It has been a pretty quiet day at the con, not helped by the fact that I’m very tired from not having had a proper night’s sleep in 4 days, and my head is still stuffed with phlegm. Thankfully I don’t have a lot to do. Indeed, most people here appear to have never heard of me, which is a pleasant change from being super-busy or the hated fannish antichrist. There are only about 100 people here, but that’s quite normal for NZ.

The morning saw a bunch of sword-fighting demonstrations, in particular from a local group of Roman legionary re-enactors. That’s not what I expected to find in New Zealand, but they looked pretty good. There were some excellent medieval costumes around too.

In the afternoon I succumbed to a nap, which proved to be a mistake because I missed a fascinating talk by local author, Russell Kirkpatrick. It apparently chronicled the decline of science fiction and rise of fantasy through an examination of themes in popular music. Russell is turning out to be a very interesting guy, and I hope to interview him about his real world job tomorrow. I may also read his books, because apparently he has a habit of causing his hero to have body parts chopped off. Yes, those body parts.

I did catch Nalini Singh, who was very good talking about how to have a successful career as a writer. She has come into writing paranormal romance via an early career with Harlequin and I’m hoping to get to interview her a bit about the differences between the two communities.

Norman Cates was his usual entertaining self. He wasn’t allowed to talk about any of the movies that WETA is currently working on (which apparently includes Tintin, yay!), but he showed us quite a few “work in progress” demos that showed how actual shots in movies such as King Kong were built up from the original footage (often in studio) by adding CGI elements. Some of the commitment to accuracy is astounding. Very little of the New York you see in King Kong is the actual city, because it looks very different today than it did in the 1930s. Wide shots were done just with the software that generates cityscapes, but some of the close-up work such as Times Square was all based on original photos from the time (save for one billboard where the company who had the ad there at the time declined to appear in the movie).

After Norm’s talk a lot of us decamped next door to a nice little Indian restaurant. For those of you who missed the tweeting, there really was a conversation on the neighboring table in which some fans were arguing over the precise definition of “pedant”. Not to be outdone, in the bar afterward we decided to argue about how the word should be pronounced.

And now, sleep time. Or not, as the case may be. Tonight I wouldn’t waking mind up early as it would mean I could watch the Super 14 final. That probably means I will sleep all the way through.

To keep you busy while I snooze, here is an example of Norm’s recent work. The original footage was shot in San Francisco, but the rubbish ball was added by Norm and his colleagues at the WETA studios in Wellington.

Yes, I will be asking Norm about his plans for Melbourne next year.