I need a place to write these things down so I thought my Blog would be a great place! So here I am wanting to podcast regularly again. A Movie podcast where I discuss a film that I've just seen either solo or with friends. The Podcast is called Movie Landfill a name that I've been using and already put out two episodes under that name. I want to create a new podcast feed for it too. It will still be on the Entertainment Landfill feed but also have its own feed for new listeners to discover.
I've gone to the movies for the past **Four** Fridays and this has been after an entire year of not going for whatever reason. I have loved it! Each time I've gone alone though, Heather works sometimes until around 6pm and is too tired to want to go to a movie at 7:00 or 7:30 and I really don't want to go to a late movie at all. I start getting sleepy around 10:30pm - I know I'm getting old, but I've gotten to where I think sleep is more important than my entertainment, probably another sign of getting old. But, I look forward to going to see a movie on Friday and I want to continue to do it. It's basically giving me a way to check-out of real life and to get some alone time. For awhile now I had been getting this real uneasy feeling on Friday, this feeling like I was supposed to be doing something with my life and I was just kind of miserable. It's been years and I still get this kind of restless feeling on Friday evenings. For years I did the Podcast live and I worked on it all day on Friday and then finally in the evening it was time to do the show and it was great. It has been years now since Stephen would show up at my house and we'd do the show and I've missed it immensely but life moved on and so we'd (Me and my Wife) would occasionally watch a movie streaming or Hockey or a TV Show or my Wife would be working late here at home so I'd just play Xbox with headphones on or I'd just flip channels and look at my phone until it was time to go to bed. I love creating something, that feeling of having the finished show on my recorder, achievement unlocked, there was nothing better, no better feeling. So I've been thinking about podcasting more regularly but I also know that in the past I tend to go too hard at post-production and burn myself out. I love having a thing to work on but I wear myself out and I need to be conscious of that in future endeavors meaning I need to find a happy in-between of feeling creatively fulfilled and also not working too hard....
A Happy medium. So I've been thinking a lot about the recent podcast episode I just put out with Adam and Ken, it was fun recording with them again and it was fun but also I've noticed that people that have not seen the films, One Battle After Another or Tron: Ares don't want to listen because either they don't want to get spoiled or they have no interest in those films. SO, I've listened to more than a few movie podcasts over the years and I enjoy the format of the Non-Spoilery conversation and then saving the Spoilery conversation for the second half -- I'd like to do this in future episodes! Especially since Podbean now has implemented Chapter skips in the podcasts so now (If anyone cares, I honestly have no idea) a listener can just listen to a conversation about what a film is about and thoughts about it without spoiling anything and skip over the spoilerish parts. Would this create more work for myself? Maybe, I won't know until I actually do it more but putting chapter skips in the recent episode took me about 20 minutes of skipping around, so that's no big deal. I think I may do a another Rent Free episode just talking about format ideas. When I did NiM I had a format and we stuck to it. There will be times when I see a movie and there will be no one to talk to about it and I'll have to go at it solo, that's okay, there can be some short solo episodes, one week's a solo episode where I talk about two movies I saw with some other segments kind of like 'Rent Free' where I'm just ranting about some casting news or something lol and then the following week a bigger episode with Adam and Ken where we talk about some big film or something. I'd also like to have guests like Ross and Adam and Stephen and Jimmy Good! That would be a blast! I want to have fun! I want to be spontaneous! I want to go and see a movie and if I'm excited enough about it, I want to record my thoughts on my phone and get like a lav mic or a wireless mic or something! I want to just podcast on a regular basis again!
I'm not dumb though, I know those old feelings will creep up, you know the ones that always lead to burnout? That's right, the dreaded lack of feedback, the dreaded lack of conversation as it pertains to the hours of podcast that I plan on churning out. I need to fight through it, keep my head to the grindstone and keep on working. When I feel overwhelmed or like a burnout is settling in, I just need to go to the movies, eat some popcorn and just kick back. If I see something I'm excited about, I'll want to talk about it. I also need to start every episode asking whoever is listening that I want to hear from them in the nicest way possible, ask them to either join the discord and drop me a voicemail that I'll play on the show if they want me to that is. I do know though that sometimes it is not even that, that leads to burnout, it's working really hard on something that I'm proud of and release it to the sound of crickets. It always happens and that's okay. The episode of NiM Movie Club that I released in May of 2024 called It's High Noon in the Meta Storm is probably one the the best edited podcasts I've ever created. It had a very fun segment that I had been thinking of for a long time called 'Film Therapy' where we discussed two films that I've always had lingering problems with all of these years since their release, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Wayne's World, I collected assorted clips from the films and added them into the conversation in fun ways and I had an absolute blast assembling the episode. It's probably where I am at my happiest, putting it all together. First you record the episode with friends, then you get to work editing the conversation, removing the noise, cutting out ums and ahs etc. That takes a long time and it's pretty monotonous, but it's during that editing that I take note of possible clips that would go here and there, sometimes I collect them as I'm going by recording off Youtube or Netflix or whatever and put them in a folder. So then when I'm done editing the conversation I begin making the clips that I've collected and adding them in, there's almost always more that I need that I have to create on the fly. After I'm done with that version the 'Conversation with Clips' added I will have been mulling over an intro the entire time, sometimes I know exactly what I'm gong to do and sometimes I have no idea what I'm going to do but something always comes together and that's when I add background music and finally some kind of Ender (as I call it) that I've thought of during all of this listening to the films clips over and over, some moment that I put right at the end and cap it all off with a "Now this is Pod-CASTING!" drop to end it all. It feels so good to be finished with the episode but I've learned my lesson after the years of releasing podcasts, I don't release the episode right away. I put it on my phone and listen with earbuds or in the car and over night sometimes I think of one more thing to add or something that I don't quite like to take out. Sometimes I leave it exactly the way it is but every once in awhile I add one more thing and then I publish the episode and post it on the website and on Discord and Facebook, Twitter and then it is done and it's over. I feel good for the rest of the day.
And then that feeling creeps in. No one cares. I mean I see the downloads, someone is downloading the episode. I mean, downloads weren't what they once were back in the heyday of Nowhere in Mulberry but I'm pretty happy when I see thirty downloads after a full day or two but it might as well be just phantom numbers that mean nothing because there's never an inkling of a hint that someone out there enjoyed the episode. I still have no idea what anyone thought of the Film Therapy segment that I was so proud of. Did anyone laugh, smile or even agree with me? I'll never know and that's fucking sad, that's what leads to me getting depressed. There's no continued conversation and that has always bummed me the fuck out. I just have to live with it, I just have to figure out a way to go on without it. I have to keep doing what makes me happy and ignore that part of when it makes me sad because I don't see it changing. Hell, I don't even know if it would stop the bummed out part from happening because I do hear from certain people who have listened here and there but it's not enough. I don't know, I've wrestled with this for years and years. There was times when we were getting thousands of downloads on a weekly NiM and we still never heard a damn thing. Yes, we did get voicemails, we would get occasional emails and we even made friends with regular listeners and I've always been thankful for that but it was never enough for me. Maybe if I had comments out the ass on every single episode of the show it would be exhausting? What if it was just a bunch of people nitpicking everything we said? I've certainly seen that happen to other podcasters in comment sections and I would never want that.
But what do I want?
I want to release a podcast with alarming regularity, I want to have a show again, a dependable show that someone can count on that will always be there. I want to bring joy to whatever audience I happen to have and I want to express my love of the movies in the only way I know how, through the art of podcasting! I want to have all of my friends on the podcast from time to time, I want my Sisters on the podcast from time to time, I want members of my family on the podcast. I want to look back in Ten years time and be equally proud of the new generation of podcast episodes that I have created -- all timeless. Timeless because it won't matter what year you listen to them. I don't want to talk about current events on these episodes. I just want to talk about movies.
So this is what I've come up with. The Podcast is called Movie Landfill. Occasionally when I am so inspired there might be an episode of TV Landfill possibly. There are no plans at the moment for another TV Landfill but it's bound to happen. So Movie Landfill will sometimes be Solo and sometimes have co-hosts. I'd love to always find a co-host that has also seen the same movies as me but I'm being realistic that that won't always be so and I'll be okay with that. Movie Landfill will have a conversation first about the film that is non-spoilery and then after a break We'll come back and spoil some things. Every episode will have chapters to skip ahead past the spoiler part. While I don't necessarily care to review a movie I don't think it would be too big of a deal to say a film is for example a "Go see it on the Big Screen!" or "Wait for Streaming" or if say something just wasn't my cup of tea to "Skip it." Although I don't think I've ever told anyone to skip a movie. I'd just say that I wasn't into it. Not flat out, "It sucks! Don't see it if you count yourself as my friend!" I'm honestly okay with someone liking something that I don't. I'm honestly not too picky as I like all sorts of movies. I've honestly never given a flying shit about a film rating except for when I was a kid and Siskel and Ebert gave thumbs down to a movie that I loved. I will encourage to see a movie that I'm really into though. So there's that. I want the podcast to be about the conversation about a movie that we've just seen more than any review that you just want to skip to the end of to hear our rating.
I want to have fun with the format, add clips where I can and make it enjoyable to listen to while flexing my creativity and most of all I want it to sound fantastic! I want the audio to be professional and something I can be proud of. I want to average over a thousand downloads per episode and even have an ad or two to make some money from this endeavor! Why not? Everyone else seems to be! There will always be an ad-free version though for my dear friends! Hahahahahaha (I've gone mad with power!) I kid I kid!
Most of all I want to have my own show, a show I can be proud of and something I look forward to doing and something a listener can look forward to, I want to build a small loyal following of people that dig what I do, I want a podcast keeping me busy and helping me be creative, making something, something I can be proud of.
I'm ready.
