TODAY'S GUEST POST is from up and coming, recently minted CFC alumnus and screenwriter Elize Morgan, and comprises her insights gleaned from the NextMedia conference in Banff. You can follow Elize's blog here.
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There's even been some smack talk on the internet about how fic writers just write what people want to see, not what's good to story, but I'm here to say that's all crap. Hooey if one might.
That maybe, even, that fic writers have a place in our industry.
And before the gasps of outrage over what might be seen as the crazed lack of control that will spiral into a crazy world where anarchy is prevalent and the Conservatives decrease funding to the CBC (...wait), allow me to throw out a few of the ideas some of those very smart folk at NextMedia were mentioning: that there's a collective audience out there for shows that sometimes get lost, and that audience wants to play along.
Especially if your show is 20 plus seasons long. Because in that case, you might as well ask your fans to get involved. This is a collaborative medium anyway, not a sandbox of one. Sandboxes of one get really boring, and, legal issues aside (this is fair use in the US staring at you in the face) it's free marketing.
Now we're not talking following what fan forums are asking for in the story lines to a tee, from Martin Wood's interview here:
You learn that the majority of your audience is not responding on those things. So a relatively small number of people are being very loud about what they want. If you respond to it the way you think you should, it's not necessarily the best thing for the show.
No, this is part of the art of marketing. By asking the fans to come on board you extend that extra little bit to your 0.02 per cent audience that want a little bit more anyway. They just want to be involved that extra titch, and that can lend itself to creating a hugely collaborative online space that extends the TV show itself.
After all, if we're collaborating on seasons after creators leave, why not. If they're going to do it anyway – because they can, and let's face it, they will – then let's make it work for that free marketing space it can work out to be.
And that marketing space – the contests and contexts that can be created with a participatory audience are almost expected at this point. Kid shows and animation demand the interactive before the show pitch even begins, and that audience is ageing up quick and unlikely to demand less from their prime time viewing.
Fan fiction doesn't need to be the elephant in the room – fans are willing to take it down a notch to make it “safe”, and the point is, at the end of the day, is that it's already being done.
Gary Carter – CCO of FMX and COO of FremantleMedia - controller of so many properties it's depressing to think of – mentioned a fic contest they did, to drum up some support for their soap. And it's here that they realized that the audiences are not only willing to play along, but they want to do it.
Fans are not your grandma's basement dwellers anymore. They do grand gestures to save TV shows, send sunflower seeds to get noticed, and generally raise a ruckus. Why not include them in the interactive pitch?
And, at the heart of this, it isn't just about TV anymore – Mike Kasprow from Trapeze said it best at NextMedia:
It's not about the control of the story elements, [but] about being part of the dialogue.
And that, is the end game of all things like TV. Although most of the stats from NextMedia showed that actually kids are still watching TV the conventional way, thank you very much (North American stats from Youthography - and that TV isn't dead. But – and it's a big but – those kids spend more time on a lot of the websites than they do on the shows themselves.
And if your audience feel that they're part of the dialogue – like the fan fiction contest FremantleMedia ran for their soap Neighbours, to other long form contests, it means that not only does fan fiction really not suck, it's a part of the culture online anyway.
1 comment:
Interesting to know this is being discussed. My gut reaction was that people on the industry end should be aware of how much ingrained resistance fandom has to any kind of industry involvement in fanworks, but logically I'm not so sure that really matters.
Actually, it'll be pretty embarrassing if the industry learns to shift its perspective and fandom doesn't. There's a tendency to think that those who play in sanctioned sandboxes are just clueless corporate dupes and not "real" fans, a view that could become increasingly irrelevant as new media develops.
I'm still inclined to believe the twain shouldn't meet, but don't discount the possibility that someone will come up with a viable model to change that. The resulting sturm und drang within fandom will be epic, of course, but that happens with something every other week and the world really, truly doesn't care. Your frequent point about fannish myopia is a salient one that it behooves us to keep in mind.
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