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Journey of an Editor: A Conversation with We Needed Roads
8 Plays1 minute ago
In this episode, Satsunami talks to the fantastic Neil from the We Needed Roads podcast about all things movies and editing. What does it mean to be the perfect editor? How did Neil's work on cruise ships lead to him meeting his co-hosts? And what films should you be checking out this year? All this and more in this incredible episode of Chatsunami!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Genesis
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Satsunami and joining me today is a very special guest from the We Needed Roads podcast. It is none other than the one and only Film Buff, Neil. Neil, welcome to Chatsunami. Ah, it's been too long hasn't it? It has. This episode has been a couple of months, maybe six, maybe more in the making.
00:00:41
Speaker
I have to say. But how are you doing tonight? Yeah, good, good. As we were saying before we started hitting record, it's so nice for me on my end to not have to script or plan anything for a change, so ah I'm very happy about that. but I completely agree with you because the amount of times I've been in somebody else's podcast and I'm like, oh my god, do I sound okay here? Do I sound okay there? And obviously I've tried to sound as good as I can, but then I think, well, on the plus side, I don't have to edit this, so. at least I can just sit back and let the hosts do their thing which is always a relief. Especially when they run over but that's a bridgeable cross later of course. So as I was saying there of course you are indeed a film buff, you are a TV buff of course and you are one of the hosts of the We Needed Roads podcast.
Podcasting Tips and Evolution
00:01:25
Speaker
I'm going to get the very traditional chat tsunami question out the way. Is it right to assume that you started this podcast in early 2021?
00:01:34
Speaker
That would be a very good guess indeed, yes. Early 2020. Oh, early 2020? Was it that far back? Yeah, yeah. Oh well. I suppose I'm reading my crystal ball here, but I can take three guesses as to why you started the podcast.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, me and one of my former work colleagues, David, we, me and him used to work in the same office building. It's so layered that the people on our podcast with the links. So David and me actually work for the same company that I'm still at now. And we worked there about six years ago for about a year, then he left. And then he came back and he was working in the same building I was working in, but I was working remotely then. So, and we just keep chatting about TV shows and movies all the time. And this must've been maybe late 2019. And everyone kept saying, oh, you guys should do a podcast. Cause you talk about movies all the time. And was like, oh yeah. And we were just too busy with life at that point. David left the office and cause he'd got his nice new house. So he didn't have to actually pay for an office. As we all know, 2020 happened and we were getting very bored and was like, let's just do a podcast. Let's talk about movies and what we've been watching and anything we like want to talk about in terms of TV or film. And let's just put it out there. You know, I bought a blue Yeti mic that I still have to this day. David was using some dodgy gaming headset mic that was horrific. And finally at least he's replaced that now. And I think our first episode, we debated what was better. to sleep all the shining and it got very heated. It's always the case with these episodes, isn't it? Yeah well especially when there's only two of you, the podcast really developed over the years like David, he and I, he got started a new job, he got married, he bought a house, he's just had his first child. So they are things that can definitely interfere with you doing a podcast and as we were kind of starting out all the advice we kept always getting from everyone was you just need to be consistent. Doesn't matter that no one's listening to it, just keep doing it. Keep putting it out, you'll get better and people love finding a catalogue of loads of episodes to go back to and
Network Growth and New Hosts
00:03:09
Speaker
work their way through. I am then approached one of my old colleagues from the cruise line days where I used to work on cruise ships called Jose from Florida because he used to be a photographer, well he is a photographer now and I used to be a videographer for a company called Princess Cruises. Bizarrely David actually did the same job as me but again I think a few years after I'd left he was doing the same and we even had the same manager and worked the same first itinerary and again it's just craziness that then we end up at an office job in Ashford of all places and yet we both worked overseas doing the Panama Canal run. So at this point, we're up to three of us now on the pods. And then Jose couldn't make it sometimes, David couldn't make it, and I still wanted to keep being consistent. So then one of my oldest friends from school days, when I was a kid and wanted to be a rock star, I started a band, can't remember the name, actually, because we were terrible. But our singer, he kept at it. How many people, you know, for years and years and years, you keep plugging away. And I think our friend Ben, he got into his 30s, mid 30s, I think he was. And then he had that light bulb moment where he's like, I've played every shithole venue all over Europe. I've never made any money. We haven't sold any albums, haven't sold any records. But
00:04:01
Speaker
I know every band. I know all the tour promoters. I know all the venues. And he's like, I should become a tour manager. And that's what he does now. And so Ben's literally getting back from Australia as we record this today, I think. And he's been on tour with me first in the Gimme Gimmes. And of course, I forget that we've known each other since we were like 15, 16. We're in our mid forties now. So it's kind of like, okay, we forget how much we've talked about stuff down here. And Ben's like a big sci-fi and TV guy as well. And then, of course, our fifth member of the podcast now, who is the most recent to join, you know very well, because she seems to guest with you quite often and talk for hours and hours upon end about her space husband, Garris, and that's Marie from a Two Girls Run Reusable Cup as well. Yes. And as of this episode, as we're recording, she has indeed still maintained to the crown for the longest episode of Chatsunami, which is no small feat because I've said this before in past episodes, but the longest episode we did in the past was a i think it was like a 2 hour 10.
Diversifying Topics and Formats
00:04:54
Speaker
The final edited version came out and it was a review of two very infamous Christmas films but of course when I was recording with Marie for the Mass Effect month we spoke for about over three hours I want to say and by some miraculous feat I managed to chop it down to two hours 13 minutes. My god it was the longest episode, both the longest I've ever recorded and the longest I've ever edited it down to so yeah no I completely agree in terms of what you were saying there before I completely understand you because I remember when I started the podcast I was in the summer boat where it was like I started with a friend to well technically it was a friend of a friend to a Met because I went to a terminator screening in Glasgow it was really weird
00:05:39
Speaker
It's a really weird fateful encounter as it were. And then of course when Covid hit, I started the podcast with him and then he couldn't make it. So then I got my very good friend from uni, Andrew Allen. And then whenever he can't make it, I've got a friend and wrestler extraordinaire, Martin McAllister to get him on. So I'm completely with you there in the sense. It's almost like a revolving door, isn't it? But do you find now, though, that when you get all these extra co-hosts and you explain to them right, well, it's just to be consistent. They all want to be on all the time now. The whole idea was if we couldn't didn't have enough people, we could still put an episode out. I mean, having said that, me and Marie just did one on Friday that was, I think, about two hours 20. And that was just about five things we reviewed on that. I mean, the amount of people that I've had on, and I don't mean this in a bragging way, but genuinely the other of people that I've had on and they'll say initially, oh, I've never been on a podcast. Oh, I don't know if I want to come on. And it's like, OK, let's just do this one episode, see how you feel. It's just going to be a very casual chat. And then a couple of weeks later, they're like, OK, I've got an i idea for another episode and then another that episode. And then eventually you've got all of these Word documents or notes that are just list upon list of topics. Do you find that as well? We're starting to get there, but generally, it's kind of every couple of weeks, I've had a Cine World card for a decade now. So I go to cinema a lot, but also there's so much good TV out there. And I think we've established in ours that I watch more than probably everyone else. We're not combined, but I watch a lot more than everyone else on the podcast. yeah And so it's right, guys, who else has seen this? I want to talk about it. And then stuff no one else has seen, I'll just do a short non-spoiler review about and whether it's a thumbs up, thumbs down. It's worth watching or not worth doing. everyone else has seen it or it's something that we we all really have to go to. like I made Marie go and see Conclave the other night and she went to see that. So then we could dive into that. So then we have a spoiler section. you know We've always toyed with a format. Is it going to be a what we've been watching and we do like a round table for everyone and then pick one or two things at the end of the pod where we kind of dive in deep in spoiler detail. It's very handy having one of the co-hosts then with his sort of band's background. He got one of his bands to just record our theme song. And we said, okay, we want it to sound 60% like the power of love from Back to the Future, but not enough that we get sued. And it's exactly that that. It sounds exactly as you can imagine. It's so much so we actually got nominated at the Independent Podcast Awards recently, which is it's kind of a bummer when you don't get nominated for your category for like best TV or film. but you get nominated for best theme songs slash jingle. And so no one else can make it because obviously Marie's in Portugal, Ben was in Australia, David was in knowledgeable places and Jose's in Florida. So I was literally the only person who can make it up there. But it was just so cool to meet all these other podcasters that you only know through social media in person. I said it was like podcasting speed dating. You would see someone and go, Hey, you're so-and-so, I recognise you from Twitter.
Indie Podcasting Community and Growth
00:08:08
Speaker
Oh yeah, what's your pocket? Everyone like literally spent five minutes exchanging details and then you boom, you move on to someone else. But it was a brilliant way to network and just sitting there in like the king's place in London, where like I go up to empire and and pilot TV when I do their live podcasts there. And so to be sitting in the same audience and having our theme song played out with the PA and up on the screen, even if it was only for like 10 seconds, it was still cool. I was like, Oh, this is awesome. It kind of helped us get noticed. But I think we owe a lot of that to M from verbal diorama. Yeah, because she interviewed me and David maybe what, a year after we started and for the film stories website and gave us a British podcast of the week, which was great. And then obviously we've always followed each other. And I forget how many episodes she's up to now. She does two a week by herself, which is insanity. She obviously helped co-found the event. So it's obviously handy if you know, literally the co-founded event. Not saying that's why we got nominated, but hey, we'll take what we can get, right?
00:08:53
Speaker
No, you're completely right though, because do you find this as well that the indie podcasting community especially is quite a tight-knit community? Well, the funny thing is, you know what it says about everyone's rage-quitting Twitter and, oh, it's full of this? I've never had that experience at all. Yeah, you get your bots as normal, but I've never had anyone go, oh, your stuff's shit. Oh, you guys shouldn't bother. I've never had any negativity from it at all. It's been brilliant. You know, I've only had a positive experience since we started doing a podcast. Yeah, I have to say in terms of at least in that bubble, because you're completely right, you do get a lot of negative people, you get the bots, you get the people who are posting about very controversial things that they're probably just doing for their age, the engagement, whatever type of thing you want to put in there. But in terms of podcasters, there's only maybe off the top of my head one or two that I've come across and thought, I don't know if I want to not associate, that sounds terrible but you know I don't know if I want to interact with them because we would probably clash but for the wide majority I feel as if everybody is just so supportive of one another and that is something quite rare because I mean before I started podcasting I did streaming on Twitch and is interesting. I'll just say, is that the exact opposite of the experience you've had doing a podcast in so far by the sounds of things? Oh yeah, because I think the thing with Twitch compared to indie podcasts is that indie podcasts know that starting a podcast, building a community is very much a slow burn. It's not something that you'll immediately, unless you've already got a following, that's of course different. But if you're starting from the ground up, then you're going to have to build your community, you're going to have to network with other podcasters and things like that. But for streaming, I feel as if a lot of people just want to be successful on day one. You know, they want to be the next, I don't know, Pokemon, or I was about to say ninja again, but I said that last year, the year before. I don't even know. But you know, they want to be the next big brand name and everything, but then they get very frustrated easily. And I can totally see where they're coming from, but compared to podcasts, and I feel as if there's a lot more realistic expectations there, would you
Podcasting as a Connector and Stress Reliever
00:11:03
Speaker
agree with that? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends what your definition of success is. For my day job, I had a lot of TV shows and they are a lot of people in rooms talking about business and they could easily be podcast. In fact, some of them are podcast. So, you know, say the producer hasn't done his job one day and the shoot, instead of being 24 minutes to 26 with Sky, it's gone to 45 minutes. We can either try and push it out to like an hour show or I have to cut half of the content out of it and it doesn't make any sense because you're then losing the thread of what people are trying to say. We never had any expectation to make any money out of this at all. You know, it was a joke, but it's not really a joke. I almost say to the guys, we're always quite open about how, you know, our mental health and things like that as well, which is kind of good. Not obviously not on the podcast, but we talk about because we're all in different parts of the world, except for me and David, you were down in Kent. But it's good that everyone sort of checks in, how's your week been mate? And it's good that you kind of have that network. And so I've had a stressful year with work and stress because of work and stress affecting me physically because of work and just trying to get it diagnosed and figure out, well, okay, but I didn't think I was stressed. But doing the podcast, it was literally a lifeline in those times when it was hard early in the year. Because you would just be like, no matter what's going on, I can sit down a couple of hours and have a chat with my mates about stuff I like. And for that two hours you're chatting away, you're forgetting about everything else. you know I actually, well I say I but my friends and I actually brought that exact point up during our full year anniversary episodes where we're talking about the idea that during Covid of course it's a double-edged sword there was good times and bad times during that period but we felt as if without the podcast and without Chat Tsunami, I mean don't get me wrong we still would have talked to one another, maybe not as frequently because our lives are of course busy. As I said, my friend Martin McAllister, he is making absolute waves in the Glasgow wrestling scene. My other friend, he moved over to Canada and of course got married. It gives us a chance to, as you were saying, to set aside time, even if it's just an hour, even if it's just
00:12:53
Speaker
few hours and we'll just talk about what we want to really. And that was something else I was going to ask you because I was looking through your catalogue of episodes and you've of course got a very extensive list because I was listening to your Acolyte episode earlier.
00:13:08
Speaker
which was a great episode, by the way. you know I was listening to a couple of others, especially the one with Marie when you were talking about Lower Decks and things. Do you feel as if it's easier to diversify your topics, like not stick to one particular topic? Because we were talking about this before we started recording that your podcast name, of course, relates to Back to the Future, which again I was saying it was very depressing that younger people of the audience and just in general probably won't understand the reference to Back to the Future but do you feel as if it's easier to just pick and choose what you want to talk about rather than just sticking to one particular franchise or series or such? Yeah I think it's more fun for us and I hope it's more fun for the listener because where we've expanded out into having five of us now and sometimes all five of us will be on there more than once. What happens is we all talk about different stuff and so we've kind of all gravitated towards different areas now so like David it's funny because he wasn't into this when he started the podcast and since then he's I guess the impending doom of fatherhood and marriage he's got really into his horror films now he's become a massive horror buff he's spent ages just devouring everything he could so you know we always joke it's David's dungeon now when we go like what horror film do you want to tell us about where Whereas Jose is Mr. Blockbuster, you know, he is whatever the, and I like having Jose because he is your average man in the cinema in America. You know, he won't have the big, deep film acknowledge of the thing, but if it's popular, it's in the Blockbuster and you want someone who's tuned into what the average film fan wants and why they don't like it or if they do like it or what they like about it. So Jose is good in that set. Ben is kind of like me. Ben's like a big sci-fi guy. He's got his Millennium Falcon tattoos and he pretty much lived at Galaxy's Edge as much as he could when he was in the States over the last couple of years.
00:14:47
Speaker
And then we've got Marie, who absolutely brings in a completely different vibe to the rest of us because she'll tell us about a bunch of shows we've never even heard of. She'll use you as well with a lot more of an LGBTQI slant to the show she's talking about. But it's great because we're all recommending stuff. So this stuff she's never heard of that I've watched back in the day that was brilliant. And we go, right, you should watch this. Go and watch this. And then vice versa, you know, like all of us strangers probably wouldn't have watched that if she hadn't gone, Oh, it's one of the best
Highlighting Indie Content
00:15:09
Speaker
films of the year. Go and see it. And then my local actually had a small screening of it. I think I showed it three or four times. So I was like, two of us in there and it's any world on a Tuesday night. I was like, brilliant. Let's go and see this. And so I feel like we've kind of broadened the appeal of the podcast now because we're covering so many different areas. oh So yeah, me by default, I've kind of become independent slash world cinema guy now, because everything else is kind of, I'm a big fantasy and sci-fi guy as well. But I mean, I'll watch pretty much anything, you know, like. when we was doing the watchlist things together that we used to do a graphic but it was taking me too much time each week to come up with four things each week do the photoshop on it and then remember to post it at the same time and it's also if I hadn't sent it in time then there'd be no point doing the graphic so like tonight when we get down here it's watch the next episode of the June TV show that dropped last week and then the final episodes of the franchise which I love the franchise and no one seems to be talking about it or liking it Because that is one of the absolute benefits, I have to say, of running your own podcast where you look up on YouTube and you think, is this person going to be talking about it? Is that person going to be talking about it? Is your that old Anos meme where it's like, fine, I'll do it myself? And you're just like, okay, hit record, I'm gonna talk about this. Because I remember the one that I was absolutely kicking myself about was Squid Game. I remember at the time, and I say this all the time whenever our Squid Game comes up, but I genuinely, I think it was the week before it actually took off and started being popular.
00:16:24
Speaker
I remember I watched it with a friend who was really into key dramas and I was saying to her, this is a really good show, let's watch it together. We watched it and then I was like, oh, OK, I can't wait to talk about the show. And you know, recommend it to people. Of course, the week after it blew up and then it became this global phenomenon. and So I was like, well, bugger.
00:16:43
Speaker
but just bugger I can't talk about this now without thousands of other people coming in, but conversely there's a lot of things like, especially when it comes to indie games, that seems to be the thing that I'm very passionate about recently where there's a lot of, and I mean you'll probably have seen this on Twitter especially, where in the gaming community there's a lot of back and forth about what makes a good game these days, what makes a bad game, and there's a lot of passion that people out there especially indie creators that I don't think they don't get their due where they've spent hours creating this game and it gets brushed under the rug because of games like Fortnite, your college at ease, your FIFA's, you know, ah things like that. And it's given us a chance as well to talk about things that otherwise I probably wouldn't have had the chance to talk about. Like my friend Adam and I, we talked about, I think it was season two, we talked about what remains of Edith Finch, which is an absolutely amazing
Gaming Narratives and Emotional Depth
00:17:40
Speaker
game. Yeah, I think I played it. Oh, it's such a good game and I had so many notes for it at the same time. It's just when I was playing, I was like, OK, write this down, write this down. I played it again. I was like, OK, we also talked about Papers, Please, Return to the Obra Dinn, a game called Kind Words, which essentially is just people typing out their problems, putting that into a digital space and then strangers under the guise of anonymity could respond to you there and reply to you. and that's the thing it's like you would have never found this and I would have definitely never found it unless I was looking out for these kind of things especially to talk on the podcast but it's honestly amazing what you find doesn't it? I mean I'm an old-school gamer like I had a Spectrum 48k back in the day that was like the first one with the type player that you had to connect
00:18:29
Speaker
via 3.5 mil lead, then you had to tune the TV in to find the signal of it. You know, a spectrum, it would boot up in DOS and you'd have to go speech speech, type in the name of the game, speech speech, enter, then that would start the tape player playing. And it would take, you know, I think maybe anywhere between three to seven, eight minutes for the game to load. And it'd just be the sound of a modem noise, but from the tape player. And I remember the very first game I ever had, it was a Frogger ripoff for the spectrum called Horris Go Skiing. And it's literally just trying to cross the road on skis with cars coming. I mean, you can't criticise them for not having imagination. That's a I mean I think that's a big argument to do with modern day games is that once the graphics got that good people stopped making games that were actually interesting and difficult to play. I mean in the old days you didn't have the graphics so the games actually had to make you want to keep playing them. So arguably games back then were much more inventive and clever. I played again I think think it was released in 20, either 2018 or 19, definitely pre-Covid I'm sure. I played a game called, I think it's Greece, it's called GRIS, which been told under good authority it's Spanish and French as well for the color grey and it's basically you play through it as this woman who is going through the different stages of grief, your bargaining, acceptance, anger, that kind of thing, and it's all represented by different covers. In that game, I have to admit, that took me completely by surprise, where I didn't know what to expect initially. I kind of thought, alright, this is just going to be like an art-style platformer and things, but
00:19:54
Speaker
The more I went into it, the more I saw there was a lot of overlapping of different forms of media. You know, you weren't just getting all of this fun platformer with this colorful looking character. You were getting this subtext of loss and depression and trying to work your way through these kind of things. And it was something that really took me off guard and I have to say I really need to do an episode on it. Yeah, sounds like you do. oh I'm adding it to the list definitely, but have you ever found that as well? we are and I've mentioned this in past episodes where I've gone to tackle a topic and I thought, all right, I'm going to do this. It's only going to be about five minutes, ten minutes, and then we end up going for absolute hours talking about this particular thing. But have you ever had that experience with your own podcast? ah
00:20:40
Speaker
not in the sense where you kind of you go to drill down on one certain subject and then you end up taking ages on it because I feel like every episode of ours could go over three hours if I didn't try and kind of reign everyone in and kind of write this is your bit this is your bit have we all seen this great then we can all have a chat on this at the end and And it kind of just evolves as it does. Now we're kind of down around to around the two hour mark, no matter who's on, which is kind of good. What we started doing is I think about seven episodes back now, going back to our September 18th episode, which was the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Transition to Video and Industry Engagement
00:21:08
Speaker
spoiler review. And what we've been watching, which was two hours and 20, because all five of us are on it. That one was our first video episode on YouTube, because with my day job being a video editor, for ages I just didn't want to do video till we need to roach because I was like no that's too much like the day job and you know we've got basic webcams don't want to have to have get a ring light and do all this stuff I just I don't want to put that kind of effort into doing it I liked editing the audio because it took me a lot less time than it would do to do the full edit but we said okay well look we're doing our top 10 I think the Beetlejuice one actually came about by accident because it was the first time all five of us have been available to do it at the same time so we just recorded it for fun Marie did it via zoom because bizarrely she was having a problem logging into our zencaster and it kept booting her out so we did it all on her zoom link that she sent us but what made it funny was she had all five of us on screen at the same time in the files she sent through and so the reactions were kind of what made it funny you know jose started the podcast saying i'm sorry guys i'm a bit sick of a bit of a cold and he started coughing so yeah immediately my video editing brain goes guys i sound like phoebe from friends so the second he says that his video is replaced by still with phoebe coughing from friends
00:22:05
Speaker
And he was like, right, that's the kind of thing, whenever there was a bit that would stick out, I'd put a marker in the edit and go, right, I needed a shot of this to go there, or I need an image of this to go there. And over the last month or two, when we started doing it, I'm getting more creative with it, and it is more fun to do it. So our new episode that just dropped today, as we recall this, was an interview with a filmmaker called Jed Sheppard, who's just done a documentary on the Blair Witch Project. He is like the authority on the film, so much so that he literally had all the raw footage that they used to make the actual film in the first place and so he recut his own version of the film just for fun. He's also the writer of Host and Dash Cam, two of the biggest kind of Brit horror films over the last few years. He's got a short film on Netflix called Flashback that's only 14 minutes. I didn't even know Netflix had short films on there. But obviously, when I was researching him for the interview, I found that, watched it, it was great, 14 minutes. And I was like, really, really impressed by that. But for the trailer, for his episode, I was like, right, we need to be creative. So I copied the text from the start of the Blade Witch Project when it says, you know, in October 1990, so and so, three filmmakers went missing in the woods. This is that footage. So that's what I did for the promo for our one. And then right at the very end, there's like a flash frame of the last shot of the movie, right at the very end of it. And it was just, okay, you're getting more creative. So the one meme Marie recorded recently, we forgot to do the obvious, how often do you think of the Roman Empire joke? Because we're doing a gladiator 2-1 and conclave. So we had a lot of Rome stuffers. Okay. Now I've been to Rome, I've been to the Colosseum, I got a video that I shot there professionally. So I was like, whoa, let's just cut that into the intro. So I spent the day going for all that and cutting in all this footage from Rome into our thing. So it's fun and it is do, but it does take up a lot of time. But at the same time, since we've gone to YouTube, We've noticed our numbers for the audio only have dropped quite significantly, but on YouTube we're getting five times the listeners or downloaders or viewers per episode that we were getting in total anyway. So for us, the fewer figures are only a drop in the ocean for YouTube, but compared to what we were getting and where we were seeing it, it's a hell of a lot more since we've done that.
00:23:48
Speaker
I've noticed that with a lot of people who do podcasts for YouTube and it's definitely the more visual ones that seem to take off there. Whereas, I mean, for us, we get a lot more lessons because we host, as of this episode, that we host on Zencaster and our numbers do early alright there but when they look on YouTube, YouTube is just such a wild west zone for us because sometimes there's episodes that for some weird reason do really well but they don't count to the overall numbers. I don't know why but even still you kind of look over there and you think oh that episode did good or oh that one maybe didn't do good. And you're like but why why why did it do well and we yeah yeah have no idea
00:24:29
Speaker
we don't oh no i'm totally matthew you there because there's an episode and this is on the wood episode i think that got maybe a hundred or so views and maybe one or two right
00:24:45
Speaker
because the episodes that, as of recording this episode, the episodes that has performed the best for us, and again it was a spur-of-the-moment episode. It was well and you have no idea, based on at least a very cutesy we don't. slice of life anime that my friend and I had watched when we were in university and he'd only come on for this one episode and I was like, do you want to do an episode on this particular anime? was like, yeah, yeah, sure. So we watched it, we recorded an episode on it, and we're like, right, okay, let's go back to our daily lives. But now for, I want to say, ever since it was recorded, so about two or three years now, it's been at the top of the, well, quote-unquote, leaderboard of chance enamis. So I'm like, how the heck? I genuinely don't know why. It's really bizarre. I remember there's a story, you know, the indie rock band Pavement, and they, some streamer, used one of their B-side songs, barely anyone knew by them, in one of their videos, and it's now Pavement's most streamed song of all time. Right. And they had no idea why people had the research. Well, why suddenly is Pavement getting all these downloads and streams from Japan? And it just took off massively worldwide, and it's not even close to their most popular actual song from back in the day. I mean, we had a little weird, not a weird one, but like, a couple of weeks ago I did a trailer, because one thing I'm crap at is doing good thumbnails. Because by the time I've edited it and cut the clips, I can't be hard to do the thumbnails. It is a lot of work. I finally had a bit of time to do one the other week, and it was just a clip from a couple of episodes back, and we were reviewing Heretic with Hugh Grant. And I said, you know what, Hugh Grant is doing what Bill Murray did. And I put like a one minute 20 clip up called the Bill Murray syndrome. And it's only been up for 12 days and it's had almost 200 views. It's just a minute 20. And all it is is just me saying, Bill Murray in the eighties, all he did, well, I mean, sorry, all he did in the eighties, Bill Murray was the sarcastic, rude, hilarious. He was just Bill Murray in the seventies and the eighties. That's what he was. And even in the nineties, up to Groundhog Day, he played a very similar role. He was a sarcastic. He was come across as like an asshole a lot of the time, but he was very funny. Now I would say from lost in translation onwards a new generation of filmmakers like Sophia Coppola and Wes Anderson took Bill Murray and put him in comedy dramas emphasis on the drama and Bill Murray for me does not change his performance at all he's still coming out with the lines like Venkman like his character from Groundhog Day but because the directors have put him in a drama as opposed to a out and out comedy it's now seen as this oh what dramatic performance oh it's so sad it's so moving and I'm like He's doing exactly the same thing. It's just the directors are clever enough to know that now he's older. It doesn't appear as funny as it was when he was younger doing it. And that's exactly what Hugh Grant is doing now. I mean, if you watch Heretic, Hugh Grant is absolutely 90s Hugh Grant rom-com guy, but he's a little bit older and therefore it makes it creepier because he's in a house with two young girls. And again, it's a young director who's come out and gone, right, that actor, that performance, move him into a different genre that suddenly is in Hugh Grant's place. It's right. Now, have him do his rom-com, but in this situation, that now makes it a horror. Darlie, I have two YouTube's and one of them is all up for the podcast stuff and the other one was my own personal one where I just used to use a storage for all my cruise videos and I would stick them up, I wouldn't do any tags, I wouldn't do any hashtags and one video I shot of some little village in American Samoa from about 12 years ago has got 25,000 views and I have no idea why. I think that's probably just the YouTube algorithm work in the mysterious ways, you know that way? Yeah, it has to be. Because you do see some videos that just pop up out of nowhere, maybe it'll have a handful of views and things, a handful of comments, you think, alright, okay. And then it pops up the next week and it's got hundreds of thousands of views and you're like, what changed? That's the thing though, you get a lot of, and going back to the streamer argument, you always get a streamer or a very influential creator who'll stumble across it and they'll react to a particular video or they'll react to a particular piece of content and then all of a sudden just absolutely blows up.
Guest Contributions and Industry Insights
00:28:27
Speaker
I'm not saying I'm waiting as well for someone to stumble across Chatsunami but we can only cross our fingers there. I mean that's one of the coolest things I've had from doing the podcast is when, like I said, when we started, it was just me and David chatting about shit in our bedrooms and talking about what we liked. And then since then, we've started getting the occasional guests from the industry on the podcast. And we don't have them all the time, because it would just be too much work. And I hope because I'd have to do the research. And if I'm going to interview someone, I need to know as much as I can about them when I have them on there. And so in my co-working space, there's a guy who sits two down from me and we chat movies and shows, and he's a former copper who became a crime writer. And I was like, right, come on, come on a podcast, talk about your book. And he's like, I don't really want to talk about my book. I hate doing it. I said, okay, talk about what if you come on and talk about what you've been watching and what you like. Oh yeah, I can do that. Okay, well, come on then. And so you come on, didn't really promote his book. We did it with a little plug for him, obviously. but he was more interested in talking about TV shows and movies. And then I swung it to him and said, okay, so you had to cast your book. Who would you want playing the lead detective? And then we got onto who would you want making it? And if Jodie Coman's free, if Jodie Coman hears this, Charlie Gallagher would like you to start in the TV series adaptation of his Maddie Ives series, please. Thank you. Thank you, Jodie. But then from there, because obviously Day Job's video editor, so I put a note out once, have you ever watched the show on Disney Plus Extra Ordinary? No, but I have heard about this one. Yeah, it's kind of feels like a early 2000s flat share comedy or for me almost feels like the natural successor to space. It looks like a really expensive superhero show. It's not. It's like spaced. What I like is the premise of the show is everyone gets a superpower on their 18th birthday, except for our main character who's now 25. And it's just her trying to figure out that she actually needed power and all her friends have got powers. But what I love is the universe of the show, all the superpowers are a bit crap. So like one of the characters' mums, she can do anything with technology, but because she's old, she doesn't know how technology works. One guy can turn back time, but only a minute and a half. So it's only good if he's just had a brief argument with his girlfriend, but not good for anything that goes longer than that. And there's a guy that turns into a cat. It's hilarious. It's a really funny show. But I always bemoan the fact that there's no decent indie or rock music and stuff these days, or that kind of genre of music just kind of fell by the wayside. But Extraordinary had some amazing music in it. So I was like looking up the soundtracks. And then when we reviewed it, and I put the tweet out about the show, I was like, I'd love to have known, you know, how they decided this song. The editor of the show, Dan Trinion, responded underneath in the comment. He's like, oh, well, if you want to know, yeah. And I messaged him back. I was like, well, yeah, I'd love to know. Do you want to come on a podcast sometime? So he was our first kind of person in the industry. So then I looked the guy up and I was like, oh,
00:30:44
Speaker
shit. He was the editor of Killing Eve. He was nominated for an Emmy. Wow. Then it's like research on that. And we ended up chatting for about 90 minutes. So like the first one of them, they almost kind of split into two. The first half was just about his career and how he started off and how he became an editor and how getting into the industry and all that kind of stuff, which is just as interesting to me because obviously that's the industry I want to be working in.
00:31:03
Speaker
And then after that, oh yeah, we should probably talk about your shows as well. And like, it was about the music choices and who picked the music, how did the editing work? Was there a team of you? And it was just so interesting to dive in. I mean, they basically found Wet Leg before Wet Leg got massive. Wet Leg's big song is basically kind of like the unofficial theme song of the show, which is kind of cool. And then when the show came out, Wet Leg then went on and I think they won two Grammys in the States before anyone had really heard of them. So it was like, oh, that's superb. But then once I'd got that interview with Dan Dunn, I could then use that as currency to go, oh, well, I've had Dan Crinney, an editor of Killing Eve on the pod, and then I could send a link to the episode. And then so actually for the second series of Extraordinary, because of the link with Dan, we got one of the actresses from the show on. So again, first time I've ever interviewed an actress. What was good is it wasn't the main four actors in the show. It was one of the actresses who had a smaller part, but that was great because she's just breaking out now. And her name's Olivia Marcus, and she'd never done a podcast before.
00:31:49
Speaker
And I was like, great. And so again, the same thing chatted about her life, her career, what she wanted to do, what she could tell us about. Again, it was just so much fun to actually go, great. We've had people from the industry on the big one because of Ben and his job touring around the world with famous rock stars and bands. He met a filmmaker at one of his gigs. Turns out that guy works for Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith is one of my all time favorite filmmakers. Clerks was one of the films that made me want to go to college because I looked at it and thought, this is so funny. And yet the script was so razor sharp on Clerks. And yet it was made in what, 1994 on black and white film. And it looks terrible.
00:32:19
Speaker
And I was like, the cockiness of Youth was like, I could have done better than that back then. But just the fact you saw like a film like that, and then I suppose the work of filmmakers like Richard Linkletter, they used to be confused. That's kind of got me into my indie film. And I was like, oh, you know, I discovered Tarantino and the Coen brothers, all that kind of stuff. And it just kind of moved on from there. So we've had Josh on a podcast who like, say, he works for Kevin Smith, and he's a filmmaker in his own right. Did a great film called Wrong Reasons, which we had him on for. And like I say, in literally the last episode, we just had Jed Shephard on. So we kind of have every kind of fourth or fifth episode, we try and get someone on who's like in the industry and I'll do an interview with them, just like a one on one man, just like we're doing now. And then obviously, if the rest of the gut team who got questions and we'll throw the questions in as well, and then we'll ask them all in one go. I find group interviews tend to get spectacularly chaotic and don't work. So ah I kind of stick to it for that. Yeah the only time I ever do interview episodes is just by myself. I haven't outsourced it yet to my co-hosts but maybe one day Andrew and Martin if you're listening to this you're more than welcome to hashtag for the content but but yeah I know what you mean because there's a lot of people that I've had on, mainly Twitch streamers. I had a wonderful musician called Valentin Spindler on. We had an amazing chat. As I said, I've also had Martin McAllister on, not just as a co-host, but talking about his experiences as a wrestler. I've had VAs such as Ollie de Vega aka Bullfishman TV and Twitch, you know, I've had all of these different people on and for the majority of them, a lot of them turn round to me and say exactly the same thing that you just said there that, oh, this is my first podcast, you know, I'm a little bit nervous about this and you're completely right. It's thinking of it more as a conversation and not an interrogation because whenever I say that to people, I say, oh, do you want to come on for an interview episode? And I think that word kinda puts them off. They think, oh God, am I going to be under the mastermind spotlight.
00:34:09
Speaker
I'm going to say we're wearing it the night of the 15th, I'm like no, no, no, no, it's a casual conversation and we just talk about a variety of things and that definitely puts people at ease I think, especially as well when you have to factor in the video versus audio factor enter because my friends Martin and I, we went to ACME Comic-Con in Glasgow in 2023. That makes me feel old. We went around with the portable DJI mics. We were just interviewing random people. One of the scariest things I've ever done for the podcast, because as you're well aware right now, I barely show my face when I'm out there. The only thing that really sets me apart is when a weirder chats in that me who do, but no one has picked me up Yeah, they kind of look at it and go, oh, cute red panda, and then they just move on. As you know, that meme of the guy standing in the corner at the party, and it's like, no one who knows I podcast kind of thing. So we ended up talking to a bunch of people, and I think a lot of them were definitely more comfortable when I was just giving them the microphone and saying, what's your favorite thing about Comic Con? Why do you like it? Et cetera. Yeah, once they get over that kind of first episode. As I said, I had a friend. Well, I had a friend. She has no one friend. I swear to God. Yeah, I have a friend called Wisteria Moth who streams on Twitch. And I remember she came on and she was very much the same of, oh, I've never really done a podcast before. And I'm like, yeah, well, come on, have a casual conversation. And ever since then, we have done so many episodes together. We've done a lot on Sonic the Hedgehog and those games. We did one on Alice Madness Returns, which is an amazing but emotionally brutal game. And then, of course, we talked about her journey as a Twitch streamer. We got to talk about mental health and taking care of yourself and I think that is such an important thing in podcasting and it's something that I don't know about you, but I never expected it when you get other people, as you were saying with Marie as well, when you're another course, that you get so many perspectives and points of views in there that you personally might not have thought of or might not have approached it in a way. But if you've got them, they'll come in and say, well, what about it from this angle? What about it from that angle? And it is, it's just amazing. I mean, I had Jess from, have you heard of the opinionated Zalush's podcast? Yeah, absolutely fantastic podcast. Jess, in particular, we talked about a game called Firewatcher. Have you ever played that one? No, it doesn't really go well, that one. It's like a walking simulator game, but you play, as the title suggests, a Firewatcher, basically someone who lives in the kind of American wilderness and you have to literally watch out in case of fire. Yeah, exactly. Basically, it was a game about that, but at the very beginning, it's a very gut-punching game where you find out, and this is slight spoilers, but you find out at the beginning that your wife is terminally ill, and because of that, you end up leaving her because you can't cope with her. And of course, I was looking at it from a guy's perspective, and she was looking at it from a woman's perspective, and you know, it was just such a good episode, not to pat myself on the back. but it was just such a good episode to get that point of view as well. Did you expect that going into podcasting that you were going to get all these opinions or did you just think it was going to be quite casual initially? Yeah, I think we just thought it was going to be casual and we started starting. What are you watching? Oh yeah, I think even if I didn't have a podcast, I'd still be the same and I'd be chatting to anyone I pumped into. Like everyone in my office in the co-working space, they just ask me the recommendations now, or just watch this, is it worth watching? We're joking that there'll be a whiteboard up for me to put my recommendations of the week up on it. So even if I didn't have the podcast, I'd still be doing this. When you look at what a success down the line, it would be lovely to make a little bit of money. We made a tiny bit of money out of it from merch, but again, that's thanks to Ben, because a day job as a tour manager, he can set up a t-shirt store really easily. The website he used, we were the only podcast owner, it was all banned shirts, and that worked out really well for us so far. Talking on games briefly, it's funny that there's so many games now that have come in that are really dealing with serious issues and they're not just the
Gaming as Relaxation and Creativity
00:38:10
Speaker
standard old ones. Having said that, probably because I realized I was kind of your standard gamer, you know, you shoot them up, you beat them up, your RPGs, and they weren't really relaxing games. And when I was trying to de-stress earlier in the year. I literally found something like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing or my time at Samrock or my time at Portia. They were the perfect chill games for me because he was just wandering around and just wandering through the world as it were. It's quite interesting seeing when you start games that are just so fast paced and just all over the place and then you finally get a game like that where you can just relax and kind of walk through the world and things. It's honestly such a relief. I mean speaking of games, probably one of my favourite ones from the last couple of years was Immortality. Oh yeah.
00:38:48
Speaker
Because, again, as a video editor, literally the point of the game is you have to look at all these different film clips out of context and discover the story. So, I mean, you could not have custom built a game more for me. And the fact they basically made three separate films for this game and, you know, the control is basically an editing console. I was like, yeah, this is such a good game. So whatever Sam Barlow does next, I'll be there after that. Actually, that's what I forgot to mention earlier. Ched, who's on today's new episode for us. He's been working on a video game for about four or five years called Ghosts.
00:39:13
Speaker
And the idea of it is it's a full motion video game, but it's going to be time locked so that people can only play at 10 o'clock at night. And you will be basically controlling these. I mean, I don't know how it's going to work. And he said, since they started it, it's changed studios and it's got bigger and bigger than I ever imagined it was going to be. And it is due out next year. It's all the cast of the film host that he wrote before. i just like That sounds a very interesting video game that you can only play at certain times. So you're only playing it at night because he wants the idea is that everyone is discovering the same shocks and bits of the game.
00:39:43
Speaker
at the same time, so it's a really novel concept in trying to get people to play at a certain time for a certain amount of time. It's something that I think a lot of people, and this is something that really surprised me the other day when it was either Twitter or Blue Sky and it was someone saying that they were basically annoyed that people were still considering video games as being very juvenile for kids, that kind of thing. I was genuinely really surprised at that, that this day and age people still think of it as like a medium for kids and things, But it is amazing though that nowadays you do get a lot of very creative outlets because I feel as if there's an overlap between the TV and video games as a whole because you get a lot of, you know, the interactive games that are essentially just like a TV show. yeah But with extra prompts and things, you know, you've got the Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human, you know, those kind of games, like the very narrative heavy and maybe not gameplay heavy. Stuff like ah Life is Strange as well. Exactly, because I feel as if it's maybe more popular in the indie side, but you still get a lot of them in the mainstream, especially with that. Is it until dawn, which is the horror game? Because I think that's getting an adaptation, I want to say. I don't know when. Well, I think we'll be doing a chat soon with Marie, because we can't leave her out of it, but the new Mass Effect is going to be finally turned into a TV series over Amazon. Oh, God, that's going to be fun.
00:41:04
Speaker
I mean, I'm a hero fan and I've old already been scorned by Paramount+. Yes. My worry is, like I said, I was the one who's looking at research for it a little while ago. It's being written by the guy who did Fast and the Furious 9. So that's not a good start. ah No.
00:41:20
Speaker
100% no. That's a thing though, because I feel myself, and as weird as it seems to say, we've almost had a renaissance of video game adaptations. Up this year, come on, I mean full out, Last of Us Season 2 coming out soon, and I mean in terms of the films, we've had the Detective Pikachu film, we had the Sonic films which are doing well, the Mario film even did extremely well surprisingly. The New Turtles one as well last year. Oh of course, yeah, but then you're kind of looking at that and then you're looking at some of the other ones that feel as if they're stuck in the 90s. Have you ever heard the theory that Hero was supposed to be a Mass Effect show? No, where did that come from? I hadn't heard that one before. Well, I think it's a rumour. I mean, it was on Reddit, so of course it has to be true. But now it's a rumour, or looking to speculation, that because of the way that Halo, at least the show, unfolds, he goes around and he has very promiscuous times with certain characters and whatnot, and he never has his helmet on, and people have speculated that surely this was supposed to be a Mass Effect show but they've just swapped it with Halo because they couldn't get the rights. I don't think that's true but it would be very funny if it was because it would explain so much. I might actually be able to get you an answer on that sometime because Dan Krinian, who we've had on as a guest who did Killing Eve, he actually edited Summer Season 2 of Halo. oh yeah He edited the first episode of Season 2, which I thought was probably the best episode of the whole soul run. But since then, I was trying to get him back on recently, but he's very busy because he's literally just spent a year working on two episodes of one show. That show, obviously, Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power Season 2, which ah I can see where he spent six months working on just two episodes. That's the thing that really annoys me about it.
Challenges in Editing and Production
00:43:02
Speaker
Very bad adaptations of particular shows, because as much as I'm not a big fan of things like Halo and The Handmishes with Rings of Power at times, I do think that there are certain elements behind the scenes that are really good like the editing which obviously is very much the unsung hero of a lot of things. We've had this debate on ours about House of the Dragon versus Rings of Power multiple times and I always come down on well for season one I think House of the Dragon was better just because it was better written the acting was a lot better in it but it didn't have the scale or the money that Amazon had for Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings looked amazing it looked as good as the movies I think the TV show but it had a lot of extraneous characters that I didn't care about whereas I think season two, I feel like House of the Dragon really dropped the ball in the second series, whereas Rings of Power season two just went from strength to strength. I would say the last, I mean, they have a battle scene that lasts three episodes towards the end of the series. And I would say it's on a par with the movies. Those last three episodes, it's that good. To be compared to those, that's probably the highest praise I can give it. And it just looks amazing. I think they did all the exterior work in New Zealand and then pocketed a load of stuff for when they moved the production to England. So they thought, well, we've got those exterior shots. We've got those in the bank for and the next season. and they're working on a third series already as well now. It's kind of funny because if you remember, a lot of the team, well, what it's not obvious actually probably, but a lot of the people who are working on Lord of the Rings, they worked on the Wheel of Time beforehand. So the Wheel of Time, sadly, is just a failure, but it was almost like a dry run for doing Lord of the Rings from a logistics point of view, I think. See, that is quite interesting though. You do see a lot of these shows that clearly have a lot of talent behind them. See, as an editor yourself, do you feel frustrated with that depending on what you've been given to edit? Because, I mean, you can spend another hour talking about this, I know, but you might be the best editor turn in the world, you know, but you'll get something that's quite... I don't want to say subpar, but there'll be something wrong with it that I've been given utter shit before. Utter shit. And been told, not even been told, I've been given the footage. None of it's been marked. I don't know how many cameras are on a scene. Not all the files have been uploaded and I'm finding this out as I'm trying to assemble it on a timeline. And then you'll hear a bit of raw footage and you'll hear a producer or director say, it's okay, we'll fix it in post. And they've not given you any notes to tell you where the the mistakes are. And you know, you work on other productions and you've got an amazing set of notes. They even recommend what it takes to use and everything's laid out perfectly. When you've worked with a good production, it's literally just like doing a really simple jigsaw the edit you go oh this is what they want boom drag and drop that goes there this goes there right there you go there's your rough cut any notes oh yeah can we change that person's name title from this to this yep sure color grading any any notes on that music here's some options for you which one do you like oh we like that one that's when it goes smoothly and well the pad ones are when you have to completely firefight the show in post we had a show not naming any names and there would have to be free business pitches in a 46 minute show for sky
00:45:45
Speaker
And then one pitch goes 48 minutes. And the problem is you've got three of them in one show. If you remove too much of the pitch, it doesn't make any sense because people are referring to stuff. And a lot of times it was just people sitting there doing numbers and adding up. I was like, we need to cut this. We need to cut this. Oh, no, no, no, we can't cut it. Because then you were getting pressure from above on, well, this person needs this much screen time. This person needs that much screen time. That shouldn't be my issue. It should be what makes the best show. You can deal with that afterwards. I'll do this first cut. And then you explain to people why someone and said, if someone's doing it, you just need to tell them politely. It's because they're bad.
00:46:14
Speaker
That's your job as a producer, that's not mine. In fact, what happened with this show, the client was not happy with, I think, the third series of it. I was asked by the bosses to do a report on what went wrong with it. And I said, well, from my point of view, A, B, C, D, E, F, all the way down to about LMNOP went wrong on it. And I said, this is how you fix it for the next time. Client saw it, goes, who wrote this report while the editor? Well, what's he doing in the room? I want him on set next time. I ended up producing, being on set with my boss. And yeah, my boss was at the back of the room on his laptop most of the day, and I was like, am I directing this as well now, I guess? And then one of the clients literally posted a picture of the director of Heart of Work, and he was a picture of me with the headset on behind the camera. Well, if the client thinks I'm running things, then okay, I'm just going to run things. I mean, I used to do a lot of filming on setting that all the time. I just, as age gets on, I just don't want to be carrying shit around all day. And the long, stupid hours of being the freelancer or a contract camera guy, I'm quite happy in my little routine I have where I work in a nice co-working space on the coast. I drive about 20 minutes through a really nice valley to get to work. I park on the beach. and my office is a couple of hundred bucks a month, and I can leave all my stuff there. And everyone who works in that office is kind of a very similar space, you know, the girl who sits next to me, she is into yoga and wellness and all that kind of stuff, and in some massive corporate stuff in America. I don't know how she balances the two, probably that's why she has to balance the two. To my left, we got a guy who's a copywriter for all of Netflix and all these big studios, got the crime writer, we got someone who works for a food charity, we got someone who works for an online bank, we got estate agent people, but everyone's working there as an individual. So when you get up and chat, you're not really chatting about work a lot, you're just chatting about, and so it's nice to have that kind of community there. Also, it doesn't help that there's media people there, so you get the occasional bit of freelancing coming through. And I was like, oh, Neil, have you got any spare time this week to edit? Yeah, sure. What do you need doing this? Great. How much does this sound? Great. How long is it going to take? X amount of time. Great. There you go. Job done. And you kind of build up the freelance stuff as well, which is nice to do. Oh, no, it sounds like I feel one job, to be fair.
00:47:58
Speaker
but to the nice That's why I'm making the most of the break in a minute. It's funny that it feels more full on now. I think the stresses of life and the job, get for me, have got worse as I got older. When I was younger and cocky and just didn't care about stuff, when we worked on the ships, you would do six months on, no days off. Work every day for six months for an absolute pittance. But the job was so fun, it didn't feel like work. Oh, what's Monday? Swimming with dolphins in Jamaica. What's Tuesday? Helicopter shoot over to Panama Canal. What's Wednesday? Oh, snorkeling in Aruba. That's your week. Oh, what's the day off at sea? Oh, there's a party, a big party for the crew tonight. There's a gig in the crew bar tonight. Do you want to play with all these professional musicians? Okay, yeah. So you're like, the best gig I ever played, because I played it guitar a little bit, was I stepped in with a crew band and we started playing at midnight and the gig finished at half two in the morning on a moving cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific. And you're just like, what is your life at that point? And you know, also you have 10 drinks deep every night before you realise and it doesn't even touch the sides anymore. I got all my drinking in when I worked on ships and I barely drink at all now because I have to drive everywhere. So it's funny when people I used to work with go, oh, you haven't drink? No, no, I'm driving. not Really? Yep. Did enough of my time there. I was going to say, you've got a podcast there. Come on.
00:48:55
Speaker
I can't do my job hungover now, that's the other thing. I can't do anything hungover these days, you you know, it's just even staying up late now and not drinking. I went up to visit some friends in Nottingham the other weekend and we went to see a band, one of the best Northern Irish pop punk bands of all time called therapy. I went to see them playing Rock City and met a friend from, bizarrely, the same place I'm from at the same gig. So we ended up staying out at about half two. I only had three drinks the whole night from about six o'clock to half two in the morning. And I was dead the next day, just couldn't function. So it's it's sleep now as much as the alcohol, I think that causes the problems. I mean, I don't drink myself, but see the no-sleep thing. That's my vice, I think, because I stay up far too late, see editing the podcast and things, and then I have to go through it again the next day, because I used to just do it through the once and I thought, right, OK, that's it. But then it's like, see when you're in the car, re-listening to episodes. And I was actually saying that to my friend and co-host Andrew the other day that I was listening back to our Lord of the Rings month. and there was a bit where I'm talking and then all of a sudden there's a really long pause and then it goes back into the episode and I was like, son of a... I completely missed that. And the first pass-through, you do get tired just looking at the same audio waves and things and you're like, all right, I love a good sound cut, one of my favourite sound cuts I've ever done in all time. We were doing a promo trailer for our Baltic cruising and I used the Trent Reznor remix of the immigrant song from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because obviously the song's about four or five minutes long. The trailer's a minute and a half. I defy anyone to show me the bit where I cut the song in half to get it down to that minute. And I spent about two hours just going frame by frame. No, it's not quite on, it's not quite on, it's not quite on. And that was one of my first bosses. When I first started, when we'd do one of these edits, I'd just, you know, you'd fade the music down at the end, to fade to black at the end of every video. And she was like, nope, you're not doing that anymore. I want you to finish the song. I want you to finish where the song finishes or you cut the song short so it finishes. And I was like, but that's a lot more work. Yes, it is. But it made me such a better editor. I think being a musician as well helps with editing because, you know, you cut on the beats, you know how long to leave stuff. It really helps with getting the pace of something going as well. Because I mean, that is the thing as well that no one will know if you have a good edit in there. Yeah, that's the exact thing. It's called the invisible art editing. If you've done a good job, people like it and they can't tell you why. Because the amount of times I've edited old episodes and even recent ones where you can definitely hear where I've cut it, but there's some bits that even I forget that I've cut it together. Those are the ones that nobody will compliment you on. That's how good they are. But then other ones that, you know, they're just being chopped and you can kind of hear that and it's like, OK, I'll just leave it because it's not as egregious. It's an art, I will say. It's an art I'm still learning. I mean, I've been doing it for 18 years now.
Engagement and Viral Moments
00:51:28
Speaker
There's different levels to it, right? If I'm doing a corporate video for a client, you will cut out all the images. But it depends. So if I've got a video podcast and it's standard free standardree cameras, you know, close up, close up, two people and a wide shot, you can't cut out every human error because it would just throw off the pacing unless you've got cutaways. If you haven't got cutaways, then you just have to figure out which ones are the most egregious and get rid of them and just leave it. When we do ours now,
00:51:48
Speaker
I just thought, you know what? Everyone does jump cuts these days, so I'm not fussed about it. So if there's someone I need to cut out, I'll just jump cut it. And I will try and hide it with a few images from the show we're talking about if I can. Or um what I just did today, because I couldn't be bothered to edit a bit out, where I was like, oh, is this, did this person play this role? I can't remember. And as we got a little bit of space at the bottom of the frame on the video, I put a text over saying, actually, yes, Neil, you were right. You did say this, or yeah no, you were wrong. Marie was right on this one and things like that. Or, you know, whenever she mentions one of her gay shows now, it's like, hashtag, it's too gay for when it's been canceled or too gay for Netflix kept popping up on our thing. just that you can have fun doing it and you just throw up whatever hashtags, none of them ever take off. Although I will say one of the greatest things about doing a podcast and it's got no real world currency, but it is getting retweeted or likes by actual people in the industry. To this day, our biggest one, I got retweeted by Guillermo del Toro. I wasn't talking about any of his films. I took a picture of the new ah Texas Chainsaw Massacre box that I got from my second site films. Well, what a great set. Took a picture of it. He retweeted it because I was wondering why is my notifications blown up. And it finished off with something like 750,000 views of the most basic tweet that wasn't really saying anything. We got a like from Ben Stiller for our severance review, which was cool. Trying to think who else, Ben Stiller. Oh, Colleen Fargay, the director of the substance, liked my review the other week. So that was cool. And it's coming. It's happening more and more. My most recent one, I saw Conclave and that's released by Focus Features. And what I like is I'm not atting at these people most of the time. Occasionally I will, but I'm just typing it out as a normal tweet with the hashtag. And I think for Conclave, I put never has men in rooms writing on small pieces of paper. this thrilling. Yeah, Focus Features retweeted. I was like, now put it on a bus, you absolute bastards. Come on, give me my poster quote. Yeah, you don't need to be paid. You just need to care.
00:53:23
Speaker
After a minute, I had a similar experience. Obviously not to that height, but because as of recording this episode, the new Sonic the Hedgehog film's coming out. And I made, I was quoting the lyrics of one of the songs from the games, but it was essentially a live graph love joke. And the official account liked it. And I thought, well done Satsunami, you have made a very stupid joke.
00:53:46
Speaker
And that's the only way time that they've taken notice of you for such a thing. I was like, oh my god. It's always the silly things because I remember years ago getting the like from, I think it was Mark Hamill of all people, and that was only because it was something to do with Luke Skywalker was trending or something was trending. I took a screenshot of that and I put it up and I'm like, oh, has anyone made sure Stone Soul's okay? And then I got a like for it. I think I remember seeing that one. I think I remember that. Yeah. why is ah the those kind of tweets ass always the tweets the ship posts all of them the other ones that get like but whenever it' the actual what's a content they like na no look good i'm gonna look at the oh good see for us it's just I always find it's like a good review, a cleverly written tweet, it always seems to do
Future Aspirations and Quality Focus
00:54:32
Speaker
a good job. I mean, we got a like from James Gunn for the Suicide Squad when that came out because it came out in the UK a week before it came out in the States. And so I tweeted, I was like, boom, first screening, because it was at the tail end of COVID. So I went to the Winter Cinema, there was no one else in there, 11 o'clock in the morning, let's go and see the Suicide Squad. And I come out and put something out. That's the only time I had something negative where someone was like, oh, I bet it's crap. I said, well, watch the film and then realise how fucking good it is, just like I have. And then James Gunn liked that as well. Oh, that's amazing when that happens. so My dream guest would still be to this day, Kevin Smith, because like, Clerks was one of the films, and it's potentially in the works. One of my co-hosts is good friends with his personal assistant who makes all his behind the scenes documentaries for his releases. And we've had that guy on the podcast, Josh Rauch, who's a really good guy as well. Now it's just finding the right, because I don't want to get him on and just be like, Oh, Kevin, I love all your stuff, like a douchebag. Yeah. It needs to be a reason to have him on where he's got something new to promote or what a good angle might be is he owns his own cinema in New Jersey now. And so it might be good to have him and Josh on talking about their cinema in New Jersey and how do you get people into a cinema on a modern day. So that could be a good angle into it. And then I can fanboy about 10% towards the end of it. I mean, I've got a signed clerk scripting doors, so. So to summarise this episode, what we're seeing is Kevin Smith, if you're listening to this episode, go on, we needed Rhodes podcast, please.
00:55:44
Speaker
Go on, go for the end. I feel like it's probably going to happen just through Ben, the sheer force of will that Ben is when he goes out there. I mean, that's why he's so good at being like a tour manager. He's just a people person and he knows everyone. One of the bands he manages, the guitarist in it, is the brother of the guitarist in the Foo Fighters. A few years back, he was doing some festival somewhere and then he took a picture of him in front of the poster and it's Foo Fighters on the poster at the top and his band, second or third from bottom. And I was like, mate, if you don't get a selfie with Dave Grohl by the end of the evening, then what are you even doing there? Four o'clock in the morning, the selfie of him and Dave Grohl comes through to my phone, doesn't it? I was like, you absolute bastard.
00:56:16
Speaker
Me and him were actually planning a spin-off movie music podcast because he manages so many different bands now and travels around the world. So we had the idea to just ask the same five or six questions, half-hour podcasts, do it in seasons like same people, and not just keep plowing forward like we're doing. with I mean, we're up to episode 116 today, and the idea would just be record a whole season, get it all edited, and then release it in one go over a period of weeks or so. but the idea would be to ask all these musicians about their favourite music and their favourite films and their favourite music in films. So we're kind of workshopping the idea a bit and like now when Ben gets back from his latest tour we're gonna have a little chat about it so they could be the first official We Need a Road spin-off soon as well. Honestly I cannot wait for the future of We Need a Road's podcast and again I'm not just saying this because you're on but it's an absolutely fantastic podcast. If you don't mind me saying that it's very well edited
00:57:01
Speaker
I mean, bizarrely, we've actually had that comment. And I think I take pride in it because it is my day job. So you do cut out as much of the ums and the ums and the pauses and the lip smacks and just the stuff that doesn't go anywhere sometimes. I mean, or, you know, occasionally David, David tries to be the funny guy and sometimes it just doesn't work. And so I have to judge, is it funny to everyone else?
00:57:19
Speaker
And so what I'll do is I'll play little clips of it to people in the office. You don't know the rest of the people on it. And if they find it funny, it stays in. If they just look and go, no, then it gets cut. So it's kind of always good to have like a good sounding board. I mean, I'll just be like someone who works for a food NGO. Oh, by the way, Sarah, can you just pop over and look at this slip for me? It's like a minute. Is this funny? Oh, yeah. Great. It's going in. and So it's always good to have that audience to bounce stuff off. That's the best way you can do it to be honest. So much planned, like literally episode 116 has just come out as we record this today with Jed. Me and Marie recorded a general catch-up one on a Gladiator 2, Anora, The Penguin, that's being edited as we speak. And then somehow in the next week, we need to record our two and they're going to be close to three hours, both of them. Top 10 movies of the year, top 10 TV shows of the year. And then in December, which we're already going to be in by that time, we need to record our two preview episodes for next year because last year they didn't come out till February. And that is what our picks for best TV shows and best films for 2025 is going to be.
00:58:08
Speaker
And then at some point then we can get back to a regular episode. So it's kind of like, they're all there, they're all ready to go. Writing notes on your phone is the best thing when you're watching someone at home now. Or the second I get out of seeing a film at the cinema, I'll literally grab the phone and just like, boom, all the notes down straight away while it's still fresh. That is the best way to do
Farewell and Where to Find More
00:58:22
Speaker
it to be fair. But honestly Neil, on that note, thank you so, so much. for finally coming on. The stars of a Align, the planets are, they are honestly, thank you so much for coming on tonight and talking about not just your podcast but also your editing journey and yeah, everything else, thank you. Yeah, just life in general. Oh absolutely, that's what these episodes are here for. But before we wrap up, where can these fantastic listeners at home find your content? We are all over the place. So if you want just the audio version of We Needy Roads, we're on Spotify, we're on Apple Podcasts. We're in all like the different directories. You can basically find us everywhere. But like we've been talking about, we've made the move to video now. And so we are on YouTube at the We Needy Roads Podcast, or just so you know, the We Needy Roads Podcast. And all our video episodes and like little social clips are going to be up there as well.
00:59:10
Speaker
David runs our Instagram account occasionally, so ah he usually does at least one post per episode for us, which is nice. So if you see our Instagram account, that is at We Needy Roads on Instagram. Personally, I am at Needy Roads on Twitter. I will never call it X. No, Elon, I will not. And I forgot the Wii, so it's just Needy Roads on Twitter. You can see the logo. It's literally the Back to the Future logo with the We Needy Roads podcast. And also, like everyone, I'm doing the Exodus over to Blue Sky as well in a minute, where I am just NeilG78 at BSky dot.social. I think that's it. I think that's everywhere where we are at the minute. As I said, to go check out We Need A Drozen, all of those amazing social medias, honestly. You won't regret it. Amazing content there. But if you want to listen to more content from ourselves, as well as this handed out interview, of course, then you can listen to our website, Chatsunami dot.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to thank our Pandalorian patrons, Robotic Battle Toaster, Sonya, and go stay. Thank you all so so much for supporting the show, and if you would like behind the scenes content, early access, exclusive episodes and some secrets from Neil about editing for legal reasons that's a joke, then you can catch us at our Patreon page patreon dot.com forward slash chat tsunami. But until next time thank you all so so much for listening, stay safe, stay awesome and most importantly stay hydrated.