Your Geek News Interview
On this weeks intertuesday we had a great chat with Matt and Nat from Your Geek News, a fantastic geek movie review video podcast. Unfortunately the audio quality just didn’t work out for us dispite tries on multiple phonelines… but the content was so good we decided to transcribe it for you. So have a listen if you dare, or just read the transcript here. Hope you enjoy, and be sure to check in tomorrow when Lewis and I chat a bit more about this great podcast! And make sure you add this one to your favorites on DailySplice!
Your Geek News Interview Transcript
Rian: What are you’re guys’ favorite podcasts?
Nat: One of my favorite video podcasts is Galacticast.com. They do this really funny sci-fi parody show where they make a parody of, I guess anything out there. The writing is brilliant. It’s sweet! I really enjoy it.
Matt: And as far as what we like to listen to, Ronald D. Moore is one of the producers of Battle Star Galactica, and he has his own audio podcast for the show. And on it he goes into some of the cool whatifs that the episode could have had and extended scenes. It’s just a dream 45 minutes sit down, watch the episode, and listen to him.
Nat: It’s like he’s telling you all his secrets.
Matt: Like sitting beside him in the theatre watching the show.
Nat: And then of course Galactica Forum’s got another audio podcast that we enjoy listening to just because, I guess similar to our BSGcast show it’s just cool to see what people are thinking out there and trying to figure out what the heck is going on in that storyline.
Rian: And we’ll put up some links on the site for those as well. So tell us a little bit about behind the scenes in Your Geek News.
Matt: Ok, well basically the way we do you’re geek news, it’s actually just the two of us. There’s nobody else that works on the show with us. We simultaneously shoot, direct, produce, run the teleprompter. We run the teleprompter with our feet.
Nat: In the past we used to use our hands.
Nat: It’s like a sewing machine.
Matt: but now we’ve figured out a snazzy little method to scroll with our feet.
Matt: So basically, we have our green screen, and the way we light the thing the same way that I’d light any other special effects. And because our background is from radio and television and journalism, there was a certain amount of kind of knowing what we were doing going into it.
Nat: Ya exactly, we kind of know the ins and outs of a production but it’s kind of trying to figure out how to use the minimum number of people create something really cool. So that’s essentially what we’ve been doing.
Matt: Ya, and it’s gotten to a point that two people can simultaneously be on screen while the show is being shot and we’re making edit decisions while we’re speaking. We have to call cut on each other and basically just say “ya, that was a bad take we have to re-do it.”
Nat: But you know, in comparison to a regular television product, things go by very quickly, surprisingly, because ya we’re doing all the work but it’s just so much easier. It’s simplified.
Matt: Ya, since we do the writing in the morning and then we’ll shoot by the evening, and basically I’ll edit all through the night, hit render and go to sleep, and usually we’ll wake up the next morning with an episode ready to put on the web. It winds up being a really slick, streamlined program with just just the two of us. It’s basically what we would rather be doing with our skill than our real jobs because its a neat way to combine what we do and do something totally different with it.
Rian: So what’s the coolest thing you’ve got to do on Your Geek News?
Nat: I love getting that press kit before anyone else gets it and I love getting to see those little trailers an scenes and you got to do that interview with Malcom McDowell and I wanted to die! It was too fricking cool!
Matt: You know what, for me I think the coolest thing we ever did was get that first press kit in the mail. It was for 300 back in the spring of last year and when that came to the door I was in such disbelief that we were about to watch like five scenes from a movie that I had bee looking forward to for a year and a half we were just so excited to sit down a hear what Gerard Butler and what Jack Schneider had to say about that film. And now, I mean when we get one from Paramount that has Steven Spielberg and Harison Ford it just doesn’t have that same excitement as when we got that first, that absolute first press kit.
Nat: You know, and you were pretty excited when we got Iron Man.
Matt: I was very excited about Iron Man.
Rian: So let me ask you, who’s the bigger geek, Matt or Nat?
Nat: I think it depends a lot on the topic. I’m honestly going to say that off the bat, Matt’s the more pure sci-fi geek.
Matt: Ya, I think it comes down to the idea that a geek is kind of like an unpaid expert in a field.
Nat: Ya, Matt and I discuss this quite often. The definition of geek really has evolved you know from what it was maybe 10 years ago, because Geek kind of used to have a negative connotation. But these days you can be about anything it just means your kind of, you know, like Vaynerchuk is a wine geek. You can be a geek about pretty much anything.
Matt: So as far as movies go, it also varies on the movie. Like if it’s a Harry Potter film than Nat definitely gets the geekier hat on. But if it’s an 80’s cartoon that I grew up watching.
Nat: Well Transformers…
Matt: Oh, exactly! I was obsessed with that thing and how incorrect it was. And then the next week Nat was completely obsessed with how it wasn’t quite the way it should of, wasn’t quite right, bla bla bla. So we both have a tendency to kind of trade geeky hats from week to week.
Rian: So if there’s one there’s one geek movie to see this summer what is that?
Matt: You know if someone asked me that question in April, my answer would have been Batman. And then Marvel John Favreau came out with Iron Man.
Nat: Oh goodness that’s exactly what I was thinking! Ironman, it was the movie.
Matt: Ya! You know for me, the fact that that movie was made so expertly on every level with a cast of nothing but hollywood oscar A-class everything, I just thought that was the movie of the summer. They, Marvel kicked it off exactly the way they should have with that one.
Rian: And what’s in store for Your Geek News in the future?
Matt: Basically just to see if we can get it into more places to see. Like we’ve been talking to some movie theaters in and around Toronto about putting it on as something to watch before the show which is kind of a neat move. We’ve been talking to computer companies and computer stores and they’ve been kind of keen to have Your Geek News playing on a loop. It’s kind of an opportunity to take Your Geek News into some other neat places because it’s definitely catching people’s eye and they like what they’re seeing.
Nat: Your Geek News is essentially like Entertainment Tonight but for geeks.
Matt: With Your Geek News we wanted to show off all the cool stuff that’s on those press kits that people wait a year to get on DVD as a special feature. And we decided why not make those a week before the movie comes out. It’s an opportunity for the people behind the scenes of a film to get their hearts out on the page before people have bums in seats at the theater to see it.
****
If you have any suggestions for this podcast, please feel free to leave a comment on our blog or email us at info [at] dailysplice.com. If you’d like to find these podcasts and thousands of others in our directory go to DailySplice.com. You can add all your podcasts to your list of favorites and have new episodes delivered to you daily in a convenient package either by email or RSS. If you have a podcast and you’d like to promote it on DailySplice, the best way to do this is to link directly to your podcast’s page in the DailySplice directory and encourage your listeners to add it to their favorites. You can always email us with any questions or requests!
Tags: Interview, Your Geek News
