,’ and a leather-man… we took our own cable down, packed it up and went home.

Another of our crew was out grabbing a quick lunch, and when he came back in to the convention center, he was accused of having a fake press badge. It took him an extra 25 minutes to get back up to us in the booth.

5. Probably the most important question: What was the most delicious thing you ate while in NYC? (had to ask, I’m a foodie)

We were doing things on the cheap, so we ate at a lot of diners. But my favorite meal was the Reuben I had a the Stage Door Diner. It was huge! Open face on Rye, 4 inches of Corned Beef & Kraut just completely covered with Swiss cheese. It was spot on. We also enjoyed a great meal at brother Jims BBQ near Penn station. Steven raved about his Chiliburger. I recall everyone was satisfied with their meals, but we all questioned the music… a strange mix of 80′s love songs. odd.

Every year on our way into the Con we pass a sausage cart on the street and we say.. one of these days that will be our lunch!… but we never have time to take a lunch!

I like to think I’m a foodie… but when I’m on these gigs, I’ve gotten the nickname “wonka” I always bring candy to share. So lunch is often Skittles, or Circus Peanuts for me.

Not only did they get to dine on candy, but they DID find some time for true delicious NYC food…like this reuben sandwich Drew tweeted at me while I just happened to be at work starving…. Jealous:

Indie Ogden Special – Ogdenites at NYC’s ComicCon

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