The past week has been crazy with Firefly related goodness. Just a quick re-cap.
On Friday, Joss Whedon announced (over on the movie board - but the link will go to FFFn) that the trailer for the upcoming movie would be released online on Tuesday.
This announcement led to a flurry of posts throughout the various Firefly communities on the web culminating in a vigil leading up to Monday night at midnight EDT. When it became apparent that the trailer would not be released at midnight east coast time, or midnight west coast time, the excitement flagged and most of us went to bed (Well, the US browncoats did. The Europeans had to keep going on about their day).
When I woke up Tuesday morning and checked back online it was to discover that Hercules (A strong supporter of the show over at Ain't It Cool News.) had relayed an update from Joss. The trailer would be released at 4pm EDT over on the Apple site. Shiny!
At the stroke of 1pm PDT the page went live and I immediately ran into technical difficulties. Being the greedy fanboy that I am, my first selection was the fullscreen option. At this point I discovered that I would need iTunes on my computer. About halfway through the download/install process I came to my senses and decided to try one of the other options instead, so I selected the large trailer. This loaded completely, started playing, and froze up my browser. Third time was the charm (and it was a good thing because I was starting to get a might tetchy) and I was able to finally watch the medium trailer.
Brain overload. Too. Much. Good. Stuff. I can't even begin to describe how great it was to see the first new Joss footage in the Firefly 'verse in quite a while (going back to when we got our DVD set and were able to see the three un-aired episodes). S. and I watched the trailer again (once I finally got the thing playing she heard the intro and came on over to partake). And then we went over to her laptop and watched the fullscreen version (since she has iTunes - which raises the question: Why didn't we use her laptop to begin with? I don't know.). At that point I was able to form coherent thoughts and decided to check out the fan reaction.
Pandemonium. FFFn usually has less than three hundred fans and lurkers surfing during the day. There were at least twice that many online after the trailer debutted (and a couple of times the number got over 1000). The movie board was averaging around 60 users before the trailer. After the trailer, that rose to almost 300 and almost 1000 new accounts were created on Tuesday. An article was posted immediately over at AICN.
Then the word started spreading. First at MetaFilter. Then Slashdot. Even the movie boards over at the Hollywood Stock Exchange got into the action. I spent a significant portion of the afternoon checking out various places and getting more and more excited about the generally positive comments that were posted. I knew the fanbase was pretty rabid (Myself included. My virtual home on the net ever since the DVD came out in December 2003 and I was reminded of the show has been at FFFn) but I had no idea it was so large.
By the time Tuesday evening rolled around I was pretty well sated. I was just getting ready to turn off the laptop for the night when Haken (the fan who created and maintains FFFn) relayed Joss' announcement that there would be a sneak preview next week in various cities. I was skimming through the text of the announcement when two words caught my eye, "San Francisco." I think this was the point where the fanboy in me, who I thought had passed out from exhaustion, took control again (squeeling OMG OMG OMFG over and over the whole while - silently - fortunately). I dashed over to the movie message board to find out how to get tickets, eventually ending up at this page. At some point during this process I passed on the information to S. and asked her if she wanted to go to a sneak preview up in the city at 10pm on May 5. She pretty quickly responded with something along the lines of, "I think we have to." And that was that. The credit card was whipped out. The forms were filled out. The confirmation was printed out. And we were proud owners of two tickets!
I went to bed a very satisfied man!
That's enough for now. And I haven't even gotten to what happened on Wednesday and today :-)
* editted to add: Continuiuing on after a break.
Yesterday I put two decals, that I ordered from a Texas browncoat, on my truck. One of the cool things about the fireflyfan community is that there are a lot of creative people who make some fantastic things. In the 17 years that I've owned a vehicle, the only things that I've added have been registration tags and parking permit decals. I never got into the whole bumper sticker or decal scene. That is, until I saw these designs for sale. I ordered one of each. By the way, great service from the creator, artcat. And, knowing me, if I happen to see a Firefly related bumpter sticker that I like, I'll slap that on as well.
After agonizing where on my truck to put them I finally settled on the side rear windows. Having never done this before I was extra careful during the whole application process but I probably should've practiced. I ended up with a small bubble on the Blue Sun decal (however, it's not really noticeable - at least I keep telling myself that). Aside from that small detail, they look fantastic! We only have an old digital camera so these pictures don't do the decals justice. But here they are.
Coming back in, I decided to check online. All ten of the sneak previews were sold out! Within less than 12 hours from the announcement! Absolutely amazing. It was clear that Universal had no clue that the demand would be so high.
Side note. Apparently, they haven't quite figured out how loyal the fanbase is for this product. They feel the need to consistently have these activities that fans can work on to receive points that will then be traded in for official apparel. I think they are worried that the interest will die out unless they continue to provide a fresh source of stimulation. If that is the case, they can put their minds at east. We're not the ones they have to worry about. The fans will show up for the movie. Multiple times. The people they need to worry about are those who have never heard of Firefly. If that huge group of people does not go see this movie, then we're in trouble. But the good news is that pretty much everyone who gives the DVDs a decent chance becomes a fan. The conversion rate is that high.
But, anyways. The people running the official movie board had three or four challenges set up for the preview screenings. I don't remember what all of them were but one stuck out: put up flyers for the preview screenings in the neighborhood of the theater and then send in a picture. It was really clear that they thought tickets for the preview screenings would be on sale right up until May 5th. Silly, silly, silly. Less than twelve hours after they put those challenges up they took almost all of them down. They were unneccessary. Word of mouth throughout the various fan sites was enough to snatch up all of the tickets (Although it's ambiguous who was actually buying the tickets. One fan reported that the Atlanta theater held back 200 tickets for Universal, held a chunk back to sell to walk-up customers, and the rest of the tickets were bought up in lots of twelve. Not sure on the accuracy of the report, however.).
So that was outstanding news. Other nice tidbits. We had a new browncoat show up at FFFn who had first learned about Serenity via CAD and it was also reported that there was a mention in Penny Arcade. Those are some heavy-hitters giving nice plugs for the trailer. And, of course, the various online communities were all abuzz with the news of the preview screenings. This event, coming on top of the release of the trailer, sent a jolt of electricity through everyone.
Today, the news that the trailer had been receiving serious notice started coming in. WhoIsRiver (from FFFn) had this rundown. Haken has a tracker for the Firefly DVDs on Amazon that shows the huge jump in purchases after the release of the trailer. Short summary: Monday - before trailer (157th), Tuesday - trailer release (94th), Wednesday (26th), Today (21st). And great reviews continue to be written - 16 months after the debut. One of the sources of pride for fireflyfans is that the DVDs have a 5 star (out of a possible 5 stars) average rating based on more than 1280 reviews. Also of note, the Serenity trailer topped the hot topic list over at Daypop. For a while, Serenity was featured on the front page of yahoo in their Buzz Log section (screen cap). We've since been replaced by Michael Jackson. Ugh.
So the buzz is building. The purchase of Amazon DVDs is especially heartening. One major concern I've had is that the fan base itself isn't big enough to generate the kind of box office we need to guarantee a sequel (somewhere between $60 to $100 million domestic should be adequate). I trust Joss to create a quality product but I'm not sure if it will appeal to people who are unfamiliar with the show. So the more people who buy the DVDs and watch the series, the more familiarity there is. Most people who watch the show in the order it was intended, with an open mind, become fans. It's as simple as that. Hopefully the sales will continue for quite some time.
On a final note, I also got a box in the mail today from Blue Sun Shirts. I've bought their t-shirts before and love the product they make. They've done a really good job of recreating some of the t-shirts that Jayne wears in the show (along with a couple of new designs). So I was very happy to receive my order of four Fighting Elves tees (three for me and one backup for S. - who already has one).
All in all, it's been a great week!
