How About WALL•E Parties?!!

With all the Oscar nominations, and ignoring the other bad news such as the Annies, surely it would be more fun to get together, in some way, instead of being Home Alone. How many of us live within an hour or so drive away from a populated area where there must be another forum fan? Are there other ways of getting together live for the action such as online chat channels, multi-party telephone calls and thru your computers camera?

A local party could be in a room rented for the day, either in a hotel/motel, or an event room. The cost of the room would be split, making it affordable. Participants could bring their Wall-E merchandise to show it off, including any Wall-E toys, Ultimate Wall-E’s welcome. Also, bring Pixar movies and at least 2 dvd players. To replace old overused boob tubes, renting screens from a Rent-A-Center type of place is fairly cheap, they rent by the week and can be in the mid $20’s, per item? So it wouldn’t be just the awards ceremony, but could be all day, and not even necessarily that weekend.

Lots of businesses want to rent rooms and facilities which are otherwise not being used on a particular day. Theaters want to do this especially during the daytime on weekdays. Game centers love this too, but they often don’t have tuner cards in their computers for television. Some tho, have televisions or projection tv’s. People can always bring small tv’s or rentals to a game center, which usually have private rooms in back, of various sizes. Churches even have meeting rooms and colleges too, although many facilities have restricted hours, they really do have someone go around and lock all the doors at a certain hour and might be closed weekends.

If someone can’t make it, they live too far away, like maybe 8000 miles, there must be ways of ‘hooking up’. Our modern technology makes such shared experiences possible. Don’t know anyone? Then put an ad in a major newspaper, a radio ad, or cheaper would be to go to other Wall-E sites such as the Walleforum.com, or the Fandango, Imdb, and Rottentomato sites. And don’t forget Craigslist, which is advertising an Oscars party in my area. I don’t know anyone at either Pixar or DW north, which is only 8 miles away, but their must be electronic bulletin boards in your area for announcements.

What do you think? Any ideas? Who wants to get together?

Cool idea! I’ve heard of Disney meet-ups, and other sort of meet-ups but not a WALL•E or even a Pixar one before.

Maybe if there was some way for me to watch the Academy Awards live, and then discuss it with other people over the Internet or Skype in real time, that would be great, if I’m not doing anything that day. You can use Skype to hold multi-person text chats, phone calls or webcam conferences (I’m not sure if you can have more than two webcams, though). Computer Skype to Skype calls (whether you use video or voice chat) are completely free. So that’s one option, DarkHand.

Ehh, seems kind of bland in my opinion, theres not much you could do at strictly a WALL-E party. I think itd be more efficient to have a Pixar party, so people could bring much much more.

Just a suggestion.

I do like the idea, but I haven’t personally ever met another Pixar fan in real life. The only person I could possibly meet from here is Mark-E, so actually physically meeting other Pixar fans might not be feasible. But technology does help! As Rachel mentioned, Skype is very good for having conversations over long distances.

A couple of my friends use Skype and they love it.

I have a webcam on my laptop now, and i am getting my macbook pro soon, so ill have on on there aswell!

I like the idea of a party, but it seems a bit… dangerous. An online party seems to be best. Maybe if I knew other Wall-E fans, a real party would be possible. However, if we did have a real party, what exactly would we do?

Well, added “bring Pixar movies” to the 1st post, it was an omission. I just bought TS2 today and noticed some used Wall-E movies for sale, at only a few bucks off list. I have a portable and non-portable, but small and ez to move dvd player. Also, one can rent other movies such as KFP for only a dollar and compare the quality of animation. Someone asked what would you do, well plenty of things. I would love to see Wall-E toys, as I haven’t bought any yet. And to be sure some of those Wall-E builders get together now and then, in each others workshops which would be interesting in its own way instead of going to conventions.

Also added some other ways of networking with folks with a similar interest. This is the type of post which is going to take several days for people to see and perhaps a couple weeks to plan.

The reason I said Wall-E and not ‘Pixar’ or ‘Animation’ is because of the UPcoming Oscars ceremony on Feb 22nd, a Sunday, where Wall-E will be the featured interest. But why get together or rent a room just for a couple hours when you can engage in other activities.

Blimey! I’ve hardly been here long and i’m already getting suggested for invites to parties

You’re far too kind!

I would never be opposed to stuff like this, although the travel costs might be a bit of a pain.

Agreed. Man, Pixar fans should like, all live in one place.

…Who wants to do a mass forum-wide move to Emeryville?

Well, I pass within a few miles of Pixar and DW every week, was just a few hundred yards away last nite, as I passed the AMC Emeryville theater (which is a small inner city suburb, sandwiched between the Oakland industrial district and Berkeley). But I have never actually seen their campus.

Actually, I will be going up there hopefully Saturday nite before the Oscars, to some sort of Berkeley FireHouse film short presentation. Maybe I will meet someone up there. Also, this Thursday there is a presentation of the film at a new library in the city of San Jose California. It’s apparently for kids off from school and perhaps their families, something to look into.

Well, this thread failed to generate much enthusiasm. Actually for my efforts here and on Craiglist, I just got an invitation to be online at the Walleforum.com. Maybe that was the place to have posted this.

Edit: Hi RachelCakes, we seem to be on at the same time, must be near noon in your equally sunny location. Yes, little networking occurred. I guess the next logical step would be to plan some sort of Pixar fan convention, since it’s clear from the responses here that just one of their movies, however good, just doesn’t have the pull power.

Posts here on this subforum have dropped precipitously in recent weeks. There was a burst over the Annies, and is sure to be one on Sunday/Monday, and will be a blip just before June 29th. But the truth is, the movie has been released, reviewed, is out of theaters, most dvd’s are sold and viewed and opinions rendered. And awards are wrapping up. Still, the subforum will continue…

I for one rarely post on other subforums here, maybe will start doing that in fanfic or such, but will mostly disappear when the action here is past. I watch Pixar movies 2-3 times, but have never been the slightest bit tempted until 2008’s offering to visit. It’s interesting how many posts they are having over at the Walleforum.com, but I wonder what will happen to them by next summer, while life here at PixarPlanet continues…

In my defence, I offered twice to be online when it airs and watch it streamed over the Internet as well as chat about it with people here at the same time. But that went unanswered, too: by everyone. What will probably end up happening (like last year) is we’ll post about the results in real-time in one of the threads and discuss it as it’s happening.

DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver- Unfortunately, people have lives outside of Pixar. Anyway, just because people aren’t constantly posting about WALL-E doesn’t mean love for it has died. I myself love the film but it probably doesn’t come across as I don’t always have much to say about it, and what’s the point of posting just for the sake of it (even though this is sort of what I’m doing now, but we’ll ignore that. )? Anyway, arranging this sort of thing is very difficult when it comes to time zones and clashing with the other stuff that people have to do, as we’ve experienced in the Fan Commentaries.

Plus there’s the fact that, in all honesty, I don’t really care that much about the Oscars. It’d be great if WALL-E won a few, of course, and it would show that all the effort the team at Pixar put into making the film was well worth it, but the Oscars aren’t the be all and end all. I didn’t really plan on watching them, just finding out the results in the newspapers (or probably from on here) is the way I usually go about it.

I like the idea of a Pixar Fan convention, as that really would appeal to everyone on here and it’d be quite the occassion, but once again, organising such a thing would be a bit of a nightmare, especially if technology is involved.

Seriously, don’t feel disheartened or that suddenly no-one on here likes WALL-E anymore, because I assure you that’s not the case. But even with such a spectacular film as WALL-E, there is a finite number of things to talk about.

DarkHand - I’m all for the idea of a Pixar conference. Certainly it would bring in more participants than a WALL•E conference. If I lived in the US, I’d probably attend some sort of Pixar Planet meetup, yeah.

However, one thing to consider is that a lot of members here are teenagers who wouldn’t have parental permission to meet-up with a “stranger” from the Internet, much less the money to do so for the members that would be allowed or would have permission to do so (as well as a means of travelling). Others may want to keep their privacy and are happy to converse with members on the Internet, but for various reasons, don’t want to give away their identity any further by meeting up offline. Which is fair enough. But rest assured that if I lived in California, I’d happily meet up with you.

I’ve read of Disney meet-ups over at Disney forums, but Disney seems to have a larger audience and fanbase than Pixar, so that’s why it’s more possible for meet-ups to happen with Disney fans over Pixar fans - a larger pool of potential meeters to choose from. Disney fans also seem to be older and more independent, too.

As for the posts dropping - depends on what part of the forum you go to, heheh. Well, that’s just the cycle of the boards around here. Ratatouille used to be popular, but then along comes the next Pixar film and interest wanes, or wanes to the point of people not wanting to discuss it anymore. Not that we don’t think it’s a good film, it’s just that some people have a higher tolerance than others to how much they can talk about the same movie for so long. That’s a shame about you leaving Pixar Planet soon. I’ve always enjoyed reading your sharp, humorous and insightful posts.

Yeah, California and South Australia seems to have similar weather - except you’re in winter right now, and it’s summer here! 72 degrees and sunny in winter - give me some of that!

Anyway, I’ll probably either watch the Awards on TV and/or watch it streamed live so I can record it on the computer, and also surf the 'net during the lulls of the ceremony.

Well, I was just perusing over at the Rat subforum, and it looks like they get a few posts per week, which is ok. If I have something interesting to contribute a year from now, I sure will, even tho it might look like my own personal forum: me talking to a wall of cubes.

No response AT ALL to my similar thread over at the walleforum. Honestly, it’s swamped over there by a one-man forum. I noticed that the fellow over here who has the most posts admitted that he was ‘looking for work’, and he doesn’t even like our adorable yellow friend. Some people have a lot of time on their hands, but I have to work, otherwise I would be working full steam on Wall-E projects.

You are probably right, rachelcakes, that so many are teens here. I always thought these websites were loaded with ‘trust fund babies’, in their 30’s who only leave the computer cuz mom just called upstairs to come down for dinner, or for a beer/chips run. Still, with all the online computer games, I have met so many kids. The youngest was 9 and his 13 year old brother, they came to my chat channel in between games. I never knew they were sooo young. There is still a regular at the channel who is 14 now, he has been there 2 years and has always talked like an adult, it’s startling. You just have to trust adults at some point, after knowing someone on the internet for 6 months - 2 years, they are no longer strangers!

Sure, some people who come here might work in the industry, maybe even for rival DW. I heard that at least 6 Pixar people come here, and they have to hide their ‘secret’ identity. At the other end of the scale are people with disabilities who have nothing else to do but surf, and websites like this are their ‘home’ now.

If this subforum fades away, we can just blame lizardgirl, it’s her responsibility anyways… Oh, I live in the same state as the Oscars and used to live a county over from them. For many people they are the crowning event of the film year, fading tho as you become more sophisticated in your tastes and able to call the shots even better than some Academy members. Mostly, I want to actually see people like Ben Burtt, Andrew Stanton, and Thomas Newman on television, and of course all my favorites from the other worthy candidates. The results won’t change my image of our yellow friend one iota.

Edit: well, here it is months later, and I am reduced to attending Wall-E parties like these:

munchkinsandmayhem.com/2009/ … party.html

Haha, I’m hoping that’s a joke.

Yeah, that’s the best part of the Oscars, seeing the people behind the great films, but that sort of thing does seem a world away. As someone who lives so close, you’re right next to the action and so can probably appreciate just how important the occassion is in the film world.