Hi,

Has anyone held a costume contest at their screening? If so, we would love to get any/all advice on the best way to handle it. We have a small (one screen) theatre, with a small lobby, and limited time. Last year we encouraged people to come in costume (decent turn out), and they received a free raffle ticket for their effort. A few folk were disappointed that we did not have an "official" contest, so we cannot have any disappointment this year!

Thanks

I love costume contests. Suggestion: If you have a few contestants, just use audience response to each. If you have lots, you could do character categories.

We've been struggling with this one for a while, and I think we pulled off something close to successful last year. It's very very boring to do the full parade and audience vote, at least for the people who are less interested. My recommendation, do your free raffle ticket thing (that's a good idea, we'll have to try that) and when you acknowledge them as they arrive, snap their picture. Once everyone's in the theater and watching Dr. Horrible or Serenity or whichever comes first, have a team of volunteers vote on the costumes on a computer screen (someone's gotta have a laptop or at least a smartphone). Then, whenever you've got a few minutes with the captive audience pull everyone up front so everyone can see all the great costumes, and announce the winners to thunderous applause. Saves a ton of time, relatively easy (hand it off to a team of volunteers and let them run it while you stress out about everything else), but everyone still gets their costumy kicks.

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David Richins
Arizona Browncoats
CSTS 2010 Coordinator
"We've done the impossible, now we're gonna do it even bigger."

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I don't care - I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me.

Can't Stop the Serenity - Seattle - 2011- http://www.cstsseattle.org

We were lucky to not be rushed for time at our Melbourne event last year, so we did a Costume Contest with audience vote (loudest cheers won). We separated our entrants into two groups - Whedonverse character and Original costume (for those who were 'verse inspired but not a specific character, and we had a few Evil League of Evil original characters this year).

We managed to get through it pretty quickly, about 5 mins per group. In both groups, we had a near tie for the winner, so we got them both to strut their stuff and play up to the audience for votes. This ended up being really fun, and got the audience jazzed up - especially the battle between Badger and Dr Horrible!

We also made sure to advertise that we were holding a costume contest on our website, and include pictures of the prize pack for each category, as well as providing links to resources and pictures for inspiration. Here's some ideas that you are welcome to use:

http://melbournebrowncoats.com/events/c ... urne-2009/
http://melbournebrowncoats.com/2009/08/ ... melbourne/

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Global Steering Committee Chair (2010-2015)
Global Team: Comms Lead (2009)
Local Event Organiser/Crew: Melbourne (2007, 2009-2017), Vancouver (2006)
New Melbourne Browncoats Inc - newmelbournebrowncoats.com

We did one a couple of years ago in Portland, as part of our after party. Since we have a metric ton of those EN rubber bracelets, we used those as 'votes'. Every attendee got one and gave it to the person whose costume they liked best. The costumed person with the most bracelets, at the end of a preordained time limit, was the winner.

It was very low-key.

That's a smart idea, artemis - and interactive as well. I may just steal that, if you don't mind.

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CSTS Vancouver 2015 will be held Saturday, June 20th from Noon to 6:00 pm at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. Donations will go to Equality Now (75%) and Avalon Women's Centre (25%).

We did costumes by groupings..Buffy/Angel..Dr Horrible..then Firefly by Characters...Best Jayne..Best Shepherd..Best Wash..Best Mal...Best Kaylee..best River..best Inara...(Sorry Simon was a no show)..and gave each a chance to say something in character, then did a runoff of the winners from each category. So everyone got a chance to strut their costume and do character play. One of the Inaras even had her companion license..although I said aloud I was sure it was only a learner's permit.

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Independentally Yours,
Jj

..oh yeah! We also had the the entrants do a photo-op for other guests that let them pick their own best total crew.Group up one of each character..then swap out Mal for another Mal..Jayne for another Jayne, Wash for another Wash..etc. Ate up some schedule time to keep folks busy during shindig.
Jj

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Independentally Yours,
Jj

Love the 'best crew' idea!

artemis - I love the bracelet idea! That's a great way to let people vote without taking up tons of time. While our audience vote was fun (same event CSTSsquid is talking about) and our "best crew" pics were fun, it did take a lot of time and I worried about the interest of people who weren't in costume.

Not quite a costume contest, but last year we had some people dress up like Whedonverse characters (we had a Dr. Horrible, River, Inara, Captain Hammer...I can't remember if there were more ) and people could bid on the chance to hang out with their favorite "characters" and do little "activities" with them (tea with Inara, frozen yogurt with Dr. Horrible, etc).

It was a neat idea in theory, but did not go over well at the event. It was a real struggle to get any bids on some of the "characters," and I think that probably made people feel a little bad and took away from the fun aspect. There was A LOT going on at the event, and I think attendees were overwhelmed with options and wanted to save their money for other things.

Now that I think about it, the people we got to volunteer as "characters" were the only ones who came in costume, which is unusual compared to other years...

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-Cate
Pittsburgh, PA
http://cstspittsburgh.webs.com/