Exciting Things in April 2015

"I am SHERLOCKED"

Hi there everyone!

So, today I thought I would write about something very exciting that happened to me last month.
I can´t remember when or how I got to know about it (I´m pretty sure though I saw a post on facebook or something) but at the beginning of this year I found out that on 24th to 26th April 2015 there would be a Sherlock Convention in London.

For those of you who are not familiar with Sherlock (which I would be shocked about ;P): In 2010 Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss came to the fantastic idea of creating a new TV Show about the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson but with a twist: The new series would take place in the modern day. They figured that all the stories about the super sleuth could be perfectly adapted to the present. When I first heard about that I was a bit confused and I must admit I thought `Sherlock Holmes in present London? That can never work´. Oh, how wrong I was! Ever since I watched the first episode with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Co-Star Martin Freeman as John Watson I fell in love with the series. All the episodes are modern adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles original Sherlock Holmes and are brilliantly transferred to the present day.
At the moment all Sherlockians are waiting for the fourth series and the Christmas Special, which will be taking place in Victorian London.

So, to shorten our time of waiting the first official Sherlock Convention `SHERLOCKED´ was presented at the Excel Centre in the docklands of London. I was really excited to hear about that and as soon as I discovered that most of the cast and crew would be there I had to buy my tickets.

I myself had bought a weekend ticket but looking back at how much money I spent for photos with the cast I could have easily bought one of the silver tickets (which were about 200 pounds I think). That was one downside of the whole thing: I know Conventions are always quite expensive but at this one they charged you for almost everything. As said before I bought a weekend ticket for 44 pounds (which is okay I guess). And then I purchased tickets for photoshoots with some of the cast members, which were quite expensive but not too bad. But you also had to purchase tickets for most of the talks with members of the cast. Some were free but if you wanted to see the actors on stage you had to pay a certain price which then added up very fast and you were spending hundreds of pounds before you even realized it. But in my opinion it was worth every penny. :)

The weekend was a bit chaotic and I had some difficulties with clashes and such but the fact that I met Benedict Cumberbatch himself, got to hug Rupert Graves and had lovely photos taken with Louise Brealey, Mark Gatiss and Andrew Scott evened everything out. :) 

On each morning everyone who had registered was lined up in a queue and depending on what ticket you had purchased you were going to get in a bit earlier (like the Gold and Platinum ticket holders) or had to wait a little longer, which wasn´t too bad as it was organised very well. The Covention was in a big hall and besides tables, where actors and crew members would give their autographs, and photoshoot areas they had quite a lot to look at, for example a real London bus with Sherlock Posters on it, one of the taxis you can see everywhere in London and a lot of merchandise shops as well as the official BBC shop where you could buy a lot of Sherlock related stuff (which I did, of course ;)). 

Another thing I must criticise at this point is that there wasn´t enough space for some of the queues. At 9.15 am the photoshoot with Mark Gatiss started and as I got there at about 9 am there were already a lot of people. After asking a few crew members of which no one really knew what was going on or where the queue for the photoshoot started or where it ended I just stayed where I was and moved with the people infront of me. In the evening it was a bit more organised and the crew members did a better job than before and managed to line everyone up with a ticket for a photo with Benedict Cumberbatch (which was quite a challange because the 221B Set was open for everyone to see so also people with no tickets for the photoshoot were standing there because they wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch).
In contrast to the queues infront of the Photoshoot Areas the photoshoots themselves were very organised and professionally done. What I really liked was that after your photo was taken they printed it out and handed it to you right away. (I´ve been to a few other conventions before and at some of them you had to wait ages to get your photos printed out.) All my photos turned out very well and I´m really happy about all of them. :)
Just after the first photoshoot I went on to get my already payed for T-Shirts which turned out to not be as easy as I thought it would be. After asking the staff at the information desk, who sent me to the ticket desk, who sent me to one of the merchandise shops, who then sent me to the other merchandise shop, who sent me back to the information desk I began to feel a little stupid walking around in circles without getting my T-Shirts. Luckily one nice lady of the crew then came with me and got me my T-Shirts (after walking another tour with her). So that didn´t go so well. 

Benedict Cumberbatch answering questions from fans

Anyways. I had purchased a ticket for the talk with Benedict Cumberbatch and it was absolutely amazing. :) The presenter asked really good questions and I enjoyed listening to Benedicts answers. He talked a lot about his favourite scenes to film (he said he really loved filming Sherlock, but he especially enjoyed filming the Scenes in ´The Empty Hearse´ where he jumps of the rooftop and the Best Mans Speech in `The Sign of Three´) and also about things he didn´t like. He particularly hated filming scenes where he has to play the violin because he as he puts it himself was really bad at it and just had to pretend to be a fantastic violin player. (But that´s what makes him a good actor ;)). He also did one of his Chewbacca impressions and on a fans request he answered in Smaugs voice which was amazing to listen to.
Another fan asked why he´s always playing kind of the same character and I really liked what he said in response. He answered that apart from the fact that all the characters he has played until now are geniuses they have absolutely nothing in common which I think is true. Every character whether it is Sherlock, Khan or Alan Turing is a genius but they all deal with that in a very different way. (By the way, if you haven´t watched any of his movies I recommend it to you. Go watch them! Now. ;) Benedict is an absolutely fantastic actor!!!)

Costumes from John Watsons and Mary Morstans wedding in ´The Sign of Three´

The new costumes from the upcoming Christmas Special

Further they had a small ´Museum´ (as they called it) where you could have a look at some of the costumes and props from the series. Next to Sherlocks, Johns, Lestrades and Moriartys clothes (just to name a few) they also had the costumes from the upcoming Christmas Special displayed which was really cool. And on the opposite side of the room there was a small exhibition about John Watsons Life. It wasn´t very spectacular but it was nice to have some information of modern day´s Watson presented.

Steven Moffat with his wife Sue Vertue during their talk

I also listened to some of the free talks and I really enjoyed the one with producer Sue Vertue and another one with her and Co-Author Steven Moffat the next day. It was really crowded and I had difficulties to understand some of the words they were saying but it was very interesting to listen to them. One of the things Steven Moffat said sticks to my mind because I really liked it. Being asked if he had ever read any fanfiction of Sherlock and if he had liked it he answered that he hadn´t read too many of them but he really liked the idea of fanfiction. Everyone who writes fanfiction should carry on doing what they´re doing because writing a story with different characters wasn´t like the job authors do, it was the job. So they are doing excately what he is doing and he encourages young authors of fanfiction or just fiction to keep on doing what they love. 

All in all it was a great weekend and although there were some things about the convention that bothered me I really enjoyed being at an event all about one of my favourite TV series. I loved to see people cosplaying the characters from the show (I think some of them did an amazing job with their costumes and some day I would like to cosplay a character myself) and I liked talking to people who share my passion for Sherlock. 

So that was a really long blog post. :) I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it and you will hear from me very soon. 

Sarah