Happy 5th Birthday, fernbyfilms.com!!
It’s our 5th Birthday today! Come celebrate with us – stop by and let us know your thoughts!!!
It’s our birthday! 5 years ago today, fernbyfilms.com came online as a forum for my thoughts and creative output, and boy it’s been a ride ever since! In that five years, we’ve written several hundred film reviews, made a short film, provided you all with our wit and charm, essayed a few more political thoughts on cinema and the format we all love, and enjoyed getting to know a bunch of wonderful fellow film fans and bloggers. We’ve seen the site grow from a couple of readers to around 4500 hits per day (on average), and we broke through our first million site hits back in 2011 – what a joyous day that was – while celebrating our 2,000,000th hit earlier this year!
As we’ve grown as a site, we’ve discovered a wonderful community of film bloggers online, many of whom have contributed to our pages with their material, and all of whom you’ll discover down in our friends list in the sidebar.
For the sake of a few minutes, we thought we’d spend some time reminiscing about some of our favorite work here at the site, and perhaps let some of our newer readers in on the tidbits they might have missed!
Here’s some of our major milestone moments:
First Film Review: A composite review of Shooter, The Descent, The Bourne Ultimatum and Sunshine. (from December 30th, 2007)
First Single Film Review: Transformers (the very start of 2008)
First BluRay Review – Avatar (back in 2010… wow, time flies!)
First Numbered Review – Contagion (from earlier this year)
Most Commented Review – Brutality vs Beauty: The Art Of War On Film (Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line)
Longest Review – All kinds Of Awesome: Critical Analysis of the Work Of Michael Bay
World First Review – The television premiere of Wallace & Gromit: A Matter Of Loaf and Death. We snagged the world on getting the first major review up and online for this animated short!
Now, aside from the milestones, here’s a selection of my favorite stuff from the last 5 years.
Favorite post: While he no longer writes for us, Doug Shearer’s first foray into editorializing for us came with his review of Sunshine, followed quickly by this four-film essay on Movie musicals. It’s a terrific piece of writing, and sums up many of the feeling I too have for the films discussed therein. I often click back to re-read this post and admire its tempered prose and ebullient structure.
Most controversial post: Although it appeared above as the “most commented” review we’ve had, it’s also the most controversial. My opinion on The Thin Red Line is well known, and when I put that film together with Saving Private Ryan, the vitriol coming my way sat me back a bit. I re-wrote another article as a bit of a redux on the matter, but the original post still tracks the best on Google – in fact, the comments after the post are more impressive than the post itself!
Most Surprising Film review: True Grit. Really enjoyed writing this one, and apparently a lot of you enjoyed reading it – if only to comment on it.
On a personal note, I’d like to thank all those who’ve contributed to fernbyfilms.com over the years, even those who no longer write for us, and I look forward to providing many more years of film review service for you to enjoy!! While we’re celebrating today, we want to hear from you – what are your fondest memories of fernbyfilms.com, and what do you enjoy about our stuff? Let us know down below in the comments section!!
Rodney T
EIC – Fernby Films.
Who wrote this?
The Rod! Congrats on 5 glorious years, brother. i'm proud to work along side you and grateful for your talent, which motivates me to be a better writer every time i read one of your masterful reviews.
My recent post Dregs of the Week: September 16 – December 19, 2012
My friend, such kind words. Thanks for being a solid support over the last few years we've known each other – truly, your words are an inspiration to my own.
Sir Rodney! While having only recently discovered the joy that is Fernby Films, I can honestly say that it's been a great pleasure discovering your new reviews and delving into those of days gone by. Count me among one of your faithful readers and one who wishes you all the best and continued success for many years yet to come.
St Pauly! Dude!! Thankyou for your praise – I'm always happy to know there are other fine writers out there who don't mind the claptrap I write! Ha ha!! Seriously, though, thanks for the wishes; here's to you and your during the holiday season!
Congrats Rodney, five years is quite an accomplishment and those stats are very impressive.
Here's to many more!
Thanks BT, good to have you along for the ride!!
Congratulations Rodney on reaching five and for producing such a great website.
Your informative, in-depth and always entertaining reviews continue to impress me. I'm constantly astonished at the speed at which you write them…I wish I could write with the same frequency (and with similar wit!).
Thanks for letting me contribute a couple of things to the site and many thanks for putting together some of my site's most popular posts. Given the amount of hits they have received and the popularity of them it doesn't surprise me at all Fernby Films is achieving the number of hits it does.
Great stuff! I'll raise a glass to another successful five years! 🙂
My recent post 50 films better than The Dark Knight Rises in 2012
Thanks Dan! We've been friends for a while now (not quite as long as Fernby Films has been around, but close) and it's been a fruitful association indeed. I'm always glad to help out a fellow blogger when I can, I just wish I could do more for you and some of the other guys I write for, but family committments always push back and I'm currently time-poor these days.
Drink up, my friend. There's a few more years in this old dog yet!!
Oh wow! 5 years is a good long time, and a real achievement on your part to keep it going for so long. You always have great content, and while I don't comment as much as I should, I always stay abreast of the latest and greatest reviews and articles popping up here. You've been my most active commenter and supporter for a while now, and I supremely thank you. You run a great ship here, and I look forward to the things you've been working on for 2013!
Also, 4500 views A DAY? That's nuts! That's like more than a month of my views! What's your secret?
My recent post Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)
Thank mate!! Always good to have quality film enthusiasts keeping me honest, I reckon. Kind praise from you about the quality of our little enterprise here, although I will return serve by stating that Silver Emulsions is probably in my top 3 film blogs I visit each and every day, so you're not doing so badly yourself!
4500 hits a day? Easy to explain, really. Pictures. A lot of pictures. Most of my hits come via Google images, I've ascertained, so it's a little bit of a cheat to state 4500 a day, when actual vistors who come to read my stuff is probably about half that.
Even discounting Image Search (which I don't think you should), half of 4500 every day is a huge number to me. Maybe my site is just micro-small, but these numbers feel astronomical to me. But I don't want to put so much focus on the numbers, because the real thrill of Fernby Films is your take on films… not to mention all the wonderful photo captions.
And thanks! I'm honored to be considered in your Top 3! I'll be riding that compliment for quite some time.
My recent post Murdercycle (1999)
Glad you like the photo captions! I do try and make them funny or nonsensical in some ways to lighten the mood and provide at least a giggle or two. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to be funny though, and often just put mindless crap there instead.
A month ago I discarded my internal analytics stats provider because I found I was too focused on getting big viewing numbers, when my main focus should have been providing good quality film reviews because that's what I love. While I'm always happy that lots of people visit my site (and if half that 4500 figure bothered to leave a comment, I'd be ecstatic!) it wasn't – and isn't – the primary reason I write this stuff. i do it because I love it, and the high viewing numbers are just cream on top of the cake (so to speak).
An aside: to those of you reading this who might wonder how a site, any site, garners high visitor traffic, you really need to get involved in the blogging community, and make your site interesting and – if possible – unique in some way. Cross-pollinate, as much as you can!
Will's site, Silver Emulsions, is a fantastic read for those of you who enjoy your films with a low budget, subtitles and a gratuitous amount of schlock, so head over there and check it out.
Thanks Will!