Live Tweeting During Production?

Just as a warning, this week’s post is not about live tweeting in the context that we generally refer to it.  It’s more about the live tweeting of the production of entertainment.  And in that broad of a description, what I’m saying makes zero sense.  Let’s just get down to it. 

                For the past four months, the reboot of Ghostbusters has been filming.  If you aren’t someone who has been totally excited about this film or following the director, Paul Feig, on social channels, you may not know about his attempted control on what gets out about the film while it is still being produced.   

                In August of last year, it was announced, without the go-ahead from Feig or from Sony, that the director was in talks to work on a Ghostbusters project.  From before he had signed on to have any power over the film, the media had begun to take it away from him.  The trend continued as media outlets exposed that Katie Dippold was then being discussed as a writer, alongside Feig, for the film.  Rumors over which actresses were being discussed as possible ghostbusters began to spring up as the year came to a close, and Sony’s hacked emails were sorted through by people across the internet. 

                Feig tried to change the pattern of how his film was being reported late in January with a picture of the film’s four leads posted to Twitter.  Then, entertainment reporting began to follow his lead.  In June, as filming approached, Feig announced Chris Hemsworth’s casting as a receptionist.  During the earliest weeks of filming, Feig posted on Twitter pictures of Ghostbusters related props and costumes: green slime, four uniforms hanging on a rack, a proton pack, the Ecto-1, and, finally, the four women, in uniform, standing in front of the Ecto-1 about a month into filming. 

                And then the director’s control got lost.  The trick of filming a giant, studio film is that there are a lot of people involved.  Not everybody is going to get the same warnings about what they should and shouldn’t say.  Dan Aykroyd tweeted about his own cameo in the film, clearly not having been warned appropriately about how secretive Paul Feig wanted the details of the film.  In quick succession, the paparazzi and entertainment media caught word that Bill Murray, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson had all been brought on for cameos in the film.  As news of Ernie Hudson’s appearance was surfacing, Feig took to Twitter again, an attempt to break the news before anyone else could.  And, finally, with the announcement of Sigourney Weaver’s cameo, Feig lamented that he was “trying to keep surprises, but [it]was about to leak.” 

                While I do understand the disappointment in paparazzi leaking who is on set, there is so much more to going to see a film than just a leaked, still image of Chris Hemsworth.  And in reality, not a single person is going to hear word that [insert name of cameo actor from the franchise here] is in the movie and decide that they aren’t going to see it.  At the very least, to see that the original cast are all going to have a hand in the new film, and must approve to some extent, might soothe all of the middle-aged men who were so threatened that the cast of this film would be women and make them stop whining about it already. 

                In total, Paul Feig is doing a great job working on a project for an existing property.  From the time that it was announced that he was directing, he was sure to engage with Ghostbusters fans across the country and is providing pictures and information about props for the more heavily devoted fans (think people who make costumes for conventions).  That community that already existed around his film a year before it will be released is a really great plus, but the media attention is an unavoidable “negative”.  Or its free, grassroots marketing.  Either way, the director should just stick to sharing his own news.  With as much demand for information as there is, he is holding all of the cards.  As it sits, this production has been a chance for him to get ready.  If it does well, the studio will definitely have him back to do more.

Identity Crisis Averted

I thought that I was wrong about my original belief that spoilers don’t spoil for a minute or two last night.  I wasn’t watching the Emmys, and I felt as though I was distinctly under-informed as I knew that this big event was happening and all I was seeing was other people’s reactions.  And I was totally okay with missing some of the speeches from the winners whose work I’ve watched because I knew that they’d be up on the internet this morning and there really wouldn’t be that much of a difference about when I watched it.  In that way, I was totally on the same page as when I wrote my first post for this blog.  

                But the Emmys are generally full of moments that don’t matter that much culturally.  In the realm of things, it doesn’t matter that  Tony Hale won for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series or that Veep won for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series because those wins were moments that will matter beyond this week for only a handful of people.    

                The moments that were spoiled for me were the moments where I missed the beginning of a conversation that was launched because of the way that a winner used the platform with which they were presented last night.  I missed out on Viola Davis’ speech for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.  On Twitter, my entire timeline was filled with emotion at her words.  But I didn’t know the content of her speech until a little later that night.  More importantly, I wasn’t able to feel the power behind what she was saying because I missed that moment live.  I missed the way that Jeffrey Tambor, Jill Soloway, and Allison Janney brought to light the issues that are connected with their shows and weigh on them.  Those are the moments that are likely to be spoiled.  But even so, it isn’t the fault of Twitter spoilers that I was left out of those moments last night.  The fault was only in my hands, because I couldn’t watch the show live.  And I would have missed out on that moment no matter what. 

It is a benefit of social media that I know now that there were important issues being brought to light during what is, at its most basic, a popularity contest for rich/famous individuals.  And that, this morning, I had the opportunity to watch Viola Davis’ speech and be glad that in 2015, you can miss it the first time around but check out what you missed when you wake up the next morning.  

Losers All Around

Hello again! 

Don’t be afraid.  I recovered from the joy I was feeling at the success that my sisters and I had while watching Only Connect last week.  There will not be bragging herein.  Because we did terribly this past week.  Only two questions right.  (In case you just NEED to know: the lion question in round two where C.V./Curriculum Vitae was the answer and the first satnav question in the missing vowel round.)

This week, before I’d watched Only Connect, I’d seen on Twitter that the show is nearing the episodes where the questions will begin to get harder.  This was the first week where two teams that had previously lost were coming together to determine which should stay.  Even the team who lost in this episode performed well when compared to the (pathetic) standard which we’d set while sitting on our couch.  It does make you feel a bit better about having a difficult time with the answers when Richard Osman (a host of a different quiz, just so you know) tweets about the show calling it the “Ultimate Hell Week” of quizzes (until he then tweets that he was doing great on that episode’s clues). 

The benefit, I think, of the way that Only Connect is set up is that a sense of failure doesn’t overwhelm you as much as it might if you don’t get a single question on Jeopardy!.  The two contributing factors to that, at least for me, are your time and your team.  Yes, your time to get the connection on Only Connect is limited, but you aren’t forced to move quicker because you are worried that your competitor will get it before you will.  When you’re putting your mind fully to the task, you will get it if you know the information or not if not.  It’s also harder to feel so completely beaten when you’ve put together your knowledge with others to try and find the connections between the clues.  A wider base of knowledge is going to exist between three people than within one person (even when, in the case of my sisters and I, large amounts of life experience overlap). 

I mean, do what you will with that.  I’m likely looking too hard for some deep meanings in this but it makes sense and applies to other situations, right?

Admittedly a Bragging Post

And here they are again as I flip through Twitter on Monday afternoon.  The lamenting about how hard this episode of my favorite quiz show had been.  Admittedly, it’s the only quiz show that I watch, so the competition for that title is nonexistent.  Whatever.  I’d seen one tweet in which the tweeter mentioned that he and his parents spend the whole episode waiting for the missing vowels round.  Maybe if I could watch it live I’d have agreed with him.  The missing vowels are the easy ones.  The “connections” are only really to the category, so solving them seems like less work.

The news that a new episode would have difficult questions isn’t really a surprise but to what extent is the episode difficult and to what extent are people being over-dramatic.  Twitter doesn’t really communicate those kind of nuances does it? 

Personally, I’d say that they were being a little dramatic.  My sisters and I are continually watching this show and never really doing that well, but between the three of us (or really just two of us because we’ve got one who just gets a little bored and drifts off) we managed to do a decent job on the Scientists vs. Builders episode. 

Round one we managed to get three questions (only one of which we needed all of the pieces for, might I add) which is not bad at all.  I can’t really feel alright about bragging here though because the three that we got all were pretty pop culture with the clues having to do with Benedict Cumberbatch, the Hunger Games, and Finding Nemo.  We still got the points though. 

Round two was terrible, as always.  If we manage to get the connection, we cannot eek out the final clue.  It just won’t happen.  The water wall was not that great for us either.  We, again, managed our pop culture knowledge for the “eponymous TV detective shows” group, but that was it.  But then it was our moment.  On the lion wall we got seven points.  Three groups we knew and got pretty quickly before we were then left to yell at the team who just could not make it happen. 

And while I agreed with the tweet I’d seen the day before about the missing vowels round, it wasn’t as much of a relief because we’d done well on the rest of the quiz.  Though we did get three of them right.  Thanks for asking.  And to think that there are probably people who do well like that every week.