Hi, I just emailed this to you guys:

[b]Logan, please could you send me your email address so that I can add you to the mail list.[/b]

Just a quick note to tell you that [u]the scheduled SadCAST #3 recording session is on for this Friday at 11.30pm GMT.[/u]

[b]IF YOU AREN’T ABLE TO MAKE IT – PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE SCRIPT AREA OF THE WIKI [/b](accessible at the bottom of the main menu on SadGeezer.Com (then select the SadCAST 3 script page)) - I need to know for booking extra people on a Skype conference (normally 4 is the limit).

Mike, Sam, Katya and myself will be recording at my front room in Preston. I’ll have a longer time to set up the recording equipment but would still appreciate you logging into Skype an hour or so early so that we can do a sound check and discuss the format.

This weeks show is more laid back (I’ll explain why below), so rather than lots of set pieces, we’ll just concentrate on chatting and a couple of video clips. As always, the SadCAST WIKI has the current script outline and you should check this on Friday before the start to make sure you’re ok with what’s happening.

The theme of the show will be ‘What is Sci Fi?’ We can chat about just about anything, but I’d be more interested in what it means personally to you. Your favourite sci fi show or film and maybe something that you think isn’t sci fi. You might also like to send us a small clip by way of an example (I’ll probably use a clip from Stalker or Solyaris).

This week we welcome Faldor who will send us a short video review of ‘In the Pirkinning’ which he is recording himself.

I’ll probably ask each of you in turn what you consider the definition of sci fi to be and your answers should be fairly short - but be prepared to get questioned about your answers.

I’ll ask Ryan if he has any news because he’s rapidly gaining a reputation for having some :)

Ok, some feedback about the show and how it’s being received:

There were 380 downloads of SadCAST #1 as of tonight. That’s not too bad considering we haven’t been reviewed in iTunes yet. All indications are that we will, but reviewers don’t want to invest review effort in a show unless it’s had at least a couple of shows published.

If you Google SadCAST, you’ll see that we’re pretty much blasted everywhere – we’re in all the podcast directories and once the real marketing gets underway, we’ll see some very big results.

In terms of marketing, I will be doing press releases (around 500) in the next week (after SadCAST #2 has been published and the first full mass email (5,450) of all SadGeezer.Com members (I did a test one recently that only got to around 400 members). We should see quite an increase in viewing figures soon. The big push though, is iTunes. Being featured on iTunes will increase our figures ten fold.

Production Problems:

We’ve been plagued by production hassles since the start of SadCAST. Some are due to the crappy sound equipment and some because of the crappy presenters! I for instance, find it very difficult to present a piece in one take and considerable editing needs to take place to make what I say seem interesting and not amateurish. That’s ok, but it means that post production is considerably more difficult. Copyright information is also important and researching shows that are mentioned so that we can publish the copyright holders web address is surprisingly time consuming. We can aim to automate this as much as possible, but it’s all coming down to scripting and direction. The time Mike is having to spend in post production is unsustainable and will have to change - ahving said that, I think we should be in a position to automate the process pretty soon.

My role will increasingly become directorial and the show will be much more conversational. If we aren’t having to cut and re-cut messed up small pieces of dialogue, and instead, choosing interesting blocks of conversations/discussions, it makes post production much better. Mike has also promised not to drink on future shows :) (I’m not going to hold him to that though).

And that’s it. A long email this one, but I just wanted to keep you up to date with how things are going.

See you Friday.
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