Dragon*conTV: May the Farce Be With You

Kevin Parker as a Homeless Klingon in 2006. (Photo by DragonconTV)

On the back porch of a sprawling, country property known as “Geek Farm” 40 minutes outside of Metro Atlanta, Georgia, a dozen or so people are throwing creative ideas around. “How about The Deadliest Catch with the Little Mermaid?” “Do we have too many Darth Vader jokes? ” “Do we need more Klingon references?”

[Gallery] DC*TV Sneak Preview for This…No, it’s not the writer’s room of the newest comedy on SyFy Channel, it’s a brainstorming meeting for Dragon*conTV, (or “DCTV,”) the closed-circuit broadcast of parody and comedy videos at Dragon*con, the multi-media and pop culture convention happening in Atlanta every Labor Day Weekend since 1987.

A rooster crows out back. Raucous laughter signals approval of an idea. Those that aren’t taking part in the conversation are tapping intently on their laptop, iPad or Smartphone. It’s eight months before the convention, and the group is right on schedule and preparing for the task ahead of them, hours and hours of work that they will squeeze into their spare time.

Jenga (2010)

A Little History Lesson

How exactly did Dragon*conTV come into existence? Like most good ideas, it happened pretty much by accident. I sat down with Brian Richardson, Head of Videography for Dragon*con and DCTV Producer, to get the story.

“ The head of the convention finds me back stage and says 'That was really good, what are you doing next year?'
” Brian Richardson, Head of Videography Back in the early 2000′s, the Con took up only two hotels. Dragon*con Technical Operations set up a live video feed of the biggest events during the weekend, like The Masquerade, and broadcasted it on the hotel channels, so that attendees could view it in their rooms.

One year, the actors from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were coming to host the Masquerade. Being big fans, Brian and his partners thought it would be great to set up a video intro for them. What they created sounds simple today — a Star Wars crawl with funny text, relevant to the occasion. But as Brian explained, it wasn’t so simple in 2002. “Back then, making a Star Wars crawling text on a computer, that was real work. It’s like ray tracing and days of effort… but now, it’s a java script on the web and you can do it in five minutes. That’s kind of depressing…”

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