Conventioneers takes place during a convention, specifically a convention for people who have either read a Brandon Sanderson book, or people who are loved by someone who’s read a Brandon Sanderson book. The best thing I can describe the convention as, in terms befitting those discussed in this class, is a meeting hub for an imagined community as described in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. It is no nation; it reaches further than that. It is not defined by a language, but by unification through print media. This is all a way to say that we’re at a convention for a bunch of books. A bunch of books so good that they made us go, “Oh man, now I want to pay 100+ dollars to this team of people to go pay them more money to buy another book and then whatever else they’re willing to sell me!”
This is hyperbole; we were there for more than just the next book or the merch store. We paid all that money so that we could take part in a massive game where we collected cards with stories on one side and art on the other. The author who made this whole thing possible sold us another book by handing us the pages, selling a $25 binder to put them in. It’s as if the next book and another merch store were interactive and made you talk to people just so you could read it. This is a cross section of an imagined community that paid for the chance to get to know each other and watch an event unfold live. The media is nothing without the people behind it, and a convention is nothing without the people beside you.
The film Hoop Dreams also falls into an imagined community of shared interest. The shared interest happens to be Basketball. There is a great appreciation for the game throughout the film, reflecting the two boys it follows. The film involves that community, but it does not only talk about that community. There is talk about the lives of starring boys in the film. We see their homes, their families, their struggles, their successes, and their growth outside of basketball. They’re never the full focus, but they’re important to acknowledge the boys as members of their imagined community of basketball players.
Within Conventioneers, there is not as much focus on the happenings of the convention and what brought everyone there. It’s an underlying thing, meant to set up the scene to watch people within it. To make a film about the whole convention and the chaos that ensued would be a lot to ask of a 7-minute max documentary or even of one individual. Something of a much smaller scope is needed. People are much smaller and much easier to capture. Especially glimpses into their relationships with each other and why they might be at that convention.
With the scope being the relationship between social actors and the filmmaker, that would firmly place this film into the participatory mode of documentary. It’s about the interactions of this group of people within the scope of the convention. I know this film wouldn’t have been made if I hadn’t been asked to go to this convention by my sibling’s lovely husband. I took the opportunity to make this film because of how strongly I feel about them and spending time with them. I want to remember us in all our positively nerdy glory.
This relationship aspect, especially a prolonged reflection on it, will always invoke works like Shermans March. Ross McElwee had a much different goal in mind for what he was going to make a film about when he got sidetracked by the beauty that is the human relationship. Much of his outlook on it was tinted by his fear of a nuclear holocaust, but that never seemed to stop him from being his shy yet enamored self when he came across a woman (whether they fit his fancy or not). His documentary’s path was reformed by the relationships that led him. Many of these were romances that didn’t pan out, but finding enamorment—even if for a little while—is still such a fascinating thing.
Like this work of Ross McElwee, I too followed around the relationships with my life. I, however, am not on some path for romance. This film is about a different kind of love. This film is, to me, about some of my closest family bonds. People who I deem not only my peers, but some of my closest friends and some of the people I would be willing to trust more than anyone else. This is my sibling and the family they built. This is the family that they offer me. My sibling’s husband convinced me to start reading books from the author who puts on the convention. Honestly, I commend him for his taste in media. It brought us closer together.
This film will find itself relevant as one person’s archive of what is a historical annual gathering of book nerds. This isn’t some general convention for every comic and pop culture thing, this isn’t a convention for a type of medium. Everyone who showed up had a common interest. We like things outside of that, but the chance to be at a book release—or at mildly botch attempt at con game that ended up being wildly successful at its goal of bringing people together—was just too good to pass. We are the reason they will need to give the convention more space next year. We are a moment in time, all dressed up as our favorite characters because we love them and discussing the technical aspects of their logistically sound yet fantastical worlds.
If nothing else, this film gets to be the perfect time capsule of who I was in my early twenties. It’s who my sibling was when they were two and a half years married to who is, in my opinion, the best person they could have possibly asked for. It’s who I spent all my time on calls with and the kinds of relationships we’ve fostered through years of communication. It’s our friend, the ginger with the “Joe”ks about 3 months into being married and goofy as ever. It’s who my younger brother-in-law was when he started growing into himself. It captures how much the internet has impacted our speech compared to works like Hoop Dreams and Shermans March. How much we joke and what kind of grand events we got to see together, if nothing else.
All of the writing sounds very gooey and sappy, but that’s because—despite all the jokes—I am gooey and sappy about the people around me to the point of creation. I get the chance to keep a moment of my life in a bottle to look at and love. I will never relive it, but it will always be proof that people at their most excited and exhausted can also be some of the most beautiful things.