Chiandra

Hi, I attend the Showmasters events in London and Birmingham fairly regularly and I am thinking of going to this one, what I was wondering is how big an event is it in terms of number of traders and dealers? Obviously I expect it won't be as large as the London events, but would it be on a par with Birmingham or maybe half the amount? Hope this makes sense, just trying to justify the travelling and get an idea of what to expect there.

So by that logic then at some point between September and this week they may have put their prices up - would it not be someone's job in the office to pick up the phone or email to check whether the prices had altered since then?

It works well enough for all of the other events.Unfortunately some of the guests costs do appear to be much higher than expected. As for availability, that can change at any time with any guest. Fair point about the other events but in the case of two of the shows represented at this con I think it is understandable why the actors have put their prices up, the popularity of Vampire Diaries is just huge right now and getting bigger so all of the people attached to it will obviously recognise this and want to milk the success. Supernatural has been consistently popular for years and with the final season now in full swing and most of the stars hopefully moving on to various new projects in films or tv then, again it is possible to see why they would want paying what they may consider to be a reasonable price for their level of 'star power'. My point was that if, before confirming the convention was going ahead, someone had checked and maybe kept checking what the current fee scale for the actors that Showmasters were intending to target (and if we're talking main cast then effectively that is 2 people from Supernatural and 3 from Vampire Diaries so hardly a long list of people) then they would be aware of any increases in the charges that they had made. We're not talking about a caravan in Skegness that has 'off' seasons and 'on' seasons - surely if a guest fee jumps from $25,000 to $50,000 for example then it is fair to assume that won't go down to $15,000 in the following month. So if fees have jumped up - like they have in this case then a decision can be made at an earlier point than this as to whether or not this convention can happen.

Would it not be best for everyone concerned (the organisers and attendees) for Showmasters to look into guest fees and availabilty BEFORE they announce the date, venue and cost of the weekend to everyone? I mean what is the point of Showmasters obviously getting a lot of flack from us whilst we wait and behind the scenes they are being given bad news from all directions from booking agents about their client's prices and diva demands. If we see the announcement of a new event that we like the sound of and risk booking non-refundable hotels, booking days off work and making other such commitments then surely in return we should be entitled to believe that some background groundwork has been put in place to actually make sure it was realistic that it might go ahead. By the sounds of the first post in this thread it would appear not to be the case as the fees and conditions seem to have taken Showmasters by surprise too. Of course I have no experience in arranging a convention but if you were only intending for it to go ahead providing you could get a main character from two or three specific shows and only at a reasonable fee then you should have put the feelers out before you get anyones hopes up. I wouldn't tell all the people in a pub that the drinks were on me if I hadn't first checked how much a pint cost and that I had the money to pay for it - granted this is a slightly different situation but to me it still adds up to a false promise, don't get someone's hopes up if it is at all avoidable!!

I went to get Edi's autograph for my sister who was not able to make the event on the sunday and the guy who I paid and got the photo from wrote her name on the back of the ticket in clear, bold letters, I went over to Edi who had not had a customer for a good five minutes or more (I was stood near the signing area on my phone so saw that this was the case) and he had his back turned reading something. The assistant gave him a nudge and he grunted and turned around and went into signing mode without even looking up, first of all he spelt my sister's name completely wrong and I had to go and get another photo - no problem with that as I wasn't in a rush or anything and as he was signing for the second attempt the assistant double checked the spelling and said that it was correct. As he was handing it back to me I explained that the autograph was for my sister who was a huge fan and although I appreciated there was no posed photos I decided to ask if he would mind whether I took a photo of him holding the autograph for her as it would make it that much more special, before he could talk the assistant practically shouted a NO! and I was left with no uncertainty that this was my time to leave despite the (lack of) queue behind me. Now I can fully appreciate that actors and actresses get cameras shoved in their face all the time and they must get annoyed at times - even at these events you get people standing a few yards back and taking pictures of guests whilst signing so I thought it would only be polite in this case to ask for permission from the guest himself due to the autograph not being for myself but he wasn't even given chance to speak. Finally to make the whole experience a complete shambles I looked at the autograph whilst walking away only to discover that he had spelt my sister's name wrong AGAIN!! - and this time it had been double checked by the assistant too, I mean I know the bloke has quite an exotic name himself but really, is Nicola a rare name?!! Is there any reason that it should have first been spelt Ncol and then on the second attempt (which I ended up with) Nicoli? I suppose I should have gone back for a third attempt but to be honest the underwhelming attitude of both guest and assistant just made me think otherwise. Just glad I wasn't the one who was a big fan and hoping for nice memory of the meeting - I had to be diplomatic with my sister as well when I handed over the autograph that she had spent good money on only to discover it wasn't even made out correctly to her - from now on whenever she is watching the films I will be cheering a bit louder when his character meets his grisly end!

Looks like this event has upset British veterans due to the inclusion of two Luftwaffe pilots 'selling their autographs for £150' and having 'no conscience' for having shot down allied pilots during the war and now allegedly profiting from it. The Sun claimed that Showmasters were unavailable for comment last night - do they have anything to say on the matter today? And what do other people think - is this just a newspaper sensationalising a situation (all be it a very popular newspaper) or do they have a valid point?

I did enjoy the first series of Being Human very much when I first saw it on BBC 3 but if I'm honest then I was a bit surprised when I saw that an event had been put together soley for this show and also for it to be so soon after first being made/aired. Don't get me wrong, I can see WHY the event was thought up - it's a good show with strong writing and acting, the cast are all British and most were relatively unknown so they would probably have been more readily available to attend as guests. Plus the show just so happens to feature many popular themes such as werewolves, ghosts and yes the 'V' word - vampires. The problem is that this is NOT Twilight or True Blood or any of the similarlily HUGELY popular shows and films of the moment, its a CULT tv show that so far consists of a six episode series and an initial pilot episode which had a very different cast. So to me it is not a huge surprise that there has been a smaller than expected response to this - however big this show does get (and I wish everyone involved in it all the best with the show in the future) you simply won't be getting hundreds of adoring fans flocking to go to this - like you do with the Twilight cons for example. The audience for this show is currently quite small and (I hope) growing so maybe some of the others posters on here were right with what they are saying about this possibly being too early on in the show's existence - after all if it does massively take off in popularity then I think it highly likely it will be around for quite some time to come which will give plenty of time to attract lots of ticket sales in the future. Not saying I want this to be cancelled - it'd be awful for those who have already taken the time and effort to commit to attend it but just giving my opinion as to the state of things and why showmasters can't understand the apparent lack of interest/take up for tickets.

'I am a regular cast member in the biggest movie franchise in cinema history and you will NOT speak to me like that!' Erm, oookay! And I'm sure he can remember all of his lines from the franchise - all two of them! What with his behaviour at this event and the revelation that the actor Jamie Waylett who played his cohort 'Crabbe' in the films is a convicted cannibis farmer it certainly seems that they live up the reputation of their characters. Hopefully neither of these idiots will be invited back to further embarass SM or upset fans again in the near future.

Not checked through every post on the forum - but has the Sunday Free Autograph been announced yet?

Pick one dream guest? - Impossible to chose, the best I could do is narrow it down to top five women and men. In no particular order they are: Women: Summer Glau Evangeline Lilly Emilie de Ravin Kristen Bell Emmy Rossum Men: Seth Rogen William Shatner Jack Black David Tennant Michael Cain And even now I'm thinking of others that I could have put in there instead! - there's just too goddam many!!

Map reading was never my strong point, and as an infrequent visitor to London (and the Tube) can anyone please give me their suggestion on which route I should take to get to the venue? I will be parking and getting on the Tube at Stanmore Station as its the nearest one for me but it appears that the closures mentioned will affect this line further on - can anyone advise me which route to follow and where to get on and off? Thanks to anyone who feels up to educating a northerner!

Can we get an updated list soon? - There has been a fair few guests added since this was last updated, I appreciate you may not know all the prices yet but any update would be handy, Thanks.

I think the thing to remember here is that the announcement of an 'Amazing' guest was based solely on the opinion of the person from Showmasters who created the post - so in other words it was a person who they themselves held in high regard whereas you and me might just think that they were 'okay' or 'average'. With the wild speculation and huge names that were being guessed at during the original mammoth sized thread I think someone at Showmasters possibly realised this could come back and bite them on the rectum so they backtracked a bit in order to avoid the guest and themselves any potential embarrasment for being announced originally as 'Amazing' and being given so much hype even before their actual announcement. Anyway thats my thoughts on what may or may not have occured - either way the guest list is a nice mix of stars as far as I am concerned so I look forward to meeting a few of them in a couple of weeks.

For anyone who is into the whole steampunk scene then I highly recommend the new US show Warehouse 13, they use various inventions and devices based on this theme and its actually a pretty decent show too - a bit like an 'X-Files lite' for the steampunk generation. http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/06/fir...n-warehouse-13/

So judging by the comments of his pleasant post this DisneyDude78 fella was a member of staff at this event? - Christ, sounds as if it was more like visiting a prison than a convention!