The Hunt for Gollum

I finally got around to watching "The Hunt for Gollum", a fan-film appearing on Youtube. And I have to say I was very impressed. It was a very creative and convincing piece of fan fiction - the actors playing Aragorn and Gandalf were very similar to their Lord of the Rings counterparts, the settings, costumes and music were very true to Jackson's films, and overall contributed to a very authentic 'Middle Earth feel'. Any fan of the Lord of the Rings should definately check it out! Now I can't wait to view the follow up film, by the same crew, called "Born of Hope". Also, now that I have decided to include other forms of social media in my research (see previous post), I believe this will make for an interesting section of my thesis.

New Approach?

As I was brainstorming last night, I had the idea of expanding my research to include other kinds of social networking sites in addition to the message boards. This way I can look at sites like facebook, myspace, twitter, and youtube and look at how they function for fans and the studios in the lead up to The Hobbit. All of these sites will develop to feature more content relating to the movies as it draws nearer, and obviously there will be more to discuss with some than others, but this way I can provide a wider outline of how new media functions alongside the development of a major motion picture, both in terms of its fans, as well as its producers. There may even be new kinds of social networking sites that will appear in the time before the films come out that I can explore. Let me know what you guys think...

EXCLUSIVE: The Official Hobbit Press Release!

The following post on theonering.net got me all excited - until I remembered what day it was made on.... happy april fools :-(

EXCLUSIVE: The Official Hobbit Press Release!

The post has received 76 replies (as of Friday, 2 April 2010)
Response from members was varied, but largely negative. Normally, I've noticed members are fairly tolerant with people poking fun at The Hobbit, but as one poster says in reply to the april fools - "This isn't the sort of thing to joke about", I guess posting fake news reports concerning the film's production is crossing the line.