Another San Diego Comic-Con has come
and gone. The four day convention requires so much preparation and
planning that I swear it's been affecting my schedule for at least a
month, but it speeds by in the blink of an eye. The big highlights of
this year's convention according to the scientific data that is my
Twitter feed were Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the trailer for
Batman v Superman: Dawn for Justice, the teaser for the Suicide Squad,
and the panel for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. Those
panels all invaded the biggest panel room at the San Diego Convention
Center: Hall H. I wonder what historians will make of the hours
and hours attendees spend waiting and sleeping in line to get into
Hall H.
I didn't catch those panels, but I did
explore a whole lot of the convention center and the surrounding
area. If you've never been to Comic-Con, you might not realize the
exhibits and displays spill well out of the convention center into
San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, onto the lawn between the convention
center and hotels, and beyond. It's hard to escape the convention
unless you stay far away. FX set up buildings and a giant snow globe
near the Hilton to promote shows such as American Horror Story: Hotel
and Fargo. Ubisoft brought back a parkour/obstacle course for
Assassin's Creed. Fox built a carnival ride to promote Scream Queens. Those are just a few examples of the outdoor activities.
I wondered around several of outdoor displays and
inside the exhibit hall with Fandango on Thursday. Using the
magic of Periscope, I tried my best to bring the Comic-Con experience
to those who couldn't make it. Because really, it's not like any
other convention. It's giant in a way that's hard to wrap your head
around, and though photos nearly do the event justice, they don't
capture the crush of the crowds and how much you get jostled around -- there is oh so much jostling.
We had people tune into watch the
Periscope stream from all over the world. We took questions about the
convention and tried our best to take requests from viewers about
what they wanted to see. The Walking Dead was a popular choice. As
scared as I am of zombies, I can't deny that AMC does a bang-up job
of making their booth amazing and terrifying every year... but I didn't
like to linger near it.
Later in the day, we decided to get
outside to move away from the crowds (yes, the aisles in the exhibit
hall were packed already, even on Thursday) so I could show off how
much of Comic-Con overflows outside the walls. We saw the FX displays
mentioned above, the pop-up carnival set up by Adult Swim – a
character from Rick and Morty danced for us and I'm still a little
scarred – and wandered across the pedestrian bridge into a corner
with the Scream Queens ride, a Point Break display, and ice cream
(also to promote Scream Queens). Ending with ice cream seemed like a
perfect time to wrap the day's streaming.
It was fun to play the Comic-Con tour
guide to the internet. I'm always happy to talk about experiences and
fandoms I love, and I liked sharing that with viewers.
I'm still in Comic-Con recovery mode,
but every step taken at the convention was worth it. I've been
catching up on all the news that dropped during the convention, and
if, like me, you missed the news and trailers that came from panels
because you were at the convention or if you're just feeling out of
the loop, you can sit down and catch up with the new Fandango
MovieClips app (available for iOS and Android). The new trailer section has made it easy for me to
see everything I missed without having to spend forever searching for
the highest quality videos on YouTube.
To stay in the loop about future
Periscope videos from Fandango – they film at red carpets and all
sorts of events – follow Fandango on Twitter.
This post was sponsored by Fandango.
