Outside San Diego Comic-Con: The Orville Experience
by Veronica Nunez, August 7, 2019
We had planned on spending all of Saturday during SDCC inside the convention center seeing various panels, but there had been an announcement on Twitter from Orville producer Tom Constantino (@TomConstantino) on Friday about some “surprises or special guests” at The Orville Experience after 5pm on Saturday. We guessed that the some cast members would likely be making an appearance due to their panel and signing all ending before 5pm that day.
We had planned on seeing The Orville Experience anyway, but we changed our panel plans for Saturday afternoon/evening to make sure we got to the offsite in time. We left the convention center immediately after The Orville panel, grabbed sandwiches to eat in line, and arrived outside the offsite around 4pm. There was a very small line, and they let in groups of 10 or so people in at a time.
It was lovely to be in a well air-conditioned room, and the space was much larger than I was expecting. There were so many costumes on display as well as storyboards and concept art. There was also a video of the animation process for sequences. The detailing on the costumes are absolutely incredible as is the detailing on the model of The Orville ship. The ship model looked to be about 2 feet long and was beautifully displayed.
As it got closer to 5pm, you could see that no one was leaving the building and they had stopped letting people in. Photographers were let in and set up around the group of costumes set up below “The Orville Experience” signage. I placed myself directly behind the gun prop display, but lost my space when I stepped back to get one of the “The World of The Orville” books. The cast arrived to take some photos, and Seth MacFarlane did an interview or two.
It was very crowded at this time, and I was getting a bit warm in the crowd. I took a few more photos of some of the displays, but I still wasn’t able to get to see everything there. There was also a GIF/photo op by the exit, but I slightly regret not staying to do it.
The Orville Experience was set up by some of the production department with about 2 months’ time to work on it. Not having experience in displays showed in that the font size on information placards was too small to read from behind the ropes. Costumes were displayed along walls along with storyboards and concept art, and they had rope barriers set up to keep visitors from getting too close to the costumed mannequins, which I completely understand, but the small font on the information placards made them very difficult to read. Also, there were a lot of shadows created on some of the art and their placards from the costumes.
The Orville Experience was voted best offsite in San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog’s Shruggie Awards.
