Why engage with your audience during development?
Before I say anything else, I want to extend the warmest of thanks to all those who were able to join us in-person and online for The Path’s very first Creative Room event on Jan 19th!
So why do we at The Path value fan input so much? Here are our top 3 reasons:
1. Fanning forward, not backward
The most common model for creating an audience for shows works something like this: creators research and develop a compelling story, they produce it and release it. Usually, audience interaction happens within the fan communities after the show is released, with little or no interaction between fans and the creative team.
With The Path, we’re trying a different approach. Rather than building a fan base after the series is in the can, we want to involve our audience beforehand and have them move with us through the creative process. Our goal is to build a story world that fans feel they’ve played a part in shaping, which we hope will bring them closer to the story. We think of it as investing in our audience, or “fanning forward”.
2. Giving our audience a VOICE!
By inviting the audience to the brainstorming process, we’re able to test our potential audience’s temperature and allow our creative team to come up with ideas that are interesting to you. Here’s an example some conversations that kept us up all night:
3. Keeping us on our toes
At Smokebomb (The Path’s production company), we try to look at challenges in ways other people wouldn’t. Thinking outside, around, and away from the box is the realm we like to live in and we feel our alternative fan model fits this preference quite nicely.
We enjoy the feedback and the tough questions – so by all means, throw them at us. You keep us jumping, and that’s just the way we like it!
From your community cultivator friend,
Carrie
**We've just announced the date for our second Creative Room Session - Join us Monday February 4th at 9pm EST! RSVP on our Facebook Page **
