Me. Talking. Again.

Since I've been going mad twittering recently, my blogging has fallen a little by the wayside. I know you all miss my erudite, controversial, and entertaining words of wisdom. Fear not! You can listen to me instead.

• Today's offering is an interview with the creative genius behind Male Restroom Etiquette, Apology, and other works of machinima legend. The truth will out, that's all I'm saying. You may never see the Overcast the same again. That's Sideshow #021
• Earlier in the week, I chatted to Joseph Matheny about machinima over on Alterati. That's seen the light of day at G-Spot #47.
• And last week, I did a webcast for The Movies On Air, which clocks in at somewhere near 90 minutes. That mainly focuses on Moviestorm and where we plan to take it.

I shall now return to being my usual shy and retiring self, communicating via prose.

Callgraph

I've just finished recording an interview with Hugh Hancock about his latest movie, When We Two Parted, which will shortly appear somewhere on the Moviestorm site. (The interview, not the movie. The movie's already out, and even hit the front page of YouTube!) Previously, I've used various free tools for recording Skype conversations, but they all time out after 15 minutes, which gets to be a real pain, as you have to keep restarting, retaking, and then you have to stitch everything together, and I've never quite got around to buying a Skype recorder.

Tari put me onto CallGraph, from Sedna Wireless in India, which seemed to work really well. You can record unlimited duration calls, it has a nice history function, and it's dead simple to use. It records you and the other person on separate stereo channels, so editing with something like Audacity is really easy too. And so on. And it's free - though the Web site doesn't make it clear whether that will continue when they come out of beta in a few weeks, so I'd advise grabbing it now. [EDIT: the developers say that the basic version will always be free.]

It's Windows only atm, though the FAQ says that Linux & Mac versions are imminent (and you can get a preview version if you contact them).

Well recommended if you record podcasts over Skype.

The plan is that the plan will go ahead as planned

Why does post-production and distribution always take so long, even in this digital age?

Over New Year, Phil and I recorded the first two episodes of our upcoming podcast, Making Better Movies. (It was originally going to be a cookery show, entitled Making Better Brownies, but the test shows didn't go down too well with the audiences, who kindly pointed out that (a) we knew nothing about making brownies and should stick to making funny foreign food, and (b) there's only so much you can say about brownies before you bore the pants off everyone. So we decided to talk about movies instead.)


The plan was to edit it in early January, and start releasing them fortnightly. However, what with one thing and another, the editing session planned for this weekend didn't happen. We're hoping to get something done this week, then you can hear us babble on about our favourite movie topics, and take part in the Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Rodriguez drinking games. Well, that's the plan, anyway.

For the time being, if you want to listen to my dulcet tones (albeit under the influence of red wine, brandy and Red Bull, and the aftermath of England beating France at rugby), you'll have to pop over to The Overcast and listen to Episode #25, recorded at last year's Machinima Festival. There should be another, more sobererer Overcast, where we talk seriously about Moviestorm, out soon once Overman has a chance to edit it.

Anyway, to answer my earlier question, it's because post is where the real work usually gets done. Pre-prod is just kicking ideas around, recording is fun, but turning all that into something half-decent - that's the tricky bit.

Here's a more difficult question. Why is everyone I do podcasts with called Phil? It's confusing.