Anime Expo 2018: Day 4

The inevitable has come: Anime Expo 2018 has ended. Although it was the last day, attendees still enjoyed every minute and did a fantastic job with their costumes. As for me, I was going to make the best of it and attend as many panels as I can as well as photograph cosplayers.

The panel that piqued my interest was “Sound Engineer with Bang Zoom! Entertainment,” a workshop to provide pointers to those who aspire to be sound engineers. Bang Zoom! Entertainment is an audio post-production with its headquarters in Burbank, California and has worked on numerous anime, video games, television series, feature films, and original animation projects.

The engineers had different backgrounds as far as their education was concerned. One went to a tech school and while some attended a four-year university. Essentially, there is no set path to get where you need to be. One mentioned how his background was in music, and because of that, he was able to smoothly transition, because he knew the nooks and crannies of audio engineering. The panel went over the logistics of sound design and the three components of the recording progress: the director, actor, and engineer, the latter of the three drives the session to ensure that all are going at the same pace, checking to see if actor goes slow or the director is too fast, and vice versa. The majority of the time, the engineers went over the technicalities of ProTools, a sound editing software.

When the panel was about the end, the engineers imparted on the audience important tips of getting their foot in audio engineering, whether it be through internships, networking, and reaching out to studios to start at the very bottom and work their way. If you are interested and want to learn more about Bang Zoom Entertainment!, click on this link to its website: http://www.bangzoomstudios.com/

Towards the tail end of Anime Expo, I decided to go to the “LGBTQ Representation in Canon and Fanon.”

On the panel, from left to right: Bailey Beasley, Rach, and Bree Robles.

The panel was moderated by Bree Robles, Radh, and Bailey Beasley.

While their presentation itself did not necessarily relate to anime, I thought that the points they addressed were fascinating. The panel started an open discussion about LGBTQ’s portrayal in canon and fanon and how its handled differently between the two. Bree Robles cited the relationship between Tara and Willow, characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as an example where a non-straight relationship ends tragically because of the death of one of the characters. Robles emphasized that with fanon, such as fanfictions and fan-made movies, the fans have a chance to provide a happy ending to these couples, and even ship two characters that one would never think would get together. Radh asserts that is important that there should be more LGBTQ representation in children’s media, because the “[children] are the seeds of our future,” as she used Steven Universe as an example of a media targeted towards children as a game changer. The panel then ended with a Q&A.

As I was preparing to leave, I made the best of the remaining time to photograph more cosplayers.