What was fox thinking? no...seriously what do YOU think they were thinking? by Stillshiny

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What was fox thinking? no...seriously what do YOU think they were thinking?

POSTED BY: STILLSHINY
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 14:39
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Tuesday, July 18, 2006 1:04 PM

In response to the thread I started earlier about the Original Fox Firefly trailer 11th Hour made a very good statement & it got me thinking. The statement was "FOX never understood what it had." - 11th Hour

Now as Browncoats we all agree. But, Fox had to have some idea in their mind of what they "thought" they had. In short, What did FOX "think" Firefly was & how were they trying to market it?

From the trailer I got this picture of this off the wall cheesy comedy with a sci-fi setting & a big collection of "space hooker" jokes.

So here's what I want you to do.

1. Watch this trailer.

This is the original trailer that Fox used to promote Firefly. And give your thoughts as to what this show was "thought" & "marketed" to be.

"We had ties that could not be broken, except by the passing of time. Like a rock. A broken time rock. And you're very special to me, my broken time rock people." - Nathan Fillion

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006 1:11 PM

WHITEFALL

Well i'll say one thing... that "and a girl in a box" thing is just plain insulting to a storyteller. Any storyteller. What it is essentially doing is ruining Joss' hard-earned hour-break. Compounded with the fact that fox eventually didnt even air that episode. So it not only ruined the pilot for any who WOULD have seen it, it also confused the viewer when they watched train job expecting aforementioned girl in a box.

Rediculous.

As for who they were marketing it to? Hell if I know: basically they wanted to draw people who like westerns, and the teenage boy demographic because they said space hookers. Pathetic.

"But, these strong women characters?"

"Why aren't you asking 100 other guys why they don't write strong women characters?" -Joss Whedon

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006 1:25 PM

MSG

they were thinking...hey where are all the naked women, why aren't they having fights over who is sleeping with who, I don't understand this humor it has more than farts and beer in it, why are these women all standing up for themselves, why are there moral choices in here and why are these people just standing around being interesting when they could be taking their clothes off and having surprise revelations about their sex lives and their torrid pasts?

I choose to rise instead of fall- U2

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006 2:02 PM

RMMC

What they were thinking was "it's not a Buffy spin-off! Where are the monsters? What do we do with it?!"

You'd have thunk they'd have a glimmer of how to market it. But then they

Brisco pretty badly, and apparently never learned from it.

(*HEY! Brisco's out on DVD today!!)

******
RMMC

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006 2:16 PM

MORWEN112

I like your explanation, MSG. I think they were trying to market it to the "common TV viewer." ONly they forgot that the common TV viewer is actually entertained by such shows as the OC and the Bachelor. In other words, they were trying to take real acting and make it into the fake, melodramatic crap that they say is like real life.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who's annoyed at how they portray "teenage life" on these shows? We're not all crashing our parents' Jaguars and sleeping with anyone who'll lay down long enough!! Some of us actually have common sense and use it!!!

*ahem* Sorry for the little rant. Back to the subject...

The trailer just goes to show that they really didn't understand the show in the first place anyway. Or how to market something like it. I mean, honestly, "a space cowboy"? "A flighty pilot"? *shakes head*

What they should have done was commercials for individual characters that actually said something about them and barely hinted at the plot.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/sunroomitem.asp?i=11789

Like that one for Simon and so on and so forth. But, as we all know, they didn't and so its up to us to do the marketing. Thank Buddha we're better at it.

Mine is an evil sugar high laugh! Bwahahahaha!

Morwen

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Wednesday, July 19, 2006 2:39 PM

NAFLM

Have you listened to the commentary for the pilot (or maybe Train Job, I'm sure it's one of the two). I think it really is a situation of Fox not knowing what they were getting. Joss explains that they had a contract with him for another show. They talked to him, he said he had an idea, they let him do it, and then they saw it. (So it's not exactly like it was pitched to them, or they requested this type of show.)

This is not an excuse for them though. (How can you watch the pilot and *not* be interested in seeing more? How could you ask for a new pilot?!) They should have treated it better, they should have trusted and listened to Joss. But they probably expected another monster show and instead saw spaceships and horses. "What, no aliens? And they're just plain horses, they're not even robotic? Shouldn't they at least be cyborg horses?"

So, Fox doesn't "get it". And once that happens there's not much effort put into it. Poor marketing ("just let the intern do it, we can't waste the talent on it"), poor timeslot, and "helpful" production notes from the execs who want to make it into something that they can understand. (Did they really say "flighty pilot"? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke? Puns aren't jokes, they're weapons!)

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