Buffyfest 2009: The Buffyfest Guerilla Drive-In

The Guerilla Drive-In was a total success. EVERYONE needs to try this, it's so fun. The concept, conceived and set up by Ryan, is basically: get some equipment (a projector, a power inverter, laptop, fm transmitter, a bunch of cars and a Buffy DVD), find a random wall at night and rebelliously project Buffy on to it. Every car then tunes in to a specific FM station and picks up the audio. So many things threatened to foil our loitering plans, most notably the torrential rain we've been seeing here in the North East for what seems like forever. It was pretty nasty and that's no way to set up electronics on top of cars. But did we let that stop us? No way! We're Buffyfest! If we can't hold a Buffyfest then something has gone wrong with the world.

Prior to going out we did our pre-party thing. Now, we already knew what we were watching this year. There wasn't going to be any of the usual polling and voting. After a bit of a voting SNAFU last year, we had it slated that we'd be viewing the 3 episode arc of "The Prom", "Graduation Day pt. 1" and "Graduation Day pt. 2". So before venturing out we did the whole, eating, drinking, partying, Buffy Trivia Game show (which Ryan hosted for the first time and Michelle won!), and gift bags (filled with Whedon themed teas and other goodies.) We watched the first 2 eps indoors and then saved the finale for the Drive-in. There was definitely a feeling of doubt and wanting to just finish the viewing inside since the weather was not letting up, but we had to try.

So our "plan B" was to find somewhere underground or sheltered. Now, it was pretty late by the time we set out, so finding a spot in the rain was a bit tricky. But Michael thought of a perfect underground parking garage normally used by stores that were closed at that moment. It was more lit up in there than we would've liked, but was still dim enough. After some very small technical difficulties we were up and running. Watching Buffy in that gritty underground way was so cool! Jen likened it to "temporary Buffy graffiti". And there we were, all in different cars passing the popcorn and movie candy, just having a ball. I was sure the cops would be coming around to bust us, but we lucked out. And really, we just may have convinced them to pull up a police car, tune in to 88.9 and just get into the wonderful season 3 finale of Buffy. Hee!

Special thanks to Ryan as we wouldn't have thought of it or been able to do this without all of his fanciness and fancy stuff! And to Frankie for his fuse :)

Check out more photos below:

How to throw your own Buffyfest Part 4: The Gifts

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If you've been following thus far, you'll know we've been discussing  "How to throw your own Buffyfest" for the last few days. Gifts are great, you can do it fancy, you can do it home made and on the cheap. They're a nice memory that you take away with you.  Over the years we've included all sorts of things.  Here are some of the raw materials we used to do our slayery dues, Buffyfest style.

Tee shirts (printable iron-on paper)
magnets - using printed circles glued on to washers with store bought magnets (home depot)
Buttons (needs a button maker)
Shrinkie Dink pins & keychains
Notebooks (Zazzle)

Postcards

This year's goodie bag was filled with super special goodness. We'll post that in this year's Buffyfest recap.

In the mean time, here's a photo montage showing the fruits of our labor:

How to throw your own Buffyfest Part 3: The Games

This is the 3rd part of our "How to throw your own Buffyfest" series and in this part we're going to be giving away a little freebie that is close to Michelle's heart - The Buffyfest Trivia Game. It's a game show type activity that she invented for Buffyfest and is the regular host of.

The Buffyfest Trivia Game Show is a great way to show off your Buffy knowledge. You don't need much to play the "Jeopardy" style game either - some researching skills, poster board and a computer - depending on how detailed you want the event. One caveat to that: After stressing over how to get the game show-type-vibe of "buzzing in" for an answer, without having to build something...we became privy to a vintage board game called "Quizzard ". So, if you want to set it up like a game show like we do, you must get the Quizzard (which usually goes for about $20-$25 on eBay.) It eliminates any fights that might break out!

Now the challenge of picking the right mix of questions - easy and hard - will be the fun part for the creator of the game. Luckily for you, if you don't want to think too hard on this we have Michelle's list compiled already for you. And as for the game itself, check out these free downloads created by Tara (download here). It's all packaged into a nice little bundle with instructions, but any questions just email us.

So, even though Ryan wins every year and Mike and Ivan grumble, I don't think a Buffyfest would be complete without the trivia game show portion of the night. Hope you enjoy it too!

Also, since last year we started ending the Buffyfests with another fun and simple game - The Buffy Fantasy Game (right click, download here). It's an interactive DVD type game created by Julia, resident TV Geek at VelvetParkMedia.com. Anyone who's left post-festivities, or hasn't passed out from drunkeness, usually end up playing this and screaming things at the TV like: "Come ON Buffy, stake a fricken VAMP already! I need some points! It's the name of the show and she doesn't stake a vamp the whole damn episode!!" Good times.

How to throw your own Buffyfest Part 2: The food

So this week we're talking about planning a Buffyfest, something we've become quite used to! In part 1 we discussed wrangling the guests and deciding on what episodes to watch...not an easy task! In this part we're talking munchies. Buffyfest wouldn't be a 'fest without lots of food and drinks to consume - Buffy style, of course! Buffy and Angel had a lot of food references, but as you'll see from the list below, the inspiration can come from anywhere, especially if they're related to blood! Here are a few examples from our parties over the years:

Entrees:

"Ted's" Mini Pizzas

"Angel" Hair Pasta Salad

"Anya's World of Shrimp" Cocktail

"Spuffalo" Wings

"Chips and Dip Girl"

The "Cheese Man" Platter

"Bad Eggs"

"Vampire-slaying" tomato, basil & marinated feta (or mozzarella) hors'

"Winifred's" Taco Station

Pancakes - (Funny Shape or Rounds)

Desserts:

Jen's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Pie

"Ted's" Chocolate cookies (not the drug-laden kind unless ya want to)

Red Velvet Cupcakes (those have Sword of Angelus' through them!)

"Stake through the Heart" Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Drinks:

Slay the "Dragon" Punch

"Blood" Orange Champagne Cocktails
Bloody Marys

"Oh, hey! Juice!"

When you're planning you're own Buffyfest, just have some food fun and be creative! Anything with garlic is pretty much vampire related, and anything with a skewer can be considered "staked," so it automatically falls within theme. You can do a Chinese-fusion type thing if you're watching Firefly at your 'fest. And for Dr. Horrible? FroYo for all, of course. 

How to throw your own Buffyfest - Four Part Series

In case you didn't already know, the Buffyfest Blog was born out of a real Buffyfest - a small, private, all-things-Buffy celebration. We're coming up on our 4th year and on June 20th we're turning this year's 'fest into a Guerrilla drive-in where we're mounting a projector and FM transmitting the audio to our car speakers. We'll definitely recap that in all its glory afterwards (we're fully expecting to get kicked out by the police from wherever we land, which from what we understand is the point of the whole thing!) In the mean time, we thought it'd be fun to post a "How To" guide, so others might follow in this tradition. Buffyfest isn't just a day of watching episodes - we've got food, booze, games and gift bags to add to the fun. And we've done something entirely different every year.

To kick off this series, we're going to focus on what episodes to watch. Of course, you can use whatever method you want to decide, but this is ours. Back in the day, we only had a small private forum and we'd use it to plan our Buffyfests. One main reason for this would be the multiple threads dedicated to polls for voting on what episodes we'd be watching. First we'd edit the nominees down to 4-6 episodes and then let the voting begin by all the guests. These, of course, would sometimes end up in a "Sudden death" thread.

Some examples would be:
Dynamite Drop-ins by Jonathan (FYI, our nominees were: "What's my line pt. 2", "Reptile Boy", "Earshot" and "Superstar" for the poll - with "Earshot" winning.)

Favorite Origin Story (our nominees were: "Fool For Love", "Restless", "Family", "The Dark Age", and "Selfless" with "Restless" taking it.)

Best Character Death episode (nominees: "The Body", "Passion", "Seeing Red", "Prophecy Girl", and "Not Fade Away" - "Passion" won that by a lot.)

Last year at our Buffyfest Backyard BBQ, we decided to vote on specific themes instead. It didn't go over very well and we really don't recommend it, but for the record the theme we ended up with was "The Period Pieces" and it consisted of "Amends", "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?", and "Darla". We also threw Dr. Horrible in the mix at the pre-party.

If you and your peeps want to use the forum polling method, you can get your own free forum at the following sites, among others:
www.proboards.com

www.freeforums.org/

www.forumotion.com/

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow which will be all about the food.