Home › Forums › Discussion Around Past MNFurs Events And Picnics › Werecamp 2018 › Werecamp – Activities
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Procyon.
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Werecamp is three months away from today and I wanted to have a little bit more discussion on activities that will be taking place there. There will be two broad categories of activities occurring. Most activities will be impromptu and will consist of whatever people want to do at the spur of the moment including gaming, fursuiting, running around outside, drawing, or whatever else people can think of. Read that as, “You get to decide most of what you do.”
The other category of activities will be loosely scheduled Werecamp activities. These will be things that are more planned out and run by someone in a specific time slot. We’ll just go ahead and call them official activities. We don’t want too many of these official activities, just enough to make sure people have a variety of things to do. I do however want these to be activities that everyone can participate in. Preferably things that don’t require people to own specialized equipment that may be hard to acquire.
With that in mind, here’s a list of activities currently being planned along with who is going to run the activity. There are a few more, but they are too tentative to mention at the moment.
- Hiking/Skiing/Snowshoeing (There will be several of these) – Run by Cyber
- Werewolf LARP – Run by Snowjay
- Tug of war tournament – Run by Cyber (Though I would be glad to have someone else execute this)
- Werewolf photoshoot – Run by ??? (Not just fursuiters but any kind of werewolf costume, even just ripped jeans and a plaid shirt. Cheap werewolf costumes are plentiful right now.)
- Hunting quest – Run by Cyber and staff
If you have any ideas for activities or would like to get involved in running some activities, go ahead and contact me. You can post here or DM me. I’ll let you know if your idea would be good as an official activity or better as an impromptu activity.
It has been suggested that we bring a projector, screen and movies for after the sun goes down (nights are long this time of year) Is there interest and would this be allowed?This sounds outstanding so far! I am so happy I could register today. The current event list looks great.It has been suggested that we bring a projector, screen and movies for after the sun goes down (nights are long this time of year) Is there interest and would this be allowed?
The movie night idea sounds interesting, but maybe if such a thing is permitted, a movie list/docket/sign-up should be worked up in advance, just to keep things orderly and make sure that the films shown are agreeable to everyone. I know it’s an 18+ event, but not everyone has the same tastes. But, that’s just my two cents.
Otherwise, I for one would love to watch/share movies with my MNFurs family. I have an enormous physical and digital library of titles, so if this is approved by MNFurs staff, and it is determined how this would be carried out on-site, people could share some of what their film interests are, and I’d no doubt have something of that flavor in my collection. I have a lot of films in a lot of genres, and some rare and obscure gems, too. I could bring a title or two.
But, I won’t put the cart before the horse until an organizer says more about whether something like a movie night and/or nights would be possible.
As for suggestions of my own:
Hmm. Maybe a beginner’s anthro art workshop, for those who are maybe newer to drawing anthro art, or those, like me, who have been away from art for a while. I have a ton of drawings that date up until about 3004… — Um…yes, up until several hundred years from now. That was supposed to say ‘2003’, but I lost home-row for a sec — …that isn’t all too bad, but since then, I haven’t drawn much, due to life stress and so on, and it might be cool to hear what our artistic gray-muzzles have to share with newer or rustier artists, like myself, to help build our skills.
Otherwise, that’s all I have for the moment. I’ll post more thoughts if I come up with them.
I am Convel Deamhan: I've learned that light can be born from darkness, beauty from ugliness, redemption from damnation, and friendship from loneliness. I am ecstatic to be a member of MNFurs, and the furry fandom at large!
It has been suggested that we bring a projector, screen and movies for after the sun goes down (nights are long this time of year) Is there interest and would this be allowed?
Did you say earlier that we might have access to a license needed to play movies? If so, then we could do that. I know I wanted to play some werewolf movies, but the licensing isn’t in our budget right now. (And some of them I’ve had a hard time tracking down who I even need to get a license from, many of the companies involved have vanished into the night.)
Just for kicks I’m looking to see what a single event license for “An American Werewolf in London” might cost, they need to approve my account before I can get a quote.
As for suggestions of my own: Hmm. Maybe a beginner’s anthro art workshop, for those who are maybe newer to drawing anthro art, or those, like me, who have been away from art for a while.
If there is somebody going to Werecamp who would like to do something like this they can let me know what they want to do and I’ll make the info available to people. If there are enough artists there, they may want to group up at some tables and see what happens.
You don’t need a license for showing movies in this manner. The license is for commercial exhibition like at a movie theater, not a small gathering of friends. You’re not charging admission. This is a private gathering.Engineer by day, artist by night.
You don’t need a license for showing movies in this manner. The license is for commercial exhibition like at a movie theater, not a small gathering of friends. You’re not charging admission. This is a private gathering.
Werecamp is a semipublic gathering, not a private gathering. (We restrict access to people who pay, but anybody can pay.)
The charging of admission has nothing to do with copyright law. You have to respect it even if there’s no money transaction involved. (Though we do charge admission to attend.)
He is correct, anything we do in a “public” area really should have a license.We could work with 501c3 partners to see if we can get an extension of thier license. 2 options we can make easily happen is any anime under the Funimation license as well as a series of movies with no current license holder in US. I bring up the later because “Mr. Zenka” who might be attending wants to do a Czech movie night of some classics from subtitled Czech movies that have to be seen to be believed. Think watching Hong Kong action or Japanese Kaiju movies.
You don’t need a license for showing movies in this manner. The license is for commercial exhibition like at a movie theater, not a small gathering of friends. You’re not charging admission. This is a private gathering.
Werecamp is a semipublic gathering, not a private gathering. (We restrict access to people who pay, but anybody can pay.) The charging of admission has nothing to do with copyright law. You have to respect it even if there’s no money transaction involved. (Though we do charge admission to attend.)
Ah, yes. That makes sense, and was something I should have thought of myself, as I have some knowledge of copyright law; just not relating specifically to an event like this.
As a semi-pro writer, albeit an as-yet unpublished one, I’ve had a day course in copyright law, and it’s been mentioned off and on over the years in other classes. Although this was was more in relation to books and stories. But, this indeed would constitute a public gathering according to film copyright law, as stated here:
https://www.wlu.edu/general-counsel/answer-center/copyright-and-intellectual-property/copyright-guidelines-for-showing-movies-and-other-audiovisual-works (*Jinkies, what a long URL!)
First, is it a “public performance”?
The showing of a movie will be considered to be a “public performance” if either of the following is true:
- You will be showing the movie to people other than members of your family or a small group of your friends. (*Convel’s note: Italicized by me, for emphasis.)
- You will be showing the movie in a place that is open to people other than members of your family or a small group of your friends (for example, a classroom or the Commons Theater), whether or not any such people attend.
…And as such, if — however likely or unlikely such a case may be; it doesn’t matter in the end, really, as we don’t want to violate copyright — MNFurs could potentially sued by a rights holder for the public performance of a film, show, or the like.
*Shrug* Yeah, its sucks, but that’s the way it goes with things like this, especially with gatherings of Werecamp’s potential size, where it can’t legally be considered a “small group of friends,” regardless of how close we all may be. I’d sure as hell hate for the hammer of a film rights holder’s legal department to come down on MNFurs over something so easily preventable. So, it’s best to play it safe and not show anything without a license.
Interestingly, there’s a nonprofit that specializes in attaining an “umbrella license” for the public performance of films from “over 1,000 studios and producers”: The Motion Picture Licensing Corporation (MPLC):
Unfortunately, they don’t cite sample costs on their site, but they do apparently do free quotes. I even tried to Google for potential costs, but came up empty handed.
I did find this, though:
So, it is apparently a legitimate company, and serves as at least one licensing company for many media corporations.
Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be too much out there more specifically. But, it’s an option, and seems to cover more ground than contacting rights holders individually. The question would then be: Is it worthwhile?
I’m sure we’ll have a heck of a good time, one way or another, even without movies.
I am Convel Deamhan: I've learned that light can be born from darkness, beauty from ugliness, redemption from damnation, and friendship from loneliness. I am ecstatic to be a member of MNFurs, and the furry fandom at large!
We could work with 501c3 partners to see if we can get an extension of thier license. 2 options we can make easily happen is any anime under the Funimation license as well as a series of movies with no current license holder in US. I bring up the later because “Mr. Zenka” who might be attending wants to do a Czech movie night of some classics from subtitled Czech movies that have to be seen to be believed. Think watching Hong Kong action or Japanese Kaiju movies.
The US and Czech Republic have treaties that recognize each others copyrights. So if a movie is copyrighted in the Czech Republic it is protected in the US, and vice versa. This means we would still need to get a license from the production company even if it’s not licensed here.
I’m waiting for more information on an umbrella license. If I get the names of the studios that made the Czech movies I can check the list they send me, assuming the pricing is reasonable of course. The MPLC in the UK shows pricing starting at $100, but that doesn’t mean the same will be true here.
Honestly, if the movie thing proves to be unworkable it may be better to see if somebody wants to brings video games instead. Those don’t have performance restrictions attached to them the same way movies do.
We could work with 501c3 partners to see if we can get an extension of thier license. 2 options we can make easily happen is any anime under the Funimation license as well as a series of movies with no current license holder in US. I bring up the later because “Mr. Zenka” who might be attending wants to do a Czech movie night of some classics from subtitled Czech movies that have to be seen to be believed. Think watching Hong Kong action or Japanese Kaiju movies.
The US and Czech Republic have treaties that recognize each others copyrights. So if a movie is copyrighted in the Czech Republic it is protected in the US, and vice versa. This means we would still need to get a license from the production company even if it’s not licensed here. I’m waiting for more information on an umbrella license. If I get the names of the studios that made the Czech movies I can check the list they send me, assuming the pricing is reasonable of course. The MPLC in the UK shows pricing starting at $100, but that doesn’t mean the same will be true here. Honestly, if the movie thing proves to be unworkable it may be better to see if somebody wants to brings video games instead. Those don’t have performance restrictions attached to them the same way movies do.
I love the video game idea! I’m not much of a multi-player gamer myself, but I love them in theory, at least, and if my MNFurs brethren don’t mind an “old” wolf…
(“Old hound!”
“Wolf!”
“‘Wolf’, sorry… What activities are being planned for Werecamp, over there?”
“I’m 33.”
“What!?”
“I’m 33, I’m not old!” 😀 )
…bumbling around in, say, an FPS, or something like Destiny 2, or whatever, and probably compromising the whole mission, and then having my digital corpse being teabagged by everyone in sequence, probably including even by the AI-controlled enemies and NPCs, I’d be happy to play along! 🙂 I’m just usually a single player gamer. I am a gamer, though!
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but might anyone be interested in running a short Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, etc. campaign, at least for those who have experience in such games? I mean, four days doesn’t offer a lot of time to get any massive campaign done, but it may just be fun to goof off as D&D characters and “accidentally” set fire to Waterdeep, or something. I mean, because, we’re all, like, chaotic neutral, right? I know I am! Things tend to “happen” when fire and I are “together” in a D&D campaign… LOL!
I have no DM experience, so I’d be ill-suited for offering to set up something, but if one of our more veteran D&D or Pathfinder, or other such tabletop game members feels like whipping up a short campaign for a portion of/the duration of Werecamp, then maybe that could be an option…? I honestly don’t know, which is why I ultimately phrased that as a question.
For the record, I’ve played 3.5, 4th Edition, and some limited 5th Edition D&D.
Personal (Joking!) Challenge to Our Potential Werecamp DM:
Run an AD&D 2.0 campaign! Let’s bring THAC0 back! Those were the days defense was like golf: the lower the score, the better! I have an AC of -99, so I’m pretty much indestructible, AND untouchable, by the way. *Bird lands on arm* *Arm falls off* Ah, crap!
I am Convel Deamhan: I've learned that light can be born from darkness, beauty from ugliness, redemption from damnation, and friendship from loneliness. I am ecstatic to be a member of MNFurs, and the furry fandom at large!
I chatted with somebody from the MPLC today to go over the licensing options that are available to us. They even checked to see if somebody else already had a license we could use. (They are issued for the venue, not the group.) In the end though, it’s just going to be too expensive. Unless something can be worked out with the Funimation license, we won’t be able to show any movies at Werecamp.We definitely have the space for people to run games of whatever variety they want.
Took a deeper dive on that license, you are correct about Czech republic. enforcement is another issue but point taken and better to remain safe. The Funimation licence is still an option and we can get that with just a little bit of registration and paperwork at negligible cost. They have extensive catalog of Komonimimi style animes as well as all of Hosoda’s work (like Wolf Children). -
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