On Sunday April 5, 1998 I went to the X-Files Expo in Miami, Florida (actually it was in Coconut Grove). I was a bit disappointed at first but as the day went on things got much better. First, before you go in they ask if you have a camera. If so, you either have to put it back in your car or leave it with them. As we walked up to the entrance they couldn't see our camera. If I was thinking I would have said no, but then again they may have kicked us out if we got caught with it. They did make up for it though. They had several people walking around with digital cameras and they would take as many pictures as you like. The picture above was taken on the digital camera. It is of (from left to right) my mother, me and one of my friends/nurses. They only charged $1 for the disk which can hold up to 60 photos. In case your curious they had cameras there you could buy but the price was outrageous. The cheaper digital camera was $450 which is way too steep for my liking.
You were also able to get your picture taken in front of 2 different blue screens. The first was of Mulder's office. When the picture came out it was you sitting behind his desk. The other picture was of you in front of the car used in the movie. They tell you to pretend as if you are looking up at an UFO as you are being abducted. It sounds sort of lame but it didn't come out too bad. These pictures were free (or I got away before they asked for the money). I was able to get my autographs scanned at my school but was unable to get the blue screen pictures scanned yet. All my Expo pictures are at the bottom of this page. I had to lessen the quality before uploading or this would take forever to load because of the size of the picture files.
Another highlight was the 8 minute preview of the upcoming movie X-Files: Fight the Future. This was a bit of a disappointment because the newspaper article made it sound as if we were going to see 8 full minutes of the movie. Don't get me wrong, it was a good preview but it was a bit ruined since my expectations of what I was going to see didn't match what I saw. At least the entire movie looks as if it will be completely about the main theme of the government conspiracy.
And now for the biggest highlight of my Expo experience. After each of the stars did their time on stage they signed autographs, but there was a very long line. The autographs themselves would have been good on their own but something even better happened to me. I was invited to go backstage and meet the stars of the show who were there. I met Dean Haglund (Langley), Stephen Williams (X), Nick Lea (Alex Krychek) and Frank Spotnitz (one of the producers). I was really surprised at how down to earth they all seemed to be. I only spoke with Stephen Williams and Frank Spotnitz briefly, just a hi, how are you, nice to meet you type of thing. I spoke with Dean Haglund for about 5 minutes, you would be surprised how comical he is. Now, Nick Lea actually pulled up a chair and sat and talked with us for about 15 minutes or so. I was able to get one little bit of information about the new movie from him. He is not in it.
I was also able to get my picture taken with some of them but haven't gotten the film back yet in order to get them scanned. As soon as I get them I will post them immediately. In the meen time I will put the digital pictures and the autographs on the following page. In order for the pictures not to take forever to load (when I first scanned the autographs each was over 3MB in size) I had to lower the pixel resolution. They still didn't come out too badly though.
