Yesterday I was all excited because I saw something which I thought would be truly amazing. That was the post entitled: Watchmen Event in London not to be Missed! I’ve just got home from said event and I’m afraid I lied to you HeyUGuys readers. It could well have been missed…. but it’s not all bad… please read on…..
OK, so I’ve been excited all day at the prospect that I was going up to London after work to check out this ‘once in a lifetime event’ that had been put on by someone in the UK who has something to do with Watchmen promotion. I turned up at Hungerford bridge at 17.30 to get my ‘seat’ and to make sure that I’d have a prime position in which to see this spectacle of greatness. My first problem was that no one else seemed to be there. No other geeks were mingling, no production crew running around to set up the event. I started to worry that this whole thing was just a hoax and that i’d fallen for a big prank to fool the nation….
An hour or so went by with me pacing around trying to keep warm (as the temperature was in and around the 0° mark) when I decided to have a wander up on the bridge (where I’d read on a Watchmen site would be the best place to be for the event) and I saw the brightest projector shining in my face that I’d ever seen. “The event was on!” I thought to myself!
It wasn’t long before I made friends with a fellow geek who was wearing nothing but a t-shirt but was kited out with both a video camera and a still camera. “Are you hear for Watchmen” I said already knowing the answer “what else?!” was his response. And from then on, we were two peas in a Watchmen pod!
We stood there with no one else turning up specifically for the event for a further 1.5 hours, watching the techie’s sort out the projector and get things set up, then they turned on the water spray. This is where it got interesting. The basic premise was that they had somehow created a way to spray water in all directions up to 70ft in the air creating this huge wall of water. It was amazing, but didn’t look 70ft high at first. I then realised that we must be 30ft up on the bridge and the water was well above our heads. but it didn’t look as impressive or as big as I thought it would.
Anyway, we waited a further hour for 20:00 to roll around which it did and then…. nothing happened! It was SO cold and me and my fellow geek friend had been there for nearly 3 hours…. waiting. Anyway, at 20.15, the ‘show’ finally started…. the only problem was, the ‘show’ was exactly the same thing that we’d seen when they were setting it all up. So I actually could have come home nearly 2 hours earlier. I guess the only difference was by this time, about 150 people had gathered there to watch the show and so there was a bit more of a buzz.
People were pretty disappointed overall I think. The ‘show’ only lasted about 10 minutes with the same video clips running round and round in sequence. We’d been told on all the websites promoting the event that exclusive footage would be shown. That unfortunately wasn’t true – it was just the trailer which we’d already seen. There was also no sound so it was just moving images on the water wall with nothing else. Can’t have it all I guess!
After a few minutes of the event, people started to disperse with disappointed looks on their faces. The promise of Dr. Manhattan rising from the water never came. He was just a static image shining on the water wall like the other members of the cast.
What I am pleased about however, is how some of my photos have come out. I have placed all of the best ones below. You can click them to enlarge.
If you were there, please let me know and we can converse in the comments section below.
