Say, how are you guys choosing your guests anyhow? I mean, what motivated you to seek out a reclusive Vancouver-based voice actress as the former "mystery guest"? Was the idea to start with actors who were in MLP and work backwards to find one who was both relevant to anime and able to attend the con?
These are questions I'd submit to the podcast, but I'm not on Facebook so that's a bit difficult for me to do.
To be honest, we look for several things --
Trends -- what is the hot thing now? If it's a series, who's VA'ing in it? We knew that MLP was the hot thing, so we started looking at who are the stars (well, we already knew who was in it, infer what you will). Cathy was one of the best choices because she had broad appeal, and hasn't been in the US for 10+ years. Plus with her credits in Ranma, Deathnote, and GW, she was the choice to go after. There are several OTHER Canada based guests we would like to go after too...we just want to make sure it is worth everyone's while to see them.
Speaking of which, we do seek out guests that haven't been in the area -- there's a reason why we don't bring certain guests, and it's not a slight against them, but they're at other cons we share the region with. Yes, we have Todd Haberkorn this year, but Todd is a popular guest that gets alot of attention. So does Chris Sabat -- they have the draw power.
Some of our guests -- well, we just like them. Take Stephanie Young for example. Her and David Brehm do not go to any other convention outside of the TX area other than Matsuricon, or so I believe. And you have to remember, we're fans too. We do let some of our biases make our decision when we decide guests, but once we have a guest contacted and we go through negotiations, business takes over and we make the best deal to bring them out. Oh yeah, speaking of Stephanie Young -- no surprise here, she's back for 2012 too
Think about this -- some of the guests we get is purely on feedback. We look at con feedback and see who's on the list, and just go after them. Funimation guests are easy to go after for us because we are buddy-buddy with them and their talent coordinator. It's to the point where we say no to alot of the Funi VAs. And for simple trivia -- #1 VA that came up time and time again - Laura Bailey. Yep, went after her too. We also go to OTHER con websites and look at what THEY'RE requesting. We're sneaky like that.
Does that answer your question?
We've been quiet because we've been working on something HUGE -- we're not even suppose to talk about it right now, sumimasen!
Next update is soon, I promise!
