Just some weeks later Artoo-Deetoo was one of the many attractions at the German Jedi-Con `97 in Munich. Since at that time I lived in the northernmost city of Germany and since Munich is situated at the very south of our country, we had to traverse the hole country, a 600 mile trip. For the opening show a lot of German StarWars talents convened (once again) to deliver a stunning show to the 900 guests.
On the picture you see R2 prepared for the Jedi-Con `97. In front of him, Tim K. is seen kneeling over his phantastic Millenium Falcon model.
During the preparations for the show, two of the celebrity guests of the convention appeared. They were Lorne Peterson and Howie Weed from ILM. Both came over and had a look at my R2-D2. Later, at the convention´s end I had my R2´s head dome autographed by both of them. But I was so groggy after three nights with a maximum of three hours of sleep that I had them both sign it on the OUTSIDE! Then I had a problem: Keep those (rather big) autographs and have an R2 that looked as if it had fallen into the hands of some graffitti-kids, or paint them over ? Well, please don´t tell Lorne or Howie, but I decided to paint their autographs over. At least I know that there ARE those autographs under the paint.
The problem with the stage appearence of R2-D2 was that R2 had to drive out on stage at the very beginning of the show with the house lights off and just a key spot on him. But at the other end of the stage was a gaping hole in the stage floor where several cables for the speakers ran. To avoid having R2 plunge into that hole, I put a small flashlight at the hole´s rim to mark it in the darkness. This worked and R2 performed as planned. The picture from Artoo´s video transmitter was projected onto the large video screen that loomed over the stage, much to the surprise of the audience, whom it took several seconds to find out where THAT footage came from.
Every evening during the three-day event we rolled R2 for security reasons under his own power from the convention hall of the hotel through the hotel´s lobby to the elevators and our rooms. This always drew a considerable crowd among the convention guests and a lot of turned heads among the "normal" hotel guests. This, as the hole convention, was real fun! . Catering rating: *: only after strangling Robert we received a dinner after a day of work.
|
|
| R2 at the Munich Jedi-Con 97 |
Below is a still taken from a TV report about the Jedi-Con97
