First off, I want to say that we’ve lost our video programming director for this year. Again. We joke that it’s the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, because we can not keep a head in position. We lost two because each didn’t know what he was doing and did not ask what to do. We followed up “sooo… is this done?” “No, you didn’t tell me what to do so I didn’t do anything” . . . which I can’t stand. If you don’t know what to do – ask. We’ll tell you; we’ll help . . . but just doing nothing is unacceptable. When we told our second what to do, he stepped out saying that since we knew what to do, then we obviously didn’t need him. >_<

Our third one did beautifully as a last-minute stand-in for the second, but fell apart when some things went wrong and, again, didn’t let us know so we could help. In fact when I asked if any help was needed I was told “No, I’ve got it” . . . she didn’t ‘got it.’
DX

Our fourth has stepped down because of personal things getting in the way. I can respect that. We were given enough notice and he is welcome back in the future once his life-things are handled, if he wants to come back. I still don’t know if he was only giving me an excuse I wouldn’t question, but whether his given reason was truth, or even if his true reason was that he just didn’t want to, he let us know with enough time to handle things.

But that still leaves us without a VPD. =\

. . .

So how VP works . . .
The basic idea is that we come up with anime we want to show, we ask permission to show it, we get permission to show it (and screeners and prizes) from the various companies which license it, we schedule it, and we show it.

It’s really one of our most basic departments, and it isn’t that hard. It isn’t even as time-consuming as some of our other departments, but it will take a little time to figure out the year’s list and what company licenses each anime.

In the event we don’t have enough licensed anime permissions, we look to fansubs. In 2010 there was a large drama burst about whether or not we should show fansubs, so to err on the side of caution, we avoid them as possible. However, fansubs are the only way to show unlicensed works. I think the drama came about because people thought we might be showing work that was licensed already. Whatever. I won’t debate it any more with anyone. We won’t show them unless we 1. need extra programming, or 2. have someone dedicated to contacting the companies in Japan and asking permission.

I think if we write Japan and ask permission, we will get it and then there will be no more gray area. Until we have someone dedicated to that, it’s not happening. (Do you want to? Email me…) I would love to have someone on staff that is dedicated to fansub programming because nothing would make me happier than to announce we are showing all sorts of fansubs and the nay-sayers from 2010 wouldn’t really have a way to debate with us because we’d have permissions and it would be 100% legal. No more gray area!

For the record, to date, we haven’t used fansubs in our video programming, so it’s all moot.

So again, here’s the entire job:
1. Develop a list of Anime we might want to run.
2. Determine what companies own the anime on the list.
3. Reach out to each company for permissions for the list of.
4. Poke companies until we have final decisions on what we can and can’t show.
5. Develop the schedule for the year based on what we do have permissions for.
6. Using the Video Programming hard drives, put together MKV files of schedule blocks for minions to run.
7. Make sure everything runs smoothly during con.

That’s it.

I don’t know why we can’t seem to find someone to handle it. It doesn’t require a lot of input or oversight from the convention chairs – you pretty much have free reign. It’s not hard to do . . . it’s a very basic job. It’s not even super time consuming. Maybe 10ish hours of pre-con work, if you don’t include ripping disks to the hard drives that we don’t already have on the hard drives, and muxing the MKV files.

Mux the files right and you probably have the least amount of work at-con out of all of the staff.

I just don’t get it.

The only way more time would be involved is if you are also part of the hentai dept. Although it does fall under VP, hentai is mostly it’s own thing. The only thing the general VP director has to do is ask permissions for the hentai that is provided by the hentai dept. You don’t need to know about hentai or watch it, just get us the permissions.

How Hentai works –
Search for in-theme hentai.
Search for anything new and interesting.
Get together and watch it in an all-night session with as many cool people in the room as possible (because watching it alone is lame).

What disqualifies a hentai – It’s boring or we can’t make fun of it. Generally if we start having separate conversations during the hentai, we have stopped watching it and it obviously couldn’t keep our attention so it’s not going to be shown at our con. If there’s too much plot, it’s not really good for us and if there isn’t enough plot it’s also not good.

Once we have a hentai we like, we qualify it into an “early night” or a “late night” showing. Early night hentai are things like Darling, or Tentacle and Witches. Things that are very funny on their own, and pretty fluffy. No hard fetishes. Nothing to scare off the newbs. We’ve made that mistake before . . . not happening again (the “bondage clock” one from 2011 is now a late night hentai xD)

All in all, it’s a hell of a fun night.
We get permissions for what we can out of our list of favorite regulars, and new finds, and at-con, we show things based on how the room feels. We have our starters and just . . . go from there.

It just . . . isn’t for everyone. The regulars are pretty jaded about the more “hard-core” stuff and look right past it and see the plot, as confusing as that plot can be. We very recently scared a newbie off by previewing something too hard core which most of us were watching with “WTF am I watching” feelings about the plot, and she saw the hard fetishes and just . . . left. Couldn’t take it. Matrix-hentai. It was trippy. xD But definitely a late-nighter.

So yeah. That’s pretty much how video programming works. There are some smaller details about it, but my detailed handbook I wrote is only 3 pages long (shorter than this post) so IMO it can’t be all that bad.

Will you be our next Defense Against the Dark Arts Video Programming Director?