Noreen Young Interview!

[skycron]

Hi,

I've lurked around this site for a while, although I haven't posted. I was debating around posting this, at least as my first post, lest it be treated as spam, but after looking at all the Noreen Young-themed posts, I thought this may be of some interest to some of you.

We've just started a podcast called Test Pattern, and Noreen Young kindly agreed to be our first guest. Our first episode officially launched today, after a great deal of planning.

You can hear the show here:
http://www.skycron.com/testpattern
iTunes Link | RSS Feed

Noreen Young was also a Muppeteer as she was Dodi on the Canadian Sesame Street and Sesame Park! You guys probably already knew that, though.

We'd love to get some voice messages for our next show on October 11th, so please consider leaving us a message with the big green Skype button. Feel free to be as crazy as you like!

 

[Blink]

As someone who knows Noreen, I was excited to hear that you were interviewing her. I listened to the whole podcast and have mixed rections.

I hope you will take what I am going o say as "constructive" and not as "critcal".

Overall I think the podcast was well produced. The sound quality and intro were all very nice. But there were some things that I found very distracting.

The first things was the interview itself. I found that the interviwer seemed distracted. A few times it sounded as if the interviwer asked a question and then didn't genuinely listen to the answer.

There were moments that sounded like the interviewer was reading paper as Noreen was talking (I could hear the rustling in the background).

I also found that the pacing of the interview changed. At the beginning the interviewer gave Noreen lots of time to talk (which was good), but towards the end, I felt like the interviwer wanted to speak rather than let her speak. Does that make sense?

In short, a good first attempt. I would like the interviewer to focus more on what the person being interviewed is saying and to perhaps make sure that key names are memorized. (I was a little embrassed when Noreen's show was called "The Umbrella Tree" rather than "Under The Umbrella Tree". Perhaps a minor note, but it left me wondering if it was just jitters or if the interviewer did only limited homework on Noreen.

I personally think that you guys are off to a good start and just a few tweeks you will have something special.

All the best.

 

[skycron]

Hi Kanja,

You're absolutely right about all of the stuff, which to be honest, we were aware of. Unfortunately, there were some cut corners which I feel pretty bad about, which I think warrant an explanation (but it certainly did not excuse it.)

The interviewer is a recent Sheridan journalism graduate who interned with us at Skycron. If you poke around the site a bit, we have a pretty long history with broadcasting in Ottawa. One of the main issues is that we heavily publicized Test Pattern before the show (and even the guest) was announced, and we had locked ourselves to a September 27th release date. It took me a little while to get to Noreen, and we had a scheduling glitch.

The other problem is the making of the show happened right in the middle of our production periods for one of our shows for a Japanese broadcaster, and we landed two major contracts literally days before the interview, so it became very busy and since that's the "day job", I was unable to get one of our "regulars" on. It seemed to be be a good way to test Tattz' (the intern's) mettle. He is talented, but inexperienced.

We also didn't give Tattz' sufficient time and threw him into a cold read, so he was very nervous. When he made that slip, he heard me comment over the earpiece, which probably didn't help. In addition, the interview wasn't conducted at the Skycron office, but rather at my place, where there was a delay over the connection of one second. Closer to the middle of the interview, the delay increased to two seconds for some reason (from phone to line to recorder to Tattz' headphones), which is why he appeared to interrupt Noreen, especially in the second half.

All of this simply exascerbated the haphazard feel of the episode. In addition, a crucial system crash that happened about two hours before the podcast had to be released, so the entire interview had to be edited from scratch in less than two hours.

My personal feeling is that it just doesn't do justice to Noreen, but ultimately I had to make a judgement call as to whether it was serious enough that it was insufficient for release, and the answer was no. Also on a personal level I grew up with Under The Umbrella Tree, and Bookmice, and Today's Special, and it played a large part of me getting into broadcasting myself. So it really hurt that I knew the mangling appeared to make it look like it didn't do our research.

We also had to cut a very funny sketch that was pre-recorded, due to the crash.

Of course, this is no excuse for the final result, and I have since apologized to Noreen, who has been very gracious about the whole thing and whom I hope will forgive me. If you listen to the "preview" episode, you'll note it is much more polished. If you poke around the Skycron site, you'll notice the work of our "day jobs" at Skycron -- so the gulf of quality, done at home or not, is wide and extremely embarrassing. The end result is ultimately not as catastrophic as I make it sound, I know, but I definitely am in your court for sure.

Noreen was very gracious about the whole thing, but I think she was a bit disappointed, especially given our broadcast background. I've since offered to contribute our production team to the next Puppets Up! for 2009, free of charge, because I really did feel horrible. She seemed intrigued about the idea...but anyway, we're working on the proposal and see what she says.

So in short, you're absolutely correct, though it isn't anything we weren't already aware of.

As it happens, we're moving our offices to the Toronto Star building in October -- maybe we could invite you over sometime.

 

[Blink]

Thanks Cory. All of that information is good to know. It makes it easier to understand what happened.

Like I said, there are some good elements in place. I look forward to seeing how you guys tweek things.

All the best.