Musings from the Land with the Big Fancy Sign: February 2014

About a year ago the idea of doing a radio show for The Los Angeles Film School come forth from the brilliant mind that gives us our Annual Veteran's Salute. Which is basically for veterans of The Los Angeles Film School their super bowl of the year, which takes place on Veterans Day weekend.

But, this post is not about that. This post is about something that The Los Angeles Film School has never done before and that is an actual podcast or as I like to say an actual radio show. And it's not like the Los Angeles Film School wanted it but it is more of an after thought idea that initially sounded like fun but reality is a strange fish sometimes.

Now in the initial planning stage, motivations are high and then after the first couple of hours or so these motivations wane and then your cream will eventually rise to the top. Those initial shows were planned as live broadcasts to be done once a month for 2 hours and well it was what it was.

You can do a live show for 2 hours but with only two people talking without much of a plan on how to fill those two hours it's probably likely that the subsequent episodes are going to be more like an hour.

The first run of Rally Point Radio saw the airing of, I think, four episodes. A beta test, and introduction show, and the last show before the revamp are unfortunately not available as they were deemed of lesser quality. Although I would really love to hear the last episode before the re-vamp cause apparently it was a train wreck of awesomeness.

What happened was that one of the guys was in Dubai so they couldn't do it and the other guy was like, OH FUCK!!! I have a radio show to do tonight. Which is not ideal for a two hour live monologue show with no plan. Man, I so want to hear that show.

After this train wreck of incredible-ness it was decided to make this show a student run show. I had been slightly involved with the initial planning as far as name suggestions, I managed to bring in a guest for one of the shows, and some creative ideas but I was not involved to the degree that I would have liked to have been. Especially since it was live and they really needed someone who could really be focused on putting together a show that was a quality show. Especially since we're located in the center of the universe about a profession that bored housewives wondering what the hell happened are obsessed with.

So already our initial idea for the show was a freakin' winner.

In July it was decided to make this a student run organization. Of course, I was the only one interested since I was basically the only one who had shown up to that particular student veterans meeting. So after this meeting it was back to the drawing board as to how I would go about it.

A meeting was planned for the following Monday which was then promptly forgotten about so when I showed up with the SVA President to discuss with our higher power, our higher power was at a lunch thing and then taking off to someplace such as Bolivia and was not going to be back for a week.

Immediately this should have been a clue. I remember that afternoon walking home and being really freakin' pissed that the meeting had not happened because I had spent so much time over the last week thinking how I would go about this and I was super excited. It reminds me of when I did staff duty in the Army and when those 24 hours FINALLY arrived your relief never shows up. Especially on Monday's when the other Battery is to take over and 'they' never did a roster so you sit there and sit there for another 3 hours until your saintly section chief tells you, you can call it a day, but that's another story, where was I?

Oh yeah,

So that first week of July, no meeting. I schedule a meeting with our higher powers assistant for the following week. This then proves to be mission impossible and we tentatively schedule a meeting for later that following week. The next week it's almost time and then cancelled. Rinse and repeat for the following week and cancelled again. By this point it's too late to do a show for July as we are then cancelled again the following week.

We finally are able to do our first meeting sometime in August where I lay out the 4 things I need in order to be able to kick ass while having the freedom to chew bubble gum:

1. Are we allowed to curse?
2. This needs to be pre-taped
3. We need proper microphones
4. We need a computer with Pro-tools

I figure if we have those four things in place we are good to go. That first meeting the first two were an easy sell. Items 3 and 4 proved a bit more difficult.

August saw more meeting cancellations and we find ourselves into September where it now seems that our higher power is now taking this as a priority and will not be giving us an 80 percent cancellation rate. These meetings consist of structuring the show. And pretty much every meeting up to the end of the year focuses on this.

My basic structure outline ended up as follows:

Student Spotlight: Approximately a 10 to 15 minute interview with one of the top students at The Los Angeles Film School who will most definitely have a career in this business.

Alumni Spotlight: Approximately 15 minute interview that highlights one of our illustrious Alumni who has gone onto have a career in the Entertainment Industry such as Brandon Trost who is now Rob Zombie's photographer.

Instructors Corner: Approximately 20 to 25 minute interview with one of the instructors at The Los Angeles Film School.

On location interviews: 2 to 5 minute interviews recorded on the Zoom at various events throughout Hollywood

Featured Guest: An industry professional of the utmost amazingness. Approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

And of course promo bumpers sprinkled throughout . . .

Coming up with this structure and for it to be agreed upon took up pretty much the last half of 2013 due to the percentages of cancellations for the weekly meetings as was outlined in the intial contract as to what the timeline specifications are for a monthly show.

So a very slow year as far as just being able to hammer out the structure and then I hit a major roadblock and my first real test as far as finding out if I have what it takes to be a Producer.

My producing partner, or at least I thought he was a partner, ended up being a liability in that he was very big on burning bridges with his peers, which was not exactly ideal as far as Student Spotlight segments go. He had gotten into a conflict with someone that I had wanted to bring in for the Student Spotlight about 5 months prior to my bringing up this persons name with him(who is now coincidentally going to be the on air host for our music show) and he was very much opposed for personal reasons.

The next couple of months was basically spent dealing with this previous conflict and him distancing himself from the show and my involvement being very much a wait and see if what happens next.

So now we're into December and right before break I was approached if I was still interested in the radio show because all the show ideas I had had fell by the wayside dealing with A LOT of people whos priorities were not making a radio show for The Los Angeles Film School. Sometimes I think The Los Angeles Film School doesn't even want a radio show but failure and giving up for me is not exactly an option with the opportunities for doing it are pretty incredible.

My response to being involved was if our overseer producer is not involved I'm in and so I was in like that Flynt cat. I then score a producer by the name of George Ohan to help me out and we were off to the races by the next week before break. In the span of 30 minutes we accomplished what it took damn near 3 months to accomplish with the structure of the show.

We had the equipment and most importantly the space to do it in which was a happy accident of syncronicity and thee Ohan had the connections. He started working with Kevyn Major Howard who was Joker's photographer in Full Metal Jacket and he was actually able to bring him in and do an interview which will be featured on our first official episode.

This year has gotten off to a very solid start as I have been able to bring other people to Produce the Music Show which will be our expansion show and focus on our Recording and Music Production Programs and the main show which will focus on the Film and Entertainment Business Programs. Also I want to do a show that is specifically a gaming show. I would really like to do a show that's all about gaming and animation but it's just too much and finding enough people to want to do it has not happened yet. I also want to do a sort of live call in potpourri show with the original hosts from last year as well.

But of course this year has not been without roadblocks.

The first thing is that I am very big on keeping Rally Point Radio and Veterans a separate thing. Even though I am a vet and my work space for this is the Student Veterans Center I'm keeping this open for all students to be involved with. Because it's all networking. Keeping this a Veterans themed show limits the submissions of students that would otherwise want to work on this. And so a poster was made.

This was up for about a week and then I was asked to do another poster and this was went out. And I was un-thrilled.

I mean George's Secretary?? WHAT THE FUCK?? And Francis??? lol, no disrespect to George but having been involved with this since it's inception and then to have a poster go out that I never saw felt like such a slap in the face because I've been in this position of taking the initiative and moving forward even when I'm hearing things like . . .

"I know you're excited but we're not ready to move forward with that."

????

So when I saw that and asked who made these changes and for it to reflect such a heavy Veterans presence, removing available positions, and for more info email rallypointradio@gmail.com it was a serious WHAT THE FUCK??? Moment for me and to not have gotten a specific answer really left me befuddled???

And again getting episode approvals for air and their availability to actually sit there for 2 hours was so not happening and then at the end of it the issue is the names of the bumbers need to be changed and your show is too long so air it as two 1 hour blocks and this micro managing style when the approval should have been more focused on is the school going to have issues with this instead of little creative stuff that's going to keep us from airing an episode for another month because they're going off campus to another state the following week and then leaving almost entirely.

Burt also I thought that my higher power should have been more focused on things like getting us to that point of monetization, and focused on registering with the CMJ (College Music Journal) and really going to bat for us with the school but I will forever be grateful for the opportunity and that I am now in the position that has even surprised me as to how this through all the waiting around I'm at a very unique position within the school.

But back to earlier this month . . .

I had gotten to the point where I was like this isn't even about going to air, this is about the experience and if I have the tenacity to stick with it and maybe it's a test for something else? And then my higher power left us to go pursue other ventures and I was stuck not knowing their involvement. And then an idea of brilliance struck me.

A couple weeks ago I had the idea to do an Academy Awards prediction show. I would then leave it uncut one take and then I would have a special show that could be put together for approval rather quickly. I then asked our higher power's assistant what the approval process was and she did not know?? Which after 8 months I found interesting.

I tell my higher power that the assistant has a show for your approval, the response is why give to assistant? I re-iterate and then tell them if I do not have approval for this before the end of next week (today) I'm going to put in my resignation as I have been dealing with this show for the last 8 months. And then I never heard anything back.

So on Tuesday our secondary platform was ready due to Blog Talk amazingly low audio quality and I decide that I need to do a test. Let's upload the Academy Awards show and see how it sounds and then just leave it up. No advertising but just leave it there even though it was way buried in the School's blog site. I get back with the assistant on Wednesday wondering the progress and what's my higher power's involvement and then I got a major leadership decision from the assistant and that I can get approval from another person. An hour later I had the approval and it felt like 8 months of work just FINALLY came together. It was a major light up a stogie moment.

I put this as a Facebook status and I got one like.

So now Rally Point Radio is officially full steam ahead and expect at least one episode to be uploaded over the course of the next 5 weeks as there is A LOT of content that has been recorded since the beginning of the year.

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