Re: Fan pages. I agree that they can be ineffective. But I guess it depends on how you use them. We update our fan pages with new info about every week. It’s part of our process to leak new STORY information with each update. We kind of look at it like another form of a mailing list, following the idea that you go where the people are. This might be unique to how we are doing our project. It’s our plan to try to entertain people along the way leading up to the film being released, and engage them in the story long before the story comes out.

So far we are on a slow burn. We are largely just building up the story world, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as to the approach and story materials.

So far I don’t think anyone resents us for this. I see it as just another way to disseminate information.

Not only that, but a realistic and positive outlook.

This kind of article could be a useful bridge between the introverted artist/writer and the new media terrain we’re all scaling now…

Although it would be nice if audiences were to follow our every move and wait impatiently for each new nugget of content or gossip, the reality is “new” is sexy and “old” is buried under the new. Unless you have the resources to constantly innovate with your marketing or are periodically releasing interesting new material, you have to work through your own story for how you’re going to build the climax (the pay off).

So, without a “due date” for the movie as yet, it’s important to pace ourselves carefully and not blow our load too soon. Our plan is to slowly build the fanbase through the user-created content and interaction/participation – it’s pretty much the only way to economically maintain the interest over long periods. We’re doing this one fan at a time. There’s no need to have a big push for early adopters because we have time and we lack a lot of resources (content and the development time). As the movie approaches first day of shooting we’ll ratchet up the marketing by increasing the amount of “official” content. All this early work is clearly aimed at the “hardcore” and not casuals who come much later.

Hope that helps?

I’m documenting our transmedia process at http://newbreed.workbookproject.com/author/markharris/

In the report, you say: “create a timetable and strategy for building a fan base such that each activity reinforces the next”

Do you care to go into any more detail about this? How long you imagine this timeline will be, or have you actually worked on any of the strategy?