Report: Browncoats Virtual Community

Browncoats report

http://browncoats.serenitymovie.com/serenity/

Later this year, September in the USA, the film 'Serenity' will be released. It's a science fiction film set in the same universe as the short-lived television series 'Firefly', part of the Joss Whedon franchise. The television series was run over the end of 2003 - 2004 and when it was cancelled there was a lot of fan disappointment. Joss Whedon was able to negotiate and produce the film 'Serenity', named after the ship in the Firefly series, to much fannish anticipation.

The Browncoats site is an official virtual community designed to promote and maintain the hype for the upcoming film release. Once joined the community rewards participation in promotion and provides upcoming news on the status of the film. Members can participate in, and are rewarded for, both online and offline activities. Points are earned for participation in promotional activities and these can go to earn actual promotional material unavailable anywhere else. The online activities include participating in forums, chats, watching promotional material and fan-production through making banners and icons to be distributed outside of the community. Offline, participants are rewarded for going to conventions or showings and providing pictures of themselves at the showing or with cast members.

The site promotes fan participation in a marketing venture through peer to peer marketing. The 35,000 or so members are encouraged to be fans: to talk about, consume and participate in the upcoming movie developing a loyalty and sense of ownership of the film within the fan community. At the same time its goal is explicitly commercial. It wants to make sure that people will go to see a commercially produced film.

This community is an interesting balance between a commercial space and a fan or participant-based space. The relationship that Joss Whedon has with his fans, and the myth that surrounds his geekdom, interacts with the history of the cancellation of the television series and the 'struggle' to produce more material in the 'Firefly' universe. It provides fans with a sense of genuineness on the part of the promotional tool, the Browncoats community. There is a feeling that the site provides a genuine opportunity to help promote and support something which has given much pleasure to the fan, and act as a formalised, feasible and productive act of resistance to the producers and networks who cancelled the original series.