Where's Episode 4?
To see Thomas Brin in action, visit the official movie site at: Adventures of Thomas Brin
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By now, some of our loyal Brin fans may be wondering why Episode 4 of the Adventures of Thomas Brin is not yet out. After all, at the end of Episode 3, it clearly stated "Episode 4 Coming Fall 2007". Since fall technically ends in late December, we're only 3 and a half months late--so far!
The truth is that we have not yet started to post produce Episode 4.
As I stated in an earlier post about E3 production statistics, it took A LOT of hours to create TBE3 (Thomas Brin Episode 3). That is one reason, among many, that we introduced Brin 2.0. To keep producing episodes, we need help.
Unfortunately, we only have had one individual inquire about Brin 2.0--a very nice individual from England who was really inquiring about the production equipment and software we used. So, with Brin 2.0 announced just a little over a year ago, we have zero people (outside of the original production team) getting involved. Furthermore, to add insult to minor injury (hey, we have big shoulders here) we have not had a single comment on the Blogging with Brin Blog and only one fan email in the past 12 months.
Although this is disappointing, it is not too surprising. Most of our viewers watch the Adventures of Thomas Brin via iTunes or some other podcasting directory. In fact, according to our server logs, fewer than 1% actually watch Thomas Brin directly via our website. This means that, although the episodes have been downloaded over 1.5 million times, we have only had 15,000 unique visitors to our website. This is one of the problems with the podcasting paradigm--the podcast directory websites get the vast majority of the visits whereas the websites of the creators' of the content (that is freely given away) receive very few visits.
So, the only way for the creator of a podcast to know how he or she is doing is from viewer comments. If they receive only a few comments, then they have to come to terms with the fact that they are not providing the type of content that viewers truly want.
When will Episode 4 come out? We'll, with seemingly little interest from our viewers, we are in no hurry to put in the 800 hours or so we estimate it will take in Post production. But, perhaps we are wrong in assuming that there is little interest left in Thomas Brin.
With all the Thomas Brin downloads, we know we have viewers. We'd love to know how we are doing. Some feedback from our viewers would be nice! As a viewer, do you enjoy what we've created? Do you want us to continue?
Please take a moment and leave a comment on this post. Or go to the Thomas Brin website and leave a comment on our Frappr Map or join the Cloud City Community.
