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Collectormania 4 turned out to be a very different event from Collectormania 3, which I reported on back in May. Although the previous event had been extremely busy with long delays for many fan signings, this was largely mitigated by the excellent organisation that ensured very few fans had any real cause for complaint. The movie cast panels at special screenings of 'Fellowship of the Ring' and 'The Two Towers' were the real highlight of the event for me and I was looking forward to a repeat of these panels, albeit with even higher profile movie actors taking part, at Collectormania 4. Looking back, Collectormania 3 was very much a 'British' event with no real representation from Europe or the States.
Collectormania 4, by way of contrast, was truly an international event and one that attracted much larger crowds than its predecessor event had done. Indeed, at times it seemed like British attendees for the Lord of the Rings -themed signings and panels were very much in the minority. At the risk of sounding xenophobic, the net result of this change in demographics and massive increase in numbers from abroad appeared, for me personally, to be one that turned this event from 'one to be enjoyed' to 'one to be avoided unless you could guarantee a place at the panel Q & A'.
		That being said, I find it hard to accurately guage the 'average' attendee's feelings about this event. I heard a LOT of complaints from fans, but have to admit that wearing a 'TheOneRing.net' t-shirt probably wasn't my wisest move. It tends to make people think you work for that extremely influential web site, thus making you the automatic focus for anybody who has any type of complaint. Alas, repeating the mantra 'I don't work for TORn. I just bought the t-shirt' had no effect as people generally felt the need to share the unfairness of their experience with me. The root cause of most of the complaints was that the organisers had announced an opening time of 10am for the hobbit signings on the Sunday, but then opened a single door on one side of the building at 8am and started dishing out tickets for the signings that meant by the time of the publicly announced opening all tickets for Elijah Wood or Sean Astin signings had already gone. If you were a fan who'd queued in the freezing cold since midnight only to find you were on the wrong side of the building and that someone who arrived 8 and a half hours after you got a ticket where you didn't then I guess you have every right to be angry! The most upset fans I spoke to (apart from the crying children, clearly traumatised by their inability to 'see Frodo' or get to shake his hand) were the seemingly endless number of people who'd flown to the UK from the States (with many others from Europe and also from Japan joining the Brits) but with flights that required they leave on the Sunday evening. I don't pretend to understand why people would travel across continents at great expense just to get an autograph and a five second celebrity encounter before returning (but then, I'm sure they don't understand why I'd want to post endless 'convention groupie' LOTR web logs either ;-)) but I can certainly understand their annoyance and frustration at the inequities of the ticket allocation system and officially announced opening times when they have incurred significant expense in attending the event. The negative perception I got from so many fan complaints certainly wasn't contradicted by my own experiences. Two and a half hours needlessly standing in a hot corridor waiting on organiser promises that clearly were never meant to be kept didn't help a mood that hadn't been that great to start with (I am not good with crowds, or with queues, or with seemingly never-ending piercing, girly hysterical shrieks!). By early evening on the Sunday things were so bad that I'd already written the web log for this event. It read: 'They say if you can't say anything nice about something you shouldn't say anything at all - so here's a blank page'!. Thankfully the second panel on Sunday evening, coupled with a hastily arranged but excellent and informal press panel rescued what was otherwise a pretty horrendous experience. Asking other fans at the second panel what they thought drew a more positive, although contradictory, response than I'd had during the day. Almost to a man (or rather fan girl) they said they were glad they'd come. But most added that they wouldn't be coming to Collectormania 5! Things had started to go a bit pear-shaped (colloqial Brit-speak for 'wrong'!) for me with the first panel on the Saturday night before the planned signings. With the best will in the world one cannot take decent flash photographs in the gloom from a vantage point that is a couple of hundreds of yards away from the subject (although thankfully something can be achieved with judiscious usage of Photoshop and Neat Image's noise reduction software!). New rules introduced at Collectormania 4 meant that anybody not staying in their seat was threatened with ejection unless they had a press pass (which I couldn't warrant after the late-breaking decision to cancel a planned piece on this event for the official fan club magazine). Collectormania 3, which had no such concept of 'one rule for the press, one for everybody else', had been much easier! Camera logistics aside, I also felt the first panel I attended was a pretty lacklustre one, despite the best efforts of the two celebrity guests hosting it: Elijah Wood and Sean Astin. Not being able to hear most of the questions asked certainly didn't help things and the simple ploy of having a roaming microphone or one positioned in the aisle would have easily fixed this problem. The transcript (with many questions missing I'm afraid because of this inaudibility) will be posted here (a link from this page) when my 'real world' work quietens down (this weekend at the earliest! Sorry for the delay!) so you can make up your own minds then, but for me the real problem was that a large number of extremely 'fan'ish Americans had grabbed the first five rows of the theatre, and as a result had a virtual monopoly on questions, which were of the rather banal type one gets from the more obsessive fans who simply want to pronounce their love of the movies and the cast. So, we were back to the "It's all about me" mode of conduct that seems to dominate the American conventions, with each question being preceded with "I'm from...(wait for applause and compliment)" or "My favourite movie is.. (wait for applause and compliment)" or even "Can I have a photo of ... (wait for invitation up onto the stage because nobody, not even a celebrity, likes to look mean in public)". When all's said and done this had the potential to be an amazing event: an exclusive audience in a relatively intimate setting (300 seats) with two Hollywood-based leads of the biggest movie franchise since Star Wars prepared to take any questions and answer them - a situation that most film buffs would kill for. Alas, what we actually got was a series of generally uninspiring and banal questions of the tired 'Will you show us your tattoo?' or 'Will you sing the hobbit drinking song?' variety. Oh dear! I'm told the simultaneous panel in The Two Towers screening, with Dominic Monaghan, Lawrence Makaore, Sala Baker and Brent MacIntyre was much better (as was the repeat Wood/Astin panel that took place the next day) so maybe Brits attending the first Fellowship panel just drew the short straw. I didn't stay for the screening (I've seem Fellowship something like 13 times and, frankly, feel that's probably about 7 times more than can be considered healthy or sane!) but am told that, just like last time, the experience was marred for many by a small minority of fans insisting on shouting out lines they knew off by heart before they were uttered on screen. Panels aside, the main focus of Collectormania is on collecting autographs. Prices were up on last time - £20 a time instead of £15, and with a new rule this time round about 'no personalisation'. Annoyingly this new rule was an extremely arbitrary one that was applied inconsistently, being imposed on some fans but not on others. I have to say that £40 (about $60) for the five seconds it took for two autographs that were written so hastily they ended up smudged did not strike me as a particularly great deal! The problem was not the fault of the celebrities present, but more one of too many fans playing the "emotional blackmail" game to extend their 'celebrity encounter' way beyond the assigned time, meaning that those not playing such games suffered from a 'get them through as quick as possible to try and catch up' encounter that at times bordered on the plain 'rude'. Those wanting maximum celebrity face time at future events are advised to blatently ignore any staff warnings and play on the good nature of the celebrities using such tricks as 'I bought you a present of a framed photo of my nephew dressed as your character', 'I have a terminal disease but getting your autograph makes my life worthwhile' (really!) or 'I work for a charity and....'. This analysis may sound extremely cynical but I refuse to believe the number of Lord of the Rings fans in Milton Keynes with terminal diseases or working for charities is percentage wise about 100,000 times the national average!
On a happier personal note by mid-Sunday morning I'd obtained the coveted press pass that I needed to get better photographic access at the panels (Thanks Victoria! - I will now be spending the rest of the week bragging about how I became a photographer for a national Sunday paper! ;-)) and the event, for me, was rescued from being pretty much a waste of time by a much livelier and better second panel (Monaghan and Serkis made a great double act which the other cast members bounced off). The panel was good fun, with some new anecdotes and insights that I haven't heard before. I hope you enjoy the transcripts (links at the top of the page) as much as I enjoyed the panel itself, in spite of the 'teens with raging hormones' nature of the audience which coloured the quality and originality of questions being asked. As with most events like this rumours were circulating thick and fast. If I had a pound for every time I heard a variation on 'Orlando Bloom is here with the hobbits and is going to make a surprise appearance' I'd have enough money to pay for a first class ticket to New Zealand! Andy Serkis' revelation on Sunday night that he'd just done his last day's work on the movie on the Saturday helped fuel all sorts of rumours about how good a shape Return of the King will be in when released! Another oft-repeated rumour was that Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen were now confirmed for Collectormania 5 - a story which I suspect originates from the organisers' overly enthusiastic expectations rather than anything approaching reality. Whatever the source of this rumour, it was disconcerting to have even the hotel clerk at 'The Holiday Inn' telling fans checking out that Viggo and Orlando were going to be at the next event in May. Wishful thinking abounds! My last evening at the event was further improved when a promised press panel actually turned out to be an informal, and rather relaxed, gathering of all the cast members in a small bar inside the cinema complex. With a very small press contingent left by this time (about eight people in total I think) there was plenty of opportunity for the press to interview any cast member they wanted to. Having been invited along as a photographer I tried to stay out the way (probably a mistake as several of the cast kept giving me a look that said 'Who's the old guy playing the non-speaking role of celebrity photo stalker?') and merely listened in to various interviews from 'The Last Word' (a magazine apparently), Leo from TheOneRing.net and Victoria from 'The Observer'. I don't want to 'steal' from anybody else's interview and so won't say more here, except to say that Andy Serkis had a quick word with me and revealed that his next movie project is a role in 'The Merchant of Venice' that is to star Al Pacino and Ian McKellen - now there's a movie I really want to see! You can read Victoria's piece for 'The Observer' here. In summary then, the cast put in their usual 'beyond the call of duty' effort and hard work to keep the fans happy and made the event, for the lucky minority that got screening tickets, worthwhile. Those lucky enough to score tickets for autographs also seemed generally happy, and again this was down to the extremely hard working celebrities. However, whether such fans represent the majority of those in attendance, or just a small minority who 'got lucky' remains open to debate. If I were the organisers for this event I'd be seriously worried about the number of attendees who said they had no plans to attend the next event in May! I'd also do some serious work on 'press relations' and evaluate what promising the world but failing to deliver actually achieves in terms of positive publicity (Gents, I think you owe a serious apology to the two ladies from SFX who had left before the evening press panel!) Click here for a transcript of the Sean Astin/Elijah Wood panel Click here for a transcript of the Dom Monaghan/Andy Serkis/Lawrence Makaore/Sala Baker/Brent McIntyre panel
Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk