TORN Staffer Garfeimao writes: Sunday at ELF began with the Charity brunch with Billy Boyd. Over $5000 was raised for the Scottish Youth Theater, and part of that came from an impromptu live auction of one of Billy’s shirts. This would not be the only impromptu auction Billy hosted this day, but I’ll get to the other one later. Billy wandered around chatting with everyone at each table and was a gracious host, as usual.
Once the brunch was over, everyone went to the main hall and filled up the seats. Michael Drout was first up on stage and his presentation on Tolkien and Beowulf transfixed the audience, as his previous panel had on Friday. And as with the Friday presentation, it began with the recitation of the opening of Beowulf in the original Anglo-saxon.
While Michael was on stage in the main room, Colleen Doran was giving a panel on how to get into the Illustration business in the second room. I know several people were in there to take advantage of such a valuable resource.
After the Dork of the Rings presentation, Ashley and Rachel Scott got up to talk about it and their fan film for it. The DOTR guys were not present at ELF, so the Scott sisters were their proxies. I think they handled their first onstage panel quite well. They have two other conventions this summer that their fan films have been accepted to, GenCon and DragonCon. Real Life issues may keep the girls home during GenCon, and I’m unsure of their status for DragonCon but their fan films will be shown.
After their panel was done, Colleen was on the main stage and maintained her informal style by sitting on the edge of the stage. She shared her knowledge of reference materials needed to be a good illustrator. She also shared some very funny stories of some of the LOTR actors who have modeled for these reference pics. Once Colleen was done, we moved into the audience participation segment of the day.
First there was the yes/no trivia competition where the winner is the last person standing. After that came the final installment of the “Is this a Kissing Book” skits. It’s always fun to see fans turn into big hams when put up on stage.
Billy Boyd finally made his appearance on stage and started off with a bang. Or rather, the kicking over of various mic stands around the stage. While on stage, he decided to do another impromptu auction and sold his cool leather braclet he was wearing that day. How cool is that? It was won by a young lady in a nice Eowyn White Gown.
Once off stage, Billy spent the afternoon doing his autograph session and chatting with the fans. It was a pleasant way to end the official portion of the show. Afterwards, long after the dinner hour, con attendees decended upon the bar in the hotel. Again, the best way to end a LOTR event is hanging with friends laughing and having fun.
