The ins and outs of posting movies to FanFare

November 7, 2014 11:03 PM

As sort of a companion MeTa to this one about posting TV shows to FanFare I'm posting this to get some clarification and input about posting movies.

I started thinking about this earlier because I'd like to put up Enemy of the State but once I started digging around I realized there were many variations to the movie posts, including whether or not the movie had been proposed in FanFare Talk.

Another thing I noticed today in the post about Three Kings was the tag "Spiritof99" which is how I discovered there was a club about movies from 1999. And just now someone proposed starting a MST3K club, which has already been established, so I'm also wondering if we need a way to display the clubs so people can find them.

I think that, like TV shows, the movie section has evolved enough that styles and etiquette are becoming established and it would be great if folks like myself who are new to the section would have a few guidelines. Here are a few questions I ran up against:

1) Some movies are proposed in FanFare Talk while others just seem to have been posted. What's the difference?

2) Some movies have organized viewings, some don't. It seems like new releases would have a built-in audience but an older one would mostly rely on people who saw it, remembered it well enough to comment, and happened to see the posting. Is that just the way it goes?

3) What's the etiquette about posting films that might conflict with a club? Some things are more obvious, like MST3K, but if there was a political thriller club (or, say, if Enemy of the State had come out in '99 in stead of '98) would it be bad form to post a movie that falls in that category without checking in with the club organizers?

4) Are older films expected to be available on Netflix or Amazon Prime without any additional cost? When I realized that Enemy of the State is only available streaming via Amazon for $2.99 it kind of stumped me.

I'm using Enemy of the State as some examples, but I think these questions apply to any new posting. (And if anyone has specific advice about Enemy of the State I'd love to hear it.)

posted by Room 641-A to Etiquette/Policy at 11:03 PM (10 comments total)

Hey, insofar as responses from the admin side, Matt can answer better than I can, but for just a quick once-over on these:

1 & 2) Some are planned and/or proposed with organized viewing, others are just posted, and both are okay

3) We don't currently have rules or guidelines for this, but in general if you know that the movie you are thinking of posting seems to specifically belong to a category that has a club sort of viewing schedule going on, it would maybe be nice to confer. It does seem that a way to make possible conflicts with organized viewing groups more obvious would be good, but I have no idea what that would look like or if pb and Matt have already thought about this.

4) There's no guideline that posted films must be available on Netflix or Amazon Prime without any additional cost (and of course, not everyone has these services, so that would be verrrrry restrictive).

So, these are just my super-quick responses in terms of basic site standards. Folks should feel free to discuss all this, and Matt and pb can add more nuance to the topic later.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:05 PM on November 7, 2014

To clarify 1 &2, I'm wondering what the advantages and disadvantages are and if different types of movies are better suited to one or the other.

Also, in the TV MeTa I said I preferred less ownership for new, firt-run shows but when it comes to movies I think whoever comes up with a club idea or posts an individual movie should format it however they want. It's really the initial posting process that I'm focused on.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:15 PM on November 7, 2014

Well I have been busy and unable to spend a lot of time with Fanfare, but I am interested in this too.

The answer to 1, in my opinion, should be that every movie that isn't brand new in the theaters should have a Fanfare talk post to gauge interest prior to posting. I know not everyone agrees with that, but that's how I feel. Of course new movies can probably be posted straight away, since we assume that they will be seen by a bunch of people.

For 2, I think this is why we need to have a Fanfare talk post. With older movies, if you throw out a warning a week or ten days prior to posting it will give people who are interested a chance to rewatch.

For 3, I would just send a Memail to the organizer or maybe drop a comment in thread to check. It is crazy to assume that the Spirit of 99 club will be watching every single movie made in 1999, but there is (was?) a Robin Williams retrospective club that might be a lot more thorough. I think the only way you can know is to ask.

4, I live in a no Netflix, no Amazon Prime country, so I personally just have to deal with it. Because of that, I don't think it is that big of a deal to find movies that are freely available. However, you might get more comments on a movie that is more available for people to see without forking out cash. You would be surprised about the number of movies you can find on Youtube or other streaming services, however. I'm not sure of the prevailing feeling about posting links to what are clearly not legitimate places to watch the movie, but I would generally think advising people of torrents is wrong, but a Youtube link is slightly less sketchy.

Then again, I don't know anything about anything, so there is that.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:30 AM on November 8, 2014

("a Robin Williams retrospective club..." *pops head up like a meerkat* huh? Are you referring to the Robin Williams Movie Club? It's active and on-going, posts are every other Saturday.)

Please continue w/FanFare MetaTalk discussion...
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:10 AM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thanks for making this post. I think a lot of the issues you bring up are things that need to be talked through and worked out (or at least just talked through) as FanFare finds its footing. Since the subsite started out without a lot of restrictions, I think it's good to experiment and try things and take a 'better-forgiveness-than-permission' sort of attitude when it comes to posting there. There are boundaries, and there are best practices, but I think they can best be found by testing the limits and seeking them out as opposed to surveying the horizon and guessing where lines should be drawn.

So sure, use FFTalk to confer with any viewing clubs if you want, but post, post away, and post some more!
posted by carsonb at 10:59 AM on November 8, 2014

I think the ettiquette/unwritten rules of FanFare are still in development. I think it is nice to see some viewing clubs/organized activity going as well as people just posting based on what they've just seen. The fact that FanFare posts don't close make them interesting in terms of the potential for long, ongoing discussion about a film, and I think as time goes by new things may be brought into older discussions.

With older films, there's an opportunity for finding more analysis/reviews/retrospectives to make the post really meaty; new films might have a lot of reviews to link to, but the analysis might not be there yet. As with any post, I think it's up to the poster how much to add - my personal bias is that more is better (because the more substance the post has, the more there is for commenters to engage with), but I also think there's nothing wrong with just throwing up an IMDB link and seeing where the discussion goes.

I did the Rocky series pretty much on a whim - I watched the first one on a Friday night, and noted to myself that there were some interesting parallels with the final film, decided to just go for it and do a rewatch of all the Rocky movies and post about one a week to FanFare; no other organization required. I suspect that some of the people who came and commented might not have been watching the films, but joined in based on having seen them before and having opinions. I've since offered to take on some of the films in the Robin Williams Movie Club, which is a larger, more organized effort of viewing involving multiple posters. As someone put it in one of film club discussion threads, just seize the Iron Gauntlet of Certainty and set a schedule for a series or just make a post about a movie. I feel fairly confident that with a small amount of searching any poster might find if there is an existing club that the film might fit into; and if it gets posted without necessarily being part of an existing film club that it could belong to, that it would be happily received regardless.
posted by nubs at 12:02 PM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

I was going to post this whole thing about problems with running things through FanFare Talk first because you can't even see FFT on a mobile phone, which is how I frequently do FanFare because it's easier to have the phone out while watching something. Except then I thought I should make sure you can't, and then I figured out, finally, how to do it.

So I will amend my planned thingy to say that it is not obvious how to see FFT on a mobile and it might mean that people miss proposals.

Now I am going to go back and see if I can figure out how to make my posts "Rewatch", which is another thing that's been puzzling me.
posted by Athanassiel at 11:14 PM on November 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, spoiler conditions. Uh-huh. No wonder I missed it. Sorry folks, can't edit my posts but that's what they are.
posted by Athanassiel at 11:24 PM on November 9, 2014

Hey, Athanassiel, I just noticed your comment and went ahead and added "Rewatch" to your two Fringe posts. Just let me know if there's any problem with that!
posted by taz (staff) at 12:35 AM on November 10, 2014

Awesome, thanks! Now that I know where it lives I'll put it on future posts.
posted by Athanassiel at 12:41 AM on November 10, 2014