This past weekend, two of my friends and I made the drive to Los Angeles for the weekend to help out during Pacific Media Expo, a fairly new convention held at the LAX Hilton. This is my first time attending and also my first time staffing for an event. We helped out with their video rooms, playing a range of Asian movies and television shows. In return, we got free admission and our hotel rooms comped. For the work that we did, I can say that that was a pretty sweet deal. So for this entry, I’ll be looking at PMX as both an attendee and a convention staffer.
The main purpose of Pacific Media Expo (PMX for short) is to promote the unknown sides of Asian media and calls itself the ‘Crossroads of Asian Pop Media’. Some of the event’s highlights including screening Asian shows and movies (with main focus on Korean dramas) and holding events for those interested in Lolita fashion (Wiki article here). It’s a very small event with everything held in the first two floors of the Hilton including the Exhibit Hall, media rooms, and the ballrooms. One of the main highlights for this year’s event was the exhibition of the Filipino martial arts with a full day dedicated to promote the sport with tournaments and exhibition sparring.
The good thing about staffing for a small convention like this is that you can see what goes on behind the scenes in conventions and see how everything is run. Lots of work goes into it from setting everything up to directing attendees to the appropriate rooms for their needs.
Of course with all conventions, there are a few areas that can always improve. In the case of PMX, there were a few issues with the choices of the films and shows chosen for the screening rooms. Some of the titles that were listed in the schedule (which, I may add, was almost never accurate) were not available and as such we had to cut things short or use other films as filler. The choices of movies and shows were is something else that could use a little improvement. The majority of the content we had were Korean dramas with some shows pulling in more attendees than others. Speaking of which, I’d like to that the time to say that I NEVER want to watch another Korean drama ever again. Way too dramatic for me….
We did show a few anime titles, including a premiere showing of the Neon Genesis Evangelion movie You Are (Not) Alone. One of the titles that did not turn out so well was the English dubbed version of Kimba the White Lion. Even though it’s a classic piece, we (meaning the video tech guys) just couldn’t help but laugh at the way the English dialogue did not match at all with the mouth movement. And the movie itself was random… random animals in the jungle and the few weird scenes.
The great thing about having this event in a hotel is that everything is relatively close to one another. The Arcade was just a few doors down the Karaoke Room and the Dealers’ Room/Exhibit Hall was right across from the Concert Room. Coming from a series of large conventions (Comic-Con International and Anime Expo), it’s quite the change from going to large scale to small scale events like PMX. It turns out that a number of the staffers at PMX also do Anime Expo during the summer. So… who knows? Maybe I’ll be staffing for AX sometime soon.
As small as it was and with its small issues, Pacific Media Expo is a good event if you don’t like the whole large convention center feeling and not into the whole large crowd thing. I can’t really say how many attendees there were (had to be less than 1,000 or so) but I do hope that the staffers at PMX work harder and that someday will be one of the big names in conventions. Overall, it was a good weekend with some great moments and some of the most unforgettable characters you could ever meet.
Below are some of the photos I took during the event to give you an idea of what goes on during PMX. For more pictures, visit my Flickr page HERE and head over to the Pacific Media Expo set. Enjoy!
