Sailor Moon, Doctor Octopus, Seven of Nine, Yuna, Rikku, Paine and Darth Vader were just some of the interesting people I met at Supanova on 14 and 15 April at the Brisbane RNA Showgrounds. It was my first time at the event and I was interested to see that the majority of attendants were probably less than 25. Sci-fi and fantasy is cool, at least to a certain crowd. And the lack of any food choices other than pizza, burgers and chips attested to the target market. For those who don’t know, Supanova is a pop-culture convention held in Sydney and Brisbane yearly, focusing on comics, manga, video games, table-top games, collector’s items and cards, costumes, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, movies and all aspects of their creation.
During Supanova 2007 at the RNA Showgrounds in Brisbane, I got to meet Marianne De Pierres, who is one of the founders of the Vision Writers group. Marianne was such a nice, smart, down-to-earth lady and I am looking forward to reading Nylon Angel, which sold out during the event!
There were quite a few people at Marianne’s talk, at the SCI-FI stage. She spoke on various topics, including: finding time to write; the function of action in her writing; writing what you love and know about; research; and about how stories need to cross media boundaries now to stay relevant. This might include, for example, audio-readings (podcasts etc.), video, 3D animation, comics, short-write-ups for mobile devices, etc.
One of the other people I met was David Bryan Russell , a professional storyboard artist and now also a fantasy novelist. David’s talk on the Sunday was a fascinating insight into some of the workings of Hollywood. He admitted to there still being biases among the various guilds and production companies against working with women in the film industry. Yet his overwhelmingly positive view of the myriad of people involved in Hollywood shone through. David stated that the vast majority of people he has met in Hollywood were really nice, friendly, talented people.
David’s book Enchanters was published by Freya Publishing in 2006 and was described as ‘a high fantasy about the importance of love, the preservation of life, and the greatness of the natural world ...’ (Midwest book review). Read a blurb here and keep your eyes out for a review upcoming on The Specusphere.
I also saw Jennifer Fallon and Sonny Whitelaw (in a world-building class I wished had gone all day), Clayton Watson (the kid in The Matrix), Dan Bacon (an extra/stunt guy who’s done heaps of movies and tv-shows, including Stargate and Dark Angel), Ron Glass (Firefly/Serenity) and many other interesting people.
Saturday night featured Movieworld's Sci-fi/Fantasy night, with all rides open and special sci-fi/fantasy attractions. With appearances from well-known characters like Neo and Trinity (The Matrix trilogy), Li-Lou (The Fifth Element) and plenty of borg (Startrek) and stormtroopers (Star Wars), it was hard to tell which were Movieworld staff and which were just visitors in costume!
On Sunday night, tickets sold out for Tales from Earthsea , a Goro Miyazaki film premiere at The Dendy cinema. As you might have guessed, it is based on Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series. I was especially disappointed about this as I had let the RNA showgrounds early to give myself time to find some parking. Brisbane City parking is in chaos at the moment with the King George Square carpark entrance currently in more trouble than Schrödinger's cat .
Altogether, it was a great event. I enjoyed all the creative talks about writing and game development, though some of those didn’t have a very good turnout in comparison to the events with famous stars. It’s amazing what big names and fandom do. I’m looking forward to getting hold of the podcasts because there was a lot to take in over the weekend and sometimes it was hard to hear, especially at the SCI-FI stage when the other loudspeaker was being used in the main stall area.
I highly recommend Supanova to anyone interested in consuming or creating anything in popular culture. It was a blast.
