DC FanDome Sets A Gold Standard: ALL Online Events Should Listen

DC FanDome set the gold standard for online events – and established a pattern other studios are sure to try and replicate going forward.

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DC FanDome was a tremendous success, and it set the gold standard for all future online events. 2020 has been a difficult year, with the entire world brought to a standstill by the coronavirus pandemic and its associated lockdowns. The entertainment industry has been profoundly affected, and this year’s San Diego Comic-Con was canceled. The organizers put together an online substitute, Comic-Con@Home, which largely used Zoom panels. Unfortunately, it was largely viewed as something of a damp squib.

And then came DC FanDome in August 2020. Rather than focus on Comic-Con@Home, Warner Bros. and HBO chose to establish their own online event dedicated to their DC film and TV franchises. It featured hotly-anticipated trailers for films like Zack Snyder’s Justice League, The Batman, and Wonder Woman 1984, along with first behind-the-scenes footage from James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad; the Arrowverse was well represented as well. Warner Bros. initially intended to conduct simultaneous panels dedicated to the comics, but they wisely chose to delay those to a later date, realizing they would be drowned out by the flood of movie and TV news.

DC FanDome was no damp squib, but rather it was a phenomenal success. In fact, it set a gold standard for all future online events; it establishes a real precedent for other studios to follow suit, proving they don’t need to be a mere Comic-Con substitute, but instead can be valuable and enjoyable in their own right.

DC FanDome Offered Something For Every DC Fan

Warner Bros. put together a tremendous slate of content with something for every fan. There were panels dedicated to every single DC movie currently in development, ranging from Wonder Woman 1984 to Black Adam; the latter was particularly impressive given that film is in such an early stage of production. For the Arrowverse, attention focused on The Flash, which has generally been regarded as the most popular TV show and is likely to become the flagship now Arrow has ended. What’s more, although comic book content was mostly cut from the event, Warner Bros. did choose to keep a single major piece of news for DC FanDome – the impending relaunch of DC’s Milestone imprint, which has been in the works for years. The decision to announce this at FanDome rightly positioned the news as DC Comics’ biggest development this year.

The panels themselves were slick and professionally-managed, with none of the stumbles seen on Comic-Con@Home’s Zoom calls. Warner Bros had clearly spared no expense putting them together, and as a result they were enjoyable even for audiences who are frankly suffering from Zoom fatigue right now. Everything was effectively packaged using blue-screen, carefully scripted to avoid uncomfortable silences, and created using top technology that – crucially – didn’t malfunction and break the flow. There were certainly no moments where you got the sense an actor was stood at the side of a freeway having pulled up to participate in a Zoom call. The event featured a wealth of new footage in order to promote content, with stand-outs including trailers for the Snyder Cut of Justice League and The Batman. Where footage was not available, Warner Bros. commissioned the creation of promotional animations, a smart move that breathed life into the Black Adam panel in particular. All in all, DC FanDome offered something for everybody – and, most importantly of all, it delivered on that promise.

DC FanDome Delivered Genuinely Huge DC Movie & TV News & Reveals

Over the years, the best studios and networks have learned that a good Comic-Con panel requires a lot of content. That’s why Marvel Studios only turn up when they’ve got something big to announce, such as the entire Phase 4 slate (and more) at last year’s SDCC. Unfortunately this year’s Comic-Con@Home may have been free to attend, but it really didn’t feel valuable, in large part because there was a dearth of real news. This was demonstrated by social media analytics firms, who deemed Comic-Con@Home to be a failure; they reported a 95 percent drop in online engagement from last year’s in-person counterpart. Panels genuinely weren’t newsworthy, with the most popular panel – both in terms of viewership and social media mentions – being for The New Mutants.

But the eight hours of DC FanDome were absolutely packed with news. So many panels featured original content, trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, or simply animated sequences that helped set the scene. There were status updates on Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2, comments on major controversies such as the replacement of Ruby Rose’s Kate Kane in Batwoman, and a first look at the full animal form of Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984. What’s more, because Warner Bros. had perfect control over the event, they were able to streamline it in order to create a strong narrative of excitement and enthusiasm. When trailers were released, Warner Bros. had them uploaded to YouTube within minutes, ensuring the hype could spread across every medium and people could break away from the panels to rewatch. It was masterfully done.

DC FanDome Proved Online Events Can Be More Than A Comic-Con Replacement

For the fans, conventions like San Diego Comic-Con are a social experience; but for the studios and networks involved, they are essentially commercials. The goal of any panel is to sell its product, to engage and enthuse an audience, and a panel’s success can be judged by the audience reaction. That is why Comic-Con@Home can be considered a failure; however well-intentioned, it was put together by groups who are inexperienced at running this kind of online convention/commercial, and that showed in the quality and format of the panels. In contrast, Warner Bros. understood from the outset that DC FanDome had a simple goal, to sell their upcoming films and TV shows, and the result was essentially a hugely successful eight-hour-long advert that will be fondly remembered for years to come.

But here is the interesting question; is this something audiences will want more of, even in a post-coronavirus world? There is a sense in which the format of DC FanDome is actually easier for a studio, because they have much better control over this kind of pre-prepared, digital panel. They know there won’t be any microphone fails, they can re-record if an actor stumbles and says something they shouldn’t have, and they can manipulate the whole environment for best effect. Actors simply need to be available long enough to do a couple of recordings, which can even be done on set, meaning production is barely affected. Meanwhile, there’s been none of the usual debate about whether or not Comic-Con exclusives – not released online afterwards – penalize the vast majority of interested fans who didn’t attend.

The whole discourse has been more pleasant, more controlled, and that too will incline studios towards repeating this exercise. Of course, there is a catch; in reality, not many companies could pull off something like DC FanDome. You need a broad range of content in the works, and preferably a unifying thread to help everything feel connected in some way (in the case of DC FanDome, it was that these are all comic book adaptations of some kind). So while there will hopefully be many more online events like DC FanDome, only the biggest beasts will be able to pull them off effectively.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/dc-fandome-review-sdcc-copy/