#week5review

Week 5 took a look at how new media is reshaping the professional practices of the entertainment industry through journalism, television, film and music. For this blog I will be discussing participatory fandom and new media campaigns in film and television. New Media campaigns I think really excites the audience about an upcoming movie or television show. For the season finale of Breaking Bad Aaron Paul led his follows on a hunt for exclusive screenings randomly tweeting the location of the tickets. Thousands of people where involved in this hunt for tickets and this created even more excitement for the final episode. Not only where Aaron Paul’s twitter followers talking about it but it was reported in papers and made even more free advertising for the final episode. I know this story really engaged me as an avid fan of the show. Image Source: http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/9.png The web 2.0 revolution has effected the way that audiences interact with movies. Now more then ever is it crucial to have an online media campaign. The technology has changed where now the audience has a voice about what they want to see in upcoming film and television. With this new advent of participatory fandom, a new wave of “consecrating agents” are introduced to into Bourdieu’s “circle of belief” (1993b, 77). These fans conduct enthusiastic critical analyses, show extreme dedication and growing numbers they are “finally being recognized as important contributors to the formation of collective belief” (Shefrin, 2004). “I believe that entertainment producers that embrace this concept of ‘participatory fandoms’ and include their fandoms more in the production process will be much more successful than those that don’t” (Jenkins, 1992). If we look at lets say, George Lucas “Star Wars” franchise the lack of internet and fandom participation in the creation of the last few movies have left fans with raised expectations which where not meet. Something that would have been fixed by simply listening to what the audience had wanted. Nowadays the audience decides on what they want to watch and are very vocal when their needs are not meet. If we look at the success of Peter Jackson’s trilogy “Lord of the Rings” we can see that the fans have been actively courted by Jackson and New Line Cinema throughout all aspects of authoring, casting, film and marketing the trilogy. This ensured that the already large fan base of the book was happy with the product. To do this Jackson conducted interviews where he would answer question that where compiled from over 14,000 submissions. McKellen highlights his alliance with fans in a Newsweek interview: “Although it’s not made exclusively for the fans, it’s made by fans. We’re all allies” (Giles, 2001, p. 4). Lord of the Rings still currently has a huge fan base which still make the content there own. Creating them into memes they put more meaning into the films and lengthen the online life of Lord of the Rings.