So last night I attended a Fathom Event. Essentially, a Fathom Event is the equivalent of watching a pay-per-view event at a movie theater. I had never attended one since most of the showings didn't really interest me. Most of the time it's a live broadcast of a concert or a broadway play, which is cool and I would probably attend one of the plays or especially a Cirque du Soleil show at some point. Anyhow, I stumbled upon one of these events, which turned out to be a live Rifftrax show. Rifftrax being the project of the creators of MST3K.
It was pretty fun!
It was a sold out event and was being broadcast from Nashville. Now again, it was a live event but what was awesome was that the performers not only interacted with their audience before them, but they interacted with everyone watching from every theater. They announced raffle winners who were located at different theaters and provided free swag to all by informing us to go to their website and type in a secret code word.
But that's not all!
Prior to the screening (oh, the film was "Plan 9 from Outer Space"), they had a special guest do a few songs. "Songs?!" you might exclaim. Yes, songs performed live by Jonathan Coulton. It was a pleasant surprise and he performed two rather well known songs of his, "Your Brains" and "Future Soon". It was quite amusing when the cameras panned and cut to the audience (in Nashville) members that were singing along, mostly due to the nature of the songs and the event. What really shined was how, at around a quarter after 8pm (EST), there were hundreds of theaters across North America housing several hundred people each, in which they all participated acting like zombies and singing along to "Your Brains" towards a giant size Coulton. It must be a first for that level of interaction in live entertainment.
A Mr. "lowtax" (of somethingawful) was also present, and screened two rather amusing fake informercials for added value. Plus there was a new short film that Rifftrax presented, followed by the main attraction. Early on in the screening, the video cut out a few times, which was very disrupting but it never occured during the film itself, so that was okay. Another interesting thing they did was, during the film, they would shrink the film down and included on one side of the screen a little view of the Rifftrax performers doing their thing while they watched the film. I found this interesting from a film theory perspective. It was very similar to when an all-powerful mysterious voice in a film is finally
revealed to be just a dude - they lose their influence and power afterwards. Same thing with Rifftrax, their jokes didn't seem as funny when you could see them on screen. Perhaps it was because my attention was split between the two?
In the end, I got to see a classic bad film made fun of by some classy dudes and I got to experience a new form of entertainment. Not sure how else to explain it except that I felt the same kind of excitement as I did when I was participating in the Dark Knight ARG. It was just a joy to know that at the same moment, a few thousand people were experiencing something live that wouldn't happen again. From an entertainer's point of view - this is still an untapped form for an audience to experience and I sure hope it continues, if anything it'll bring people back to the theater!
It was pretty fun!
It was a sold out event and was being broadcast from Nashville. Now again, it was a live event but what was awesome was that the performers not only interacted with their audience before them, but they interacted with everyone watching from every theater. They announced raffle winners who were located at different theaters and provided free swag to all by informing us to go to their website and type in a secret code word.
But that's not all!
Prior to the screening (oh, the film was "Plan 9 from Outer Space"), they had a special guest do a few songs. "Songs?!" you might exclaim. Yes, songs performed live by Jonathan Coulton. It was a pleasant surprise and he performed two rather well known songs of his, "Your Brains" and "Future Soon". It was quite amusing when the cameras panned and cut to the audience (in Nashville) members that were singing along, mostly due to the nature of the songs and the event. What really shined was how, at around a quarter after 8pm (EST), there were hundreds of theaters across North America housing several hundred people each, in which they all participated acting like zombies and singing along to "Your Brains" towards a giant size Coulton. It must be a first for that level of interaction in live entertainment.
A Mr. "lowtax" (of somethingawful) was also present, and screened two rather amusing fake informercials for added value. Plus there was a new short film that Rifftrax presented, followed by the main attraction. Early on in the screening, the video cut out a few times, which was very disrupting but it never occured during the film itself, so that was okay. Another interesting thing they did was, during the film, they would shrink the film down and included on one side of the screen a little view of the Rifftrax performers doing their thing while they watched the film. I found this interesting from a film theory perspective. It was very similar to when an all-powerful mysterious voice in a film is finally
revealed to be just a dude - they lose their influence and power afterwards. Same thing with Rifftrax, their jokes didn't seem as funny when you could see them on screen. Perhaps it was because my attention was split between the two?
In the end, I got to see a classic bad film made fun of by some classy dudes and I got to experience a new form of entertainment. Not sure how else to explain it except that I felt the same kind of excitement as I did when I was participating in the Dark Knight ARG. It was just a joy to know that at the same moment, a few thousand people were experiencing something live that wouldn't happen again. From an entertainer's point of view - this is still an untapped form for an audience to experience and I sure hope it continues, if anything it'll bring people back to the theater!
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