The
first order of business: After a long (and somewhat stressful) period of
negotiations, I have been hired as an associate producer on the upcoming feature
film “The Poet in Exile.” You can see my updated imdb profile at the link below.
This assures me a paid position following the project I’m currently working on.
More than anything, this assures me a life after college. The future is now
much clearer.
Next,
casting is Denver has been postponed from its original date in February to an
as of yet undetermined later date sometime this month. This is due to the
script not being ready in time and the star of the pilot receiving a callback
for the new X-Men film Days of Future
Past. I’ll admit that I’m really bummed but that’s showbiz, folks.
On
Saturday, March 2, I received the script for the first episode of the pilot. I
read it. It’s quite good…and that’s all I can say as of right now.
Now to
properly recap these past four weeks (the entire month of February as a matter
of fact), I’m going to copy and paste my weekly reports detailing the market
research I’ve conducted and the feedback I’ve received beginning with:
Monday,
February 4, 2013
Hey
guys.
Here’s
the lowdown for what happened with my daily tasks this past week.
On
Tuesday, my task was to respond to messages. I did this in the evening, around
10pm (Central Time). There was only one new message and it was an update from
an ongoing conversation in which a fan had agreed to convince his friends to
like the page. I spent the majority of my time sifting through old messages to
get a good feel of how everyone had been responding to fans.
Thursday,
I copy and pasted the message listed in the manual to the unofficial [omitted]
pages via the [omitted] fake page. Not much else beyond this.
Finally,
on Sunday, I posted the status regarding the Super Bowl and Warm Bodies. It had
a good reception with 133 likes and 24 total comments. In addition, 3,094
people saw the post. The comment that struck me, however, was one from Ricardo
Delacour from Guadalajara in which he stated that he had a hard time
understanding the post since English is not his first language. I guess the
Super Bowl and Warm Bodies aren’t exactly practical term combinations when it
comes to translations. He did, as he stated, comp us a “like” so the power of
love overcame all, I suppose.
Hope
this helps guys and sorry this is coming so late. I had a financial situation
come up that took up most of my time this evening.
All the
best.
Stephen
FANTASTIC UPDATE STEPHEN== and humorous!
Deeply appreciate your thorough rundown –
Very intrigued by what you hit upon- a TON of fans from places
where English is a Foreign language-
Which poses the question- how do we sell them HOMEFRONT when
they can’t understand it?
Is there a Facebook translation button?
Something to all think about.
WORKBOOK 2 coming tonight….
Tim
Some great notes!
One of my immediate thoughts.
Sounds like we need to be a little more specific with labels for
our international audience. For example; when referring to a film make sure
to put it in quotes and label it like: saw the movie "Warm Bodies"
and remember other countries have different names for things like: football and
futbol. So, I watched the Super Bowl, that's the American Football Championship
Game for all you international crew, lol :)
-John
Monday,
February 11, 2013
Hey
guys.
Hope
all is well on your side of the country. Here is the overall gist of what went
down this past week on my end…er middle. What would you consider the Midwest?
Tuesday
2/5
I spent
the night responding to messages. I had it pretty easy since this was the day
we reached over 10,000 fans. For the most part, messages consisted of
congratulatory remarks. I thanked each and every one of them for their support
and told them that I (omitted) couldn’t have done it without them.
Wednesday
2/6
It was
my duty to post on TLA GAY and TLA Releasing Fans. I copy and pasted the
message to TLA Releasing Fans without any trouble but TLA GAY has it set so
that no one can post on their wall. The only way to interact with this page is
to comment on THEIR posts. This is a bit of a conundrum as TLA GAY has 5,186
fans while TLA Releasing Fans has a meager 2,809. I’m looking into finding a
way to access this page but I’m up for any suggestions. I could try tagging TLA
GAY into a post in hopes of it showing up on their wall. It’d be better than
commenting on an unrelated post.
Thursday
2/7
The standard
copy and paste on [omitted] fan sites. Nothing too exciting.
Sunday
2/10
I had
fun with this post today. I posted the picture of [omitted] standing on the
gargantuan boulder at his place of Zen in Hollywood Hills and asked fans to
share their favorite places to relax and clear their heads. Fans immediately
responded garnering over 209 likes (compared to the 144 from last Sunday’s
post) and 42 comments (2 of which were mine…er…[omitted]). This was cool
because it brought the attention to the fans and helped deter them from asking
me questions I might not be readily available to answer due to my location in
Iowa. What’s strange, though, is that less people saw this post than the Super
Bowl Sunday post yet their reactions were much more grand. 2,809 compared to
3,858.
A
serious point I need to bring up, however, was a comment from Jonathan
Hinchliffe who had this to say: “Can't
find you on Google+ don't
want to miss your webcast next week [omitted]. Can you post a link to your
profile, would be awesome J”
To this
I responded “You bet Jonathan. I will get that taken care of. I would hate for
anyone to miss out.” This received 5 “likes” btw.
So, it
would probably be within our best interest to post something within the week to
help everyone find where they need to be for the live chat.
That’s
all I have for now. Hope you guys didn’t find my update excessive. Otherwise,
I’ll keep ‘em coming and I look forward to seeing everyone in Denver a week
from today.
Best.
Stephen
Hey
Danny-
Hope
you are well.
Just
got the below message from Stephen stating the below concern-
A
serious point I need to bring up, however, was a comment from Jonathan
Hinchliffe who had this to say: “Can't
find you on Google+ don't want to miss your webcast next week
[omitted]. Can you post a link to your profile, would be awesome J” To
this I responded “You bet Jonathan. I will get that taken care of. I would hate
for anyone to miss out.” This received 5 “likes” btw. So, it would probably be within our best interest to post
something within the week to help everyone find where they need to be for the
live chat.
Would
you be so kind as to guide us all on how to respond to such queries from fans
and remedy the situation?
THANKS
DANNY!
Tim
Right quick, I want to chime in and say that
this next week, a live chat was scheduled between our star and fans of the
facebook page (10,000 or so of them) for Saturday, February 17, but technical
difficulties prevented it from happening and forced it to be rescheduled. Also,
on Sunday, February 17, we received an email from Tyler James, the head of the
social media front, who told us that facebook has certain regulations once a
fan page exceeds 10,000 fans and that we would all get the following week off
for “winter break” while they worked out the bugs.
Monday,
February 18, 2013
Hey
guys.
Here’s
the week 3 update for the [omitted] facebook page. I’ll try to keep it short
this time so I’ll leave out the extraneous details regarding the copy and paste
messages on other pages.
Tuesday,
February 12, 2013
Personal
messages that I noticed on Tuesday consisted of fans desperately wanting to
speak to [omitted] in person or as one fan put it, “I think we should get to
know each other better.” I referred each of them to the live chat that would be
taking place on Saturday as being the best possible opportunity. Most of the
other messages consisted of carryover conversations that had been continuing
amongst the rest of us although one I noticed that struck me was a question
that had never been answered on January 30. It seems as though some of the fans
are getting direct on questioning [omitted]’s sexual orientation. This
particular fan (a female in fact) had asked this question and despite the
ongoing conversation she had had, never received a response. Then on February
12, she sent another message saying, “I guess you do mind.” I’ll admit, I was a
bit taken aback. The manual states:
NEVER
CONFIRM OR DENY SEXUALITY- BE VAGUE.
But what do we
do when they’re direct like this? For some people, I suppose learning [omitted]’s
preferences could be a deal breaker despite the role model aspect [omitted] has
with the NO H8 campaign.
Other than
this, fans are clambering for autographed photos and memorabilia.
I answered what
I could and took a quick break at 10pm to shoot a short film of my own only to
return to answering questions at 4am (Central time) the next day.
Sunday,
February 17, 2013
The Sunday
post, which I sent everyone the live link to, went well. We’re still recovering
from the live chat mishap so I felt it appropriate to address the fact that
[omitted], as I put it, is pretty “bummed.” I tried to garner the fans’
sympathies by asking for Valentine’s Day stories to cheer [omitted] up. To make
the post even more personal, I posted the second picture [omitted] sent me,
which I never used for the prior Sunday post, and said that [omitted] would
probably require a visit to his place of Zen. These two aspects served as a
callback to last week’s post in which I encouraged fan interaction and posted
the second photo of [omitted] in Hollywood Hills.
Things were
quite successful and attracted more positive attention than [omitted]’s apology
video that was posted the day before. The Sunday post achieved 145 likes
compared to the video’s 111 likes. Because of the encouragement, it attained 39
comments over the video’s 31. This is most surprising because the post was seen
by 2,432 people versus the video’s 2,812. I posted earlier than I usually do
(around 10am). I had the day off since I was originally going to leave for
Denver that morning. Despite testing out new waters with the difference in
time, my post actually paled in comparison to last week’s so I’ll probably
revert back to posting between 2pm and 3pm Central time.
If I learned
anything from [omitted]’s demographic, it’s that most of his fans are single
(but I’m sure that you knew that already). In fact, most of them tried turning
the tables on me and attempted to garner my sympathy by telling me that they
spent Valentine’s Day alone. And you know what? It worked goddammit….because I
spent Valentine’s Day alone as well. But that’s my own problem since the girl I
love is on the other side of the world. But enough about me. Back to [omitted].
Ahem.
Most of the
fans are getting antsy to speak to [omitted] so here’s hoping the live chat will
quench their insatiable thirst.
That’s all for
this week and…WOW…this message is longer than I had intended. Sorry guys but I
hope this helps.
All the best.
Stephen
Stephen- If only EVERYONE put as much thought and personality
into this as you do.
GOD BLESS YOU.
We definitely need to deal with the ‘sexuality’ question- and
that was something that WAS on the agenda for the Live Chat- [omitted] knows
what he wants to say- but HE wants to say it.
And if he loses fans because of it- then they have been missing
his NOH8 message all along- and who needs them.
YES- we are scheduled to start selling pics and memorabilia in
March- great to know the desire is there—
Take a break this week while we work out some glitches-
Keep on being your amazing self- and if it’s any consolation- I
was alone on Valentine’s day too!
;0
Tim
On Sunday, March 24, we received another
email saying that the kinks had been worked out and that “winter break” was
officially over. I want to say that I noticed that after my post stating that I
had asked the fans a question regarding their favorite places of Zen, everyone
else seems to have adopted my tactic of turning the tables and asking the fans…usually
to lesser effect than me but hey, that’s just expected in my book ;-) The live
chat was also rescheduled for Sunday, March 3.
Sunday,
March 3, 2013
Hey
guys.
Here’s
the weekly update for the things I’ve observed on facebook. After viewing the
live chat, however, a lot of this is going to seem redundant.
My
tasks this past week consisted of responding to private messages both Tuesday
and Thursday night. The most prevalent thing people are clambering for is a
sequel to [omitted] which was addressed during the chat. I responded to these
fans by telling them that there are no official plans for an official sequel
but to keep an eye on [omitted]’s upcoming projects. Oh, if only they could see
my expression behind the computer monitor. It would be a Christopher Reeve-like
wink to the camera. Well…actually…it’s a good thing they couldn’t see my
expression because then they would know that it wasn’t [omitted] responding to
their messages.
I
received several requests for shout-outs during the live chat which he did
quite well with during the actual event. People like hearing celebrities say
their names.
Finally,
it’s worth noting that one of [omitted]’s fans I encountered is from Iowa and
we just recently experienced a huge snowstorm. I was able to connect with this
fan by telling him that [omitted] has a friend in Iowa (that’s me) who was
fighting a losing battle trying to shovel his driveway.
That’s
the gist of this past week other than today’s post reminding everyone of the
live chat. And you guys already posted the recap video for those who couldn’t
attend, so that helps immensely for the copious amount of people who were upset
that they wouldn’t be able to stay up late.
Sorry
to hear about the postponement of the trip. I have to admit that I’m pretty
bummed (albeit slightly excited about the new X-Men film “Days of Future Past).
Hopefully I’ll get to meet the rest of the team in person…someday?
Until
then, keep your stick on the ice.
Stephen
I sent this email off moments ago and have
yet to receive a response. It's worth noting that I filmed a Batman fan film during this time with an estimated budget of $20,000 (the biggest budget of any of the films I've worked on with my film company). I've been incredibly sick since and because of this internship, I don't think I'll be able to film anything else. It's a shame because I originally planned on shooting five films before I left the state. I want to mention that I’m currently doing
additional work for Adam Rifkin, a renowned screenwriter. I’ll cut this
blog short, however, and save my story for the next blog. Until then, stay
frosty, guys. Actually, with the looming threat of another snowstorm, don't do that. Stay warm instead.
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