Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony

The documentary is split into numerous sections, primarily featuring the mid-2012 BronyCon, GalaCon, and B.U.C.K. conventions. These portions are bookmarked by several featurettes, including original animations, interviews with the show's creative staff, members of the fandom, and other such facets, and look at the fandom's various effects, including music, art, videos, writing, and gaming. The work in particular provides background and the experiences of a number of fans, explaining their introduction to the fandom, the hardships they have faced by admitting this to others, and their enjoyment of the conventions. In addition to the live footage, the documentary includes original animated interstitials in the style of Friendship Is Magic, featuring songs composed by Arthur Sullivan; arrangement by David O.; lyrics by Amy Keating Rogers, Zachary Lobertini, and Faust; and sung by de Lancie and Strong.^[12] In these sequences, de Lancie voices a professor pony giving an illustrated lecture about the fandom's history, subgroups and popular activities, only to be confronted by a group of mares who call him out on his presentation's male orientation at the end.

Production

John de Lancie was a guest voice of the villain character Discord in the second season 2-part premiere, "The Return of Harmony". Faust had written the Discord character as a sendup of de Lancie's Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation, though had not anticipated that he would be the actual voice. When the production team started to look into voice actors for the character, they found that de Lancie was available, and made some alterations in Discord's mannerisms to be even more Q-like.^[13] Though at the time de Lancie felt it was just another small role when he recorded the lines, he was overwhelmed in email and other social networking services with positive reactions from the show's fans praising the character after the episode's airing. He began to research the fandom and found that it had many similarities to the early Star Trek fandom, in which most of the original fans were female in contrast to the target male demographic of the show.^[14][15]

de Lancie subsequently worked with producer Michael Brockhoff and director

The Kickstarter campaign began on May 13, 2012. By May 16, 2012, the project had already surpassed its $60,000 goal.[17] With funding surpassing the initial target amount, it was announced late in May that Tara Strong and Lauren Faust were joining the project as producers. They also announced plans to enlarge the project's budget, hoping to increase the scale and broadness of the documentary, upping the budget to $200,000. This goal was reached on June 4, 2012, and the budget was then increased to $270,000, a goal which was also met.^[19] On June 8, 2012, it became the fourth most funded film project on Kickstarter,^[20] and it would become the second most funded film on Kickstarter with $322,022 in pledges, not counting the contributions made through PayPal at the end of its run on June 10, 2012.^[21]

Because of the additional funding, the producers decided to expand the scope, using the funds to pay for fare to Europe to attend GalaCon and B.U.C.K., two additional brony conventions in mid-2012. To reflect the larger scope of the project beyond the BronyCon convention, it was announced shortly thereafter that the film's name was changed to Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony.^[22] Much of the production was done with the questions "Why are 20-year-old guys watching a cartoon intended for 10-year-old girls? And, why does society have a problem with that?" in mind.^[15]

Distribution

An initial edit of the film was shown to a select audience at the Equestria LA convention in Los Angeles in early November 2012. Some final edits incorporating additional convention coverage and fan contributions were done afterwards, prior to the release.

The film was released digitally to those that funded the Kickstarter on January 19, 2013,

After the digital release of the main documentary to the backers of the Kickstarter campaign, the production team continued to work on additional features that would have been part of a separate media release. In early February 2013, the production team announced that due to high rates of copyright infringement of the digital version within the brony community, they had ceased further work on these features, stating "that investing any more time and energy would be not be worthwhile".^[29] Regarding the infringement, De Lancie stated that the creators early on had decided not to take any form of payment for the documentary and were instead using the money toward production, with the expectation of earning money from sales of the work.^[15] Unlicensed versions of the film were reportedly on YouTube and other sites within a half-hour of its release to backers, and while de Lancie estimates 4,000 copies were sold digitally, they estimated that more than 10,000 people have seen the film.^[15] The decision to discontinue production did not affect their plans to continue to publish the documentary on home media, fulfill the remaining Kickstarter backer rewards, or additional releases at film festivals and streaming services.^[29]

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray, with an option for additional new features, on February 17, 2013.^[30] Digital streaming of the film on various services began on September 13, 2013.^[31]

Reception

The film received a generally favorable reception from the fandom and a mixed reception from critics, with some feeling the film focused on certain aspects of fandom and ignored other facets, including the lack of criticism of the fandom by others, and the significant portion of female adult fans. Other fans felt that the documentary made the concept of being a brony mean that one had to be "treated like a misunderstood taboo to the rest of the world", and countered that they have openly expressed their appreciation of the show without any backlash from friends and family.^[32] Jeneé Osterheldt of The Kansas City Star stated that "the film does its job" in showcasing the stories from the fandom, and that it "makes you think twice before judging a guy by his cutie mark".^[33] Mike Sauve of Exclaim! states that film, while showing some of the more touching aspects of the fandom, "plays like an infomercial for [My Little Pony], fawning over its creator and voice talent".^[34]

Follow-up

The film was followed by another documentary film, titled Bronies 2: More Unexpected Fans of My Little Pony. It follows Brony Jason Koenig through his day-to-day life, and was initially released split into several parts, which were uploaded to YouTube on the filmmakers' official channel throughout 2014 and early 2015. The entirety of the film was later released on DVD.^[35]

See also

• A Brony Tale, a 2014 documentary film

References