This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘The Cinemile: The art of guerilla podcasting’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello, and welcome to PodPod; the podcast all about podcasting for podcasters like yourselves. I'm Rhianna Dhillon. And this week, I'm joined by Adam Shepherd, editor of PodPod, and Matt Hill, head of Rethink Audio and co-founder of the British Podcast Awards. Hello to you both. Thanks for joining me. We have a really fun one lined up today because Adam and I got to speak to Cathy and Dave from the Cinemile podcast, which I kind of came to a long time ago. And it was really nice to as you do, you kind of dip in and out of podcasts. And it was so lovely to revisit Cinemile again, because those two are just so enthusiastic when it comes to talking about movies. And so we kind of delve into the format of that. But in terms of what's been going on in podcast news this week, what has been going on? Adam, do you want to kick us off?
Adam Shepherd
It's been a busy week, but the biggest thing is that YouTube has announced that they are adding support for podcasts to YouTube Music, which in short means that users of YouTube Music will be able to listen with the screen off, they are adding a bunch of features to support podcasters using YouTube Music. And it's a big step towards YouTube's continued growth as a sort of rival to Spotify or Apple Podcasts as a podcast consumption platform.
Rhianna
Why has this taken so long do you think, Matt?
Matt Hill
I can tell you it's because they were waiting for my feedback survey to come in. The news came out in the afternoon. And then in the morning, I filled out what I could only describe as a diatribe to my YouTube creator account, like a feedback survey they'd sent me right or share with them, this is what you need to do. And then in the afternoon, they announced it and that is the real power of people. Really, really impressive consumer support. But it is fantastic news, not least because obviously YouTube commands a huge amount of digital advertising. Yeah, and we don't really get a sniff of that in podcasting. Except if you have a full blown video content strategy alongside your podcast, the idea that maybe we could inject RSS is straight into YouTube at high quality with some sort of visualisation, perhaps, crucially, lockable screen still be able to hear the content, and maybe inject YouTube Advertising into it is absolutely really, really important. And something we've all been looking forward to.
Adam
I mean, as a podcaster, YouTube is such an annoying platform to use, because for anyone that's not familiar, to put a podcast on YouTube, currently, you have to take the audio file, transmute it into a video file, whether you do that by just, you know, filming it as a kind of video and ripping the audio out of it, you know, separately, or just slapping the logo on, you know, in Premiere Pro or whatever you're using and putting it up that way. But you have to upload it separately, as opposed to every other podcast platform, which just pulls it down from the RSS feed. So if you could, as Matt, as you say, if you could just have the RSS plugged directly. And that would save so much time and allow so much more audience potential.
Matt
And also, we don't play the game of trying to convince YouTube viewers to use podcasts, the issue was always that it's very difficult to pull YouTube users off their platform, then they love and put them in another device or another app. And so the idea that we can actually now take our content to them without having to massively repurpose it in the first instance, I think it's still important that you know, podcasts now think about their visual strategy, you know, and the idea of being able to effectively take a episode of your show, which is just audio only, and then add a video layer to it on YouTube. That actually, you know, is a good thing for everyone, I think in terms of a better experience. And also, even though I'm sure Spotify are quite frustrated that this is happening and is quite a big rival play, it will probably help their cause of bringing more video to Spotify because if you start doing it for YouTube, you're more likely to then try and build that into your Spotify channel as well. As long as Spotify couldn't get over their thing that they have to do video just on Spotify like to anchor like it would be good if you could feed that through other platforms.
Adam
Well I was gonna say at what point then do we reach a point where the same thing you have audio via RSS is built in for video. So you have the video file embedded in the RSS feed and that just goes out to everywhere that supports video?
Matt
Well, it's entirely possible even right now; an RSS feed can be whatever you'd like it to be; it can be programmed with different enclosures. And you could add a video enclosure to the same episode. And the problem is, all the players have to take it. They have to agree on the format. Now there's a bit more money in podcasting, it's much harder to get them to all agree on those changes. If they can get themselves around the table, maybe in a wonderful conferencing event organised by Haymarket Business Media, we don't know. But maybe breakfast, I'll be there. Maybe they could try and sort this out because it will make my life a lot easier because I'm uploading too much stuff. Basically, too much.
Adam
So yeah, YouTube, Spotify, if we can make Matt's life easier. That's the main goal of this. This podcast.
Matt
I'm like a Mondeo man, like if you can please me, I think most people in the industry will be happy - for me.
Rhianna
Moving on then to our interview this week. This is Dave Corkery and Cathy Cullen. I sort of feel like maybe Matt, you should talk a bit about Cinemile, because they're one of the British Podcast Awards' big success stories. And one of their earliest, right?
Matt
Yeah, one of our earliest successes. I remember Miranda Sawyer, who was in the podcast of the year judging panel, the year that Cinemile won. And she was just so enthused about the show, I think partly because there were so many differences there were, you know, there was a long history of movie podcasts out there. And Cinemile just sounded so fresh and so different. And may I say still does. And that personal relationship between the two hosts and the fact that it was outdoors, you know, so few podcasts are recorded in the wild. And the fact that it's recorded on the way to the cinema, and then on the way back it kind of it's so beautifully formatted. And yeah, I'm really happy for all the success that came from that as well.
Rhianna
So here they are. Adam and I are talking to Cathy and Dave from Cinemile. Cathy and Dave, welcome to PodPod.
Dave Corkery
Hello, thanks for having us.
Cathy Cullen
Thanks for having us. Hello.
Rhianna
Thanks so much for coming on. I love this. This was kind of born out of your messaging saying that you were listening to PodPod. So we immediately invited you on, I love it.
Dave
Do you invite all your listeners on? It's not a sustainable model, guys.
Adam
You realise now we're gonna get an absolute flood of messages going please let me on the podcast.
Rhianna
What I love about your podcast is that I've been aware of it for quite a long time and we met at the British Podcast Awards. Was it back in... was it 2017?
Dave
Yeah, the first ever one. Yeah.
Adam
Oh wow, so you're OGs.
Dave
Oh, yeah. Before it was cool.
Rhianna
Still not cool. But what I loved about your podcast was because you were talking about films, which is something that I was really interested in, I am really interested in because of my side hustle as a film critic, but also you kind of were bringing something completely new and fresh to the format. And that was something that I just don't think anyone had really considered. So we're going to be delving completely into that. So do you want to sort of, do you have like the elevator pitch for Cinemile?
Cathy
Yeah, it's the podcast where we record our walk home from the movies. That's the pitch.
Rhianna
It's so perfect. It's such a brilliant idea. And it's something that everyone can relate to. So when did you first kind of come up with the idea? Was it the love of movies that came first before the love of podcasts?
Dave
Yeah, I think we've always had a love of movies, the formation of our relationship. I think the cinema was very heavily involved, you know, both big and weird. Arnold Schwarzenegger was very heavily involved in the early days of our relationship. There was a lot of best best summed up in when we are the first Christmas we were ever together, we both got each other a present. a surprise present each and it was both presents were a copy of pumping iron on DVD. That's when we knew it was meant to be. So yeah, our love of film was there. I've been listening to podcasts since I don't know the noughties, and had been trying to get Cathy involved in a podcast with me around film, right?. Just like you said Rhianna, big into film podcasts and reading, you know, Empire and everything. And I was just like, you know, we could do that. I think everyone thinks they can do that. But then Cathy was like, No, I don't want I don't want to sit down with you. And talk about a movie for an hour. That sounds awful. So she kept batting me away, rejecting me. Now I'm gonna want to do it. And then eventually, I said, Look, can I just put a recorder in front of you while we're walking home? Because we're doing that anyway. Right? It's no extra time commitment. She eventually agreed and then ended up enjoying it. So it was really the format that was born out of, you know, I don't know, necessity. or the restrictions that she kept putting on me and so in a way it was very much Cathy's idea.
Cathy
Yeah. Cuz I was like, I'm bored of listening to men sitting around and talking about movies. I don't like the thought of having to put an hour aside every week to do something and I said I normally think it won't be interesting. So do you come up with what it was a really fun idea and then we walked home from The Jungle Book and we recorded it and we're like, oh, that was really fun. And because at the time we thought, okay, if you're going to the cinema like three, four times a week, it was truly no additional effort and I know we'll talk about it in a while editing and stuff but like we just recorded as live and put it up. So kind of at every point in it, it was like minimal efforts and it's so fun because you know, initially it was obviously just friends and family listening, now more people listen, but everyone says like oh, that's exactly what I do when I mean cinema I talk about the movie and I because we record before we go to the cinema so we say like just a few minutes what we're expecting out of the film, then we then we record after. And loads of the listeners tell us that they listen on their way to the cinema to like the start and then they listen on the way home whether they're driving or walking. And that makes us so happy we're like a companion to people who like to go to the cinema and that's kind of the core thing about our podcasts as well is like we love cinema. So we do non cinema stuff on our Patreon but our feed is very like cinema purist, and I don't mean that as in we love high fancy films and stuff, but we you know, we go to blockbusters but like we want to do in the cinema, obviously the pandemic a little bit but um, it's very much traditionally the trip sometimes we drove but we almost always walk.
Dave
But that's the thing, right? That trip is a huge part of the cinema experience. It's not something anyone thinks about, you know, you think of the cinema, you think about the, you know, the popcorn and being there and the logos coming up in the excitement. But like, everybody goes to the pub afterwards, or they go have dinner or, or they just go home and chat in the car. That happens to everybody. And I think that's something I think, which we kind of just stumbled upon that hadn't really been captured.
Rhianna
What were you using in terms of equipment in the early days? And how has that changed?
Cathy
It's never changed.
Rhianna
Really?
Dave
We bought a Zoom H4N when we decided to do this, and that was...
Cathy
Seven years ago, 200 quid.
Dave
Something like that.
Cathy
They should sponsor us.
Dave
We've been using the same thing ever since.
Cathy
Every photo of us doing a podcast was holding that Zoom H4N. Until it dies, we'll never stop using it.
Dave
I mean, I know a lot of your listeners are gonna be, you know, super audiophiles and tech heads.
Rhianna
Not necessarily.
Dave
That's not us you know, but we googled. I think I just Googled like, good field mic for podcasting. And then you know, lazily pick the first one and read a few reviews and do you know what? Reliable silver, the kit it's solid, it's like built by the same engineers that must have made that Nokia 3210. Indestructible.
Cathy
Yeah, we've dropped it a lot. But you know what's changed though is Dave. I can't take any credit for Dave self taught himself out. No, no, he did have a skill of editing and advanced in the podcast because he has edited for like video before but he got really good at audio recording or audio editing and so our very early episodes don't sound as good as they sound now but it's the same piece of kit and the only upgrade you did was in the editing software is not in the kit.
Dave
Yeah, I guess if we're getting into the details there I mean, I, as Cathy said, learned on the job so you know if you go back to the early stuff that sounds rotten. What's that free audio editing software?
Adam
Oh, Audacity.
Dave
Audacity yet, yesterday, you did the job? Absolutely. Then yeah, decided to get old fancy and upgraded to Adobe.
Cathy
So the funny part is he had the Adobe thing from work. So he used it for a few years to work eventually, till it didn't have to work anymore. We finally only paid for it last year. So seven years in, we paid for the Adobe suite.
Dave
I do work in marketing, I had a good reason to have the Adobe suite.
Adam
It's too late now, Adobe will be sending the frighteners around.
Cathy
But no, we have as of last year paid for the Adobe Suite.
Adam
So speaking of the editing side of it, does recording on the move bring challenges in terms of the audio quality or the editing that you have to do?
Dave
Yeah, 100%. Anyone who's ever been outside knows that, you know, number one, anything can happen. And number two is bloody noise. So we learned very early on that we had to adapt our routes accordingly.
Adam
Oh really?
Dave
So we made some mistakes, right number one, you know because there's a lot of ways you can walk home. We had one route which was down on a motorway but just a busy road. Trucks passing by a lot of you know, motorbikes, some occasional road rage you know, anything that happened was just like the den. The constant noise is kind of distracting and eager to raise your voice a bit and then I think it all becomes a bit frantic. Conversely, we found it's kind of off putting if It's too quiet.
Cathy
At night. Yeah, it sounds weird to us, we like a low level den like we live in Ireland now, but for a long time when we lived in London, we'd actually like to walk around London if we had guests. And that was a lovely level of noise. But motorways are too noisy and the burbs where we live now can be too quiet. So, we've had listeners say that they've been out for a run listening and they've heard a beep and they think it's some kind of beeping or they've already been led to like a beep in the bug. Like we don't like Dave just played around with their levels you know of like, what the mic will take in. So we've played around with that a bit. But to be honest, we don't worry about that. I know a lot of podcasts, edit our arms and as or anything like that, if we were so inclined to turn off because we're too lazy. We still couldn't because the background noise changes all the time.
Dave
We don't like to edit very rarely but when we do Yeah, it can be quite challenging. What I like to do is as well, you know, incorporate some of the environment.
Cathy
Maybe recently a few months ago, we're talking about a Mars movie and someone stopped someone was like oh, you spoil the movie for me that was funny
Dave
Passers by, one of the most awkward things which has happened a few times over the years is if you bump into someone you know. Yeah.
Cathy
Yeah. Because we're like such a weirdos
Dave
There's this moment where they're like they go away and then they're like let's initiate a conversation and we're like just turn it off.
Cathy
And we did once get at the very again very early days of the podcast when the new Bridget Jones movie came out I was wearing heels never again very few listeners at the time but I think every single one of those texts was like there's Cathy's heels/
Dave
There is one particular coat which we had to ban yeah as well.
Rhianna
Yeah with your route home obviously if you're maybe changing it or you know when you moved as well because you have a specific structure to your podcast you go on to like spoiler street which I love. So is that always a certain place? Is that actually you kind of going? Oh, we've reached this band, we've reached his house, we need to move on. Is that like a cue for you to like okay, we need to wrap this up now or do you just kind of go as long as you want to go
Dave
I'm going to spoil this now for all of our listeners and all of the potential ones, spoilers st doesn't exist I'm so sorry. There's no specific point where spoilers are where we need them to be. When we've exhausted the sort of the pre check, we do have a route and there are sorts of you know, we have a beginning and an end and that has helped us I think have a relatively tight format because I think that's another thing and I've done other podcasts as well that it's difficult to self edit on the on the spot and you can end up with a lot of material and I could just talk forever like this is going to be a challenge now.
Cathy
Spoiler street is when I'm tapping my wrist to Dave.
Dave
And also you know your house is coming so you mean like oh we've got to wrap this up now and now admittedly we we have occasionally you know if there's a real meaty little topic we want to cover off we've done another little lap around our neighbour's block.
Cathy
Yeah it is interesting because we love the format of recording on the go and we have a lot of fun with it and because I think it's because we're not that obsessive the audio that we let ourselves do it where people who would be really prestigious and really good audio editors don't like it, but like we've recorded ourselves on the train like we rewatched the first mission impossible and then we recorded it on the Eurostar like we love it. So that was really good fun. We've like recorded on the plane we've recorded on a ferry maybe like we'll record anywhere you can put us like we have no shame. I try I hilariously tried to do some work once like trying to get our Lingus to sponsor us they never go back to me to record I was reviewing an Irish film on an airline you know I still the officer like there loads of fun with it like you know once you're not that bothered about like it being perfect
Dave
Do you remember when we got the tube one time on the way back from I think the picture house and we were just coming up to the end of this episode. And then as occasionally happens on the tube this busker just got on. I wanted to stop, I started playing like Plato's beautiful serendipitous.
Cathy
That was still the best thing that's ever happened and Oh, very rarely do we try to record arcades, and it's hilarious because it's just us physically chasing them to try and get them. And they're screaming like Poopoo. But they'll occasionally give a glimmer of insight into a kid's film, but very rarely.
Dave
When we do have guests, we don't make them travel all the way to us. You know, we usually pick a spot in between and then we'll just go for a walk after the cinema. So I think a lot of our guests we would have met in central London, and I remember walking around Central London with Craig Parkinson and then you know, we met Chris Hewitt and Helena O'Hara from Empire. We went to IMAX with Chris as well.
Cathy
Based on the location, that's what makes it hard for us to get guests though, because you're like, Hey, do you want to come on the podcast? They're like, Yeah, cool. And you say, so you've to sit with us. You've never met us for two hours. And then we're so in fairness to anyone who's ever come on, like, it's so funny, like often the first time like Scroobius Pip came on our podcast, we've never met him before, sat down and watched Avengers, which was like four hours long. Drove to Surrey to come on our podcast, and we couldn't believe it and he was very generous, generous with the time we find because we're generally getting people who love movies and love talking about them. But we've struggled since he moved to Ireland, we haven't had a single guest. And it's because we've just not had, frankly, moving countries get new jobs, kids, everything. We've not had the energy to be like, Oh, actually, will someone meet us, like in Dublin and like, do the whole thing. So we really want to get back to having guests. But basically, since the pandemic, we've not really done it.
Adam
Yeah. So you mentioned Chris Hewitt of the Empire podcast there. Those guys have made quite a good business out of live events and their screenings and those kinds of things. Is that something that you've ever considered branching out into?
Dave
Yeah, no, definitely. We've done a couple of live workshops with the BBC and a couple of other audio industries.
Cathy
Yeah, like in the early days when we won the British Podcast Awards, so you're like, kind of new and shiny. It's like, oh, those people who don't work radio and who spent 200 quid on a piece of kit, they won the British Podcast Awards. So the BBC contacted us and asked us to do internal workshops with their radio staff because they wanted to show them how to be creative and think outside the box. And we didn't want to go to Bristol and Manchester. Like we have a six week old baby at the time. I don't know what we're doing. And we were so clueless. Do you think we asked them to pay us anyway?
Adam
The British Podcast Awards entries?
Cathy
Yeah. And we Yeah, truly, and we were like, Oh, this is amazing. They paid for a train to Manchester.
Dave
We did one live show at the Latitude Festival in 2019.
Cathy
Right before the pandemic. Yeah, so that was brilliant. We love doing what they have. It was their first time shooting a podcast tent and we were so happy we got asked to do it and because they have really good talent there. They got us Asif Kapadia, as in the director of Amy and Maradona, and Senna. And he came on to talk about Maradona and we did a live show with him. We loved it, right? Really, we loved it so much. And funnily right after that, we actually signed with an agent in London to do more live stuff. And then the pandemic happened, and it never, it never happened. And by the time we came out of it, we had no energy, we were never going to try and get back into it. Again, our jobs are to visit because I don't know if it is made clear or not. But this is a hobby podcast. So what it's been running for seven years, and we've had a level of success. And we know, compared to worldwide, our podcasts might be in the top 5%. But it ain't nowhere near like the top 1% of people who actually make money off podcasts. And like the Empire model is so successful, because it's also part of their jobs. And they also do the live shows that make a lot of money. Like we'd never sell out something like that to make money, that latitude thing works. Because we were at something that was already happening, our audience is really scattered all over the globe and small dots. Like, I guess the closest we'd have really, in terms of a cluster of an audience might be like Dublin, but you'd be talking to various small venues.
Dave
it's something we would love to do. But it's probably not realistic for us in the short term, I think, and also looked at As Cathy said, you know, there's been a lot of disruption and not just in the world, but you know, our personal lives and moving country and all that kind of thing. And also the podcast is ultimately secondary to us. You know, we both have careers and family. And unfortunately it does end up taking a backseat, sometimes.
Cathy
You know, it is our first baby. So we do tell our children they're more important than them.
Rhianna
With them the pandemic. I think for a lot of people, it meant that they could maybe start a podcast or you know, it gave a lot of people space to start new things or experiment a bit. But of course, by the very nature of your podcast, presumably that was a very big change. So what happened? What did you have to do? How did you continue?
Cathy
Yeah, it was really interesting, because we had a baby in January 2020. So we had a like, I guess six week old baby. So that was fairly traumatic at the start of the pandemic. And then the podcast is our outlet. Like it's one of the reasons we've done it for so long, because we just love it and it's like, you know, everyone we know what's more kids is like, we can't believe you go to the cinema and you smoke is and it's like, but it's because we did the podcast before we had kids. I think if we hadn't frankly, we probably wouldn't be going to the cinema as much as we do. But we always prioritise it and like if we have a family member coming to visit they know they're like okay, I'll babysit for you this week in terms of the pandemic so we still wanted to do the podcast like very much so and it was kind of like for our own mental health if nothing else so we just you know the way they were releasing movies like oh, you pay 20 quid on Sky store and you would like watch a cinema movie. So we were reviewing them and then you know, they were like walking around the block like today in England so we like Lucky for us. My sister moved in with us during the pandemic because her unique picture is right, she'd like to be at home with the kids and we like to walk into block answering and record. There's so grim, but it was really, really for us. And we got this most incredible email, I'll never forget this email from one of our listeners. And she said, I listened to your podcast today. And God knows what shade film we're talking about, because it was really bad. She said, I listened to you just talking about, you know, being funny about a movie. And she said, and tears rolled on my face, because it felt like the first normal thing that's happened to me in weeks, and I was. So it was really important for us. But a lot of our listeners really connected and our Patreon where we talk about TV, and that actually took off a bit more during the pandemic, because we're just doing that sitting at home on the sofa. Generally, we walk when we can just slightly different and just easier to do in the pandemic. But we were like the first time we went back to the cinematic pandemic...What was the Christopher Nolan film?
Dave
Tenet?
Cathy
We were hysterical, like if you listened to that episode
Dave
It's so exciting, like two people who have not been out in years.
Rhianna
Which was true.
Cathy
And that's what we love our podcasts on, which is because we just love going to the cinema, our podcast, because it's immediate. It's the exact feeling you have of any organ and cinema. And often for us, that's like joy and happiness, because we've been to the cinema and that, so we tend to probably infuse our reviews a bit.
Dave
Which I think is a selling point. And people have told us as much that they like that raw reaction that you get.
Cathy
Someone asked me this recently, like, how would you do it? You know, like most journalists take notes, and they might rewatch a film, if you're telling us we don't do that, because we just don't. We're sitting in the cinema, but I'm already like, Okay, I'm gonna talk about that. I'm gonna talk about that, like I have a mentally, I started a mental dossier system when I'm watching films that I would never have had years ago. And it means you can't do that. It means that when you do tasks, you have to like it, you can't not think about it as you're watching it. Because like five minutes after we walk out, we're gonna turn on the recorder. We also tend to avoid traders where we can. This is the beauty of not being actual film critics, we don't watch trailers, and we don't read the reviews, we say, save it for the streets. So if one of us is in the lobby, and we try to talk to the other one, we're like you're. So it's like, so fresh.
Adam
I do the same thing, when I go to the cinema with my partner, and I find that my opinion and thoughts about the film will often change quite dramatically from the start of that conversation. To the end, do you find that with the podcasts where you'll start out with one point of view? And then by the end of the recording? You've kind of almost one-eighted?
Dave
I think in terms of the conversation and the influence that that has, yeah, we've had moments where there's there's aspects of a film that sometimes I haven't even considered and I think Cathy is particularly good at analysing diversity in film, looking at it from the female point of view, in particular to something that obviously I cannot do and I tried to challenge my own biases. And I think that's another benefit to our podcast is that, you know, what, besides yourself, Rihanna and many others, the film conversation space is very male dominated. Cathy's very good at calling me out my unconscious biases or just something I had not even considered.
Cathy
Like on Plane and Dave was like, This is a really weird moment where they made this girl report a video, why did they do that? And I'm like, because there were no women in the movie. Yeah, someone obviously was like, oh, we need a woman. Oh, yeah, that is probably why they did that. Most of us are when we disagree on films that we love. But we would never force that. Like, it's not very often we disagree, because we have very similar tastes, but Dave combs out things from like, he loves Star Wars and horror and I love I really like sci fi. And I really like romcoms. So we've got crossover, it's a sport, like, they do different things, which helps.
Dave
But that's actually the other crucial bit, you know, what you're saying Adam there but people you know, influencing each other or challenging each other. Think if we were doing this podcast, with a friend or, or you know, someone who's a professional co host, you've got a different relationship with that person, you someone, maybe you're just a little afraid to really challenge them or you want to be kind of amiable, you know, as a as a couple, you don't really like, What are you talking about?
Rhianna
I do think that's such an interesting dynamic, though the coupled dynamic because, like you say, that can work really well. Other times it doesn't work so well. But for you, it's obviously such a successful way of talking about films, but also of getting other people to relate to you, I think because people go as couples to the cinema. And so it's just a really natural kind of echo of what people are doing. So how does it work in terms of just you two working together in close proximity, doing the same hobby, that doesn't necessarily always mean that it's going to be a kind of comfortable, successful thing. Obviously it is with you guys. But how does it work?
Dave
That's a good question.
Cathy
I think we've got an exceptionally high tolerance for each other, like we can spend large amounts of time together.
Dave
And that's not to criticise other couples, I think everyone's got a sort of a healthy balance of their myspace versus your space. But yeah, we do tend to have a high threshold for each other.
Cathy
But also we come in at the podcast, we do different things. So Dave edits and records. And then I'll do like all the socials more like, for example, when we enter the British Podcast Awards, it was like, Oh, listen to this word like, so we come at it, we do two different things. It's also not that much time in the week, you know, I don't think we'd ever want to actually work together full time. But doing something that's like a, you're going to the cinema, or we're going to send anyway, so the podcast side of it. While it is more work, and has become more work, though, we go less and stuff like Max might be two hours a week. And then on our Patreon, depending at the moment, we're doing the Last of Us reviews and like, there might be more or less on, but like, again, we'd have already been watching The Last of Us at home. So it's like just building on something we're already doing. But I don't think we ever want to do anything like full time together. And I think the point of it, doing it full time as well is you have to get a bit of Beatty, if you're really trying to profit off of which there is no shade you just do. So I feel like if it were a fully commercial podcast, like we'd have to be like, having heartaches and like disagreeing with each other, like on purpose more, because we know those episodes do better, like when we do what we don't ever lean into. But I think I could see the temptation if you were trying to make money off it, where we would be like, oh, we'll make it tick tock video and like, oh, we might have an argument because like, we know that we'll get all the retweets. And like, because it's a hobby, we've never had to fall into that kind of side of it.
Dave
I'd echo my previous point about how we're comfortable to challenge each other on the podcast, but film, I think that has helped our kind of, you know, quote, unquote, working relationship on the podcast, because, you know, in my career, I'm in marketing. And a lot of that job as you sort of go up through your career is about editing other people's work, or, you know, trying to provide feedback or criticism. And I think that's a very difficult thing to do. And every person reacts very differently to that. Whereas again, back to that point where we're very comfortable challenging each other. So from a working relationship, like I'll write a bit of copy for our synopsis. And Cathy's like that's, that's terrible.
Cathy
Yeah, and I just read, work, you'd have to, like, gently speak to someone about it, like, potentially suggest...
Dave
Writing it up in their one to one.
Cathy
Yeah, it makes things much quicker, that's for sure.
Rhianna
You mean, you don't have performance reviews for each other?
Adam
Quarterly appraisals. So speaking of that kind of side of your career, of course, you both work in marketing. Have you found that that kind of experience and skill set has helped you make Cinemile more of a success than it might otherwise have been? If you were coming in completely cold?
Cathy
Yeah, like, frankly, I think we both have worked in communications, Media TV, like across all the different jobs marketing, like first of all, as I mentioned before, they had a base level of editing skill anyway. And we both studied data journalism and communication. So we had a kind of good understanding of like, what would be a good beginning, middle and end something socially, like straight away? When we started the podcast, we're like, right, we'll get all the social handles like we thought that stuff through. And I know you were talking to a data recorder, when they were talking about that point, they were getting socials and stuff that really matters, particularly on Twitter. And so now the name cinnamon of the day from off with this so good. And the concept Dave came up with is so good that I think it made it easier for us to like to get a handle like that, like it's hard to get a handle. And then just like even in terms of like the British Podcast Awards, like I searched, I was like, Are there any podcast awards, we could enter? Because I thought our podcast really was like that, I think our podcast is really good. And we've always got such good feedback, but it's only friends and family who listen to it, like how could we get more people to listen to it. And then I just searched and it was like, it's the first year of the British Podcast Awards. And the entry was closing in like two weeks, and we bang something together and Dave put together a really nice, like, he had an understanding of how to create an award submission. So all of those things definitely matter. Like I think it wouldn't be fair for either of us to say like, we're like total amateurs doing this, even though we're not professional podcasters we know how to put together stuff.
Dave
We had a lot of experience on Twitter, and we were able to build up a bit of an audience there. So yeah, I think yeah, it definitely is an advantage.
Cathy
Because someone can have a brilliant podcast and like no one hears it. Yeah, and I'm not saying our podcast is brilliant. It's just really, I think it's really good
Adam
You have the awards to prove it.
Cathy
But I think I've heard some really, really important parts from people and like, they just have no audience and like, it's also so like, that's the other thing coming out of the pandemic, you know, the way you mentioned Rihanna, everyone. Like I think it doubled, I think it went from like, 500,000 to like a million podcasts. So like we've noticed and loads of other people that we know what our level is, what you would consider a successful but very mid tier podcast, yeah, who've got good audiences, you know, a good base, potentially, like awards or good press behind them. But like they are, all of our audiences have dropped because you've now got, like, Louis Theroux making a podcast, you know, and people have a limited amount of time to listen to something. Yeah, of course, they're gonna listen to Louis Theroux over us, like we get that and we're not out there pushing ourselves doing live events or, you know, meeting people.
Dave
Absolute Louis Theroux take down here.
Cathy
It's not a take down, I would listen to his podcast over our podcast like I totally get it.
Adam
You know, I would actually slightly disagree with that. I think Louis through is maybe a little bit of an exception to this, but I think the big name, tentpole celebrity podcast, hasn't proved to be as successful as certain companies and streaming services may have initially predicted I think a large part of the appeal of kind of podcasting in general is that it is individuals that are genuinely passionate about stuff. And I think that's very hard to fake. If you are a celebrity who's just starting a podcast for the sake of having a podcast and I think there's actually probably quite a lot of people who would listen to, you know, a podcast like yours over a film podcast that's kind of helmed by someone who is nominally a celebrity, but isn't really that sort of invested in the subject matter.
Dave
Vin Diesel on film.
Cathy
I agree with you Adam. But I think I totally agree with you because there's so many celebrity podcasts, people are dipping in and testing a new format. And like, every time a new show comes out, no, which wasn't the case seven years ago, there's a podcast like The Last of Us podcast, which we love. So there's just way more out there. So like, we know, and we noticed, because when the pandemic hit, like we always used to release an episode once a week, and I know the release pattern really matters to the algorithm. And then we dropped off like for about six weeks, we didn't post anything. And then we were like, doing our best, maybe getting one or two at a month. But we tanked and people's feeds, like the amount of listeners who messaged or saying like, are you still doing podcasts? Like I don't see your podcast anymore? And we have to be like, oh, yeah, you know, go and search for us. We're still there. But we knew we weren't showing up in people's feeds anymore. And like, what can you do so hard to get into people's feeds that it's so crushing to think that you've now dropped their algorithm, but we can control that?
Rhianna
You've mentioned your Patreon, because going to the cinema is bloody expensive. You don't get to go to screenings or things like that. So does the Patreon sort of pay in part of your cinema trips?
Cathy
Yeah, like it's funny, because, you know, like, the screening thing you mentioned, like we were kind of on distribution lists, for screenings, but we never were able to go to them because they're always at 10 in the morning.
Rhianna
Yeah. So even I can't go to those
Cathy
We get emailed maybe a screener link. That's what we don't want so we can't watch the screener links. Now we can watch screeners for a Patreon for TV. So yeah, the Patreon model, to be honest, like we find being part of the a cost model at our level, because they work on a CPM model, which means that like they pay per 1000 listens. And even after that, it's very nominal, we found that like one month on our Patreon, which is also fairly small, would do more than we'd get in a year off a cast. So the Patreon is really important for podcasters, I think, if you want to make any sort of money, and then because it's like on top of our jobs, and it's fairly low on mine, what we do is it covers our costs. So like, say the Adobe Suite, like all the subscription costs we have, and then we actually just donate about a third of our Patreon money.
Dave
Mostly everything over the top of our cost, we usually donate because we're both, you know, professionals, we've got careers.
Cathy
We get privilege guilt, we're like we shouldn't have this extra money. Yeah, probably not the right way to look at it. But like during the pandemic. When we were depressed, like we were, we gave all of our money, all of our major money every month to charity. And then like even now like last year, we gave all of our October to December, which was a third we gave to a homeless charity in Ireland because there's an awful homeless crisis in Ireland at the moment. And then last month, we gave all our money to support the earthquake. So we think of it that way. So like a little bit for us a little bit for the cost, and then the rest for charity.
Dave
It makes us feel good and it makes the patrons feel good as well that they're there. And also, like, just be honest, we would do it for free anyway, we just love talking about TV shows.
Cathy
What we didn't want to do is add stuff on our main feed because it dilutes the main feed. And also we were like, it's crazy that we've got a podcast with a really dedicated audience. We're making no money off it. And we bristle a little bit to think that like, not bristle isn't the right word. But how can 10s or 1000s of people be listening to something, but we get no money from it. And that's where the Patreon comes in.
Adam
Yeah. So I assume then that you don't really have any ambitions to turn podcasting into a sort of full time career in the way that I think probably most people that start a kind of spare time hobby podcast might do.
Cathy
Dave's on other podcasts that have been really successful if he does one on The Wire called The Wire Stripped. And like don't get me wrong. If we could make full time money offering multiple podcasts, we absolutely would think so. Yeah, it's not going to meet either of our salaries. So we know how low the money is. Even if someone's being paid per podcast, it might be good money, but if you divided over a year, and took out all the benefits, like say I've taken two maternity leaves before, like when you really break it down and you think it from a really boring point of view like that. Do you want job security or you want this or that, like, we wouldn't be anywhere near making that kind of battle?
Dave
There's so many factors that go into that question. And Cathy's outlined a lot of them, but you know, a lot of it is down to time and circumstances. Well, you know, if we were in our early 20s, when we would have when this happened, you know, when we were still on, you know, entry level jobs in our career then yet probably you did absolutely given it upon let's quit our jobs and go travelling or whatever, and make podcasts for a given shot.
Cathy
When we met you Rihanna, when our podcasts won, I was like five or six months pregnant at the time, and we were asked to do the London podcast Festival last September, it was hilarious. And it was like, right on my due date. And Dave's like, oh, we could do that. I was like, No, it's not like an option. But I think if you really wanted to make money now and podcasting at an independent level, like us, we'd need to be on Tik Tok. We need to be putting ourselves out there way more unlike we don't want to make videos of ourselves and put them on tape talking. It's not for us. It's not a criticism. I'd love to have the confidence to do it, but we just don't. Same. Well. You'd have to get on YouTube. Like some of the podcasts I love. They're all on YouTube. They're all on Tik Tok. And I love watching their clips. I just don't want to be likened to putting makeup on. No, like, like we recorded in our pyjamas at home. You know what I mean? Like the thought of actually getting all dolled up. And then it's even more embarrassing to think you put it on Tik Tok. Like, no one would watch it. I just can't even put myself out there. Whereas with the podcast when we started it, it didn't matter if no one ever listened to it.
Dave
We're kind of caught because the answer to the question is yeah, in theory, we'd love to do this full time. I think that sounds very appealing.
Adam
But doing it full time is a full time job.
Dave
It's not a hobby, Wire is a huge time investment to get us to the point where I think we probably could get there where it is, you know, this is our full time job. But it's also a huge time commitment. And it's a gamble, right? And it's right now we're comfortable in established careers. We've got two young kids, and we don't have time or ability to gamble
Cathy
We often get if one of us got made redundant or lost our jobs, then we probably go a bit heavier.
Dave
I hope our employers aren't listening.
Adam
Well You might find yourself getting some nice job offers from podcast companies who are looking for new producers and new talent.
Dave
Reach out. Sorry, no, I forgot my employers are listening.
Cathy
But I think it has to be because we both work in marketing anyway. And like, I get to do loads of really cool content for people, but it might be for their LinkedIn profiles or for their website. So for me as a medium. I like it. And I definitely supported clients with podcast development as part of my role, because I'm a digital director. But I guess to me, I don't. I don't have to focus so much on one subject or one medium. But obviously, if you paid us a million pounds a year to be on Spotify.
Adam
I'm sure that's what every full time podcaster is making.
Cathy
Exactly. A million is nothing like that. There's like massive echelons of huge money. And then there's like, the drop off is quite like you know, we all know people who work in podcasting and like what the money is like? Yeah, in terms of as if you're a podcaster. And what you can make from your own sponsorships? Yeah, absolutely. My gripe with it in general is purely because I have the knowledge behind the curtain of other platforms and more people spend on them, right. And kind of the most for me. And I think your audience would be interested in this, like when you take a platform like LinkedIn, where the audience is considered to be really valuable because you can identify where they work, what education they have, what their kind of decision making power is based on their job title. And I know what people will pay to reach an audience on LinkedIn. And it's really high, right? Because you know, you're getting that really valuable audience. It's completely incomparable to a rate you'd pay on something like Facebook or Twitter where you might be reaching people based on the content they're interested in, but you're not reaching them based on who they are as decision makers in business. And when I think about our audience who love cinema, right, and TV, like our audience is the best like they message us all the time with them to be recommendations are so engaged, they really listen to our recommendations, because obviously, the people who listen to us are people who tend to have similar tastes to us. And that's why you would listen to a film reviewer, right? You trust and you take the recommendations on board. So where I think something like the Acast model falls flat is they aren't pitching us to say a film distributor who wants to ensure that they get an audience and I know we're in Ireland and the markets are really small. And our audience isn't very big. But we're often at the very top like we're often number one of the Irish film review charts. And yet, Acast has never in five years, we got one sponsorship from them. And I'm not saying this to complain about Acast because I know they work in a CPM model and I know that they are David, I voted on the other end where we bought ads on Acast for clients. And I know they're like, Oh, well, this podcast gets 40,000 listens a month and you'll pay 20 euro for every 1000 people you meet, so it's a really cost effective way to advertise. But alternatively, when you're the podcaster, and you're thinking, okay, they run ads, and they don't get sponsored, but they run ads on it. And I'm like that advertiser because it's occasionally a TV or film ad, they're getting our audience, and we're getting like 50 quid for it. And to me, that feels wrong. And that's one of the reasons we are going to come off Acast. Because we feel like something's wrong there. For us, it works. If you've got a load of listeners, it doesn't work, if you're like with us, which is like a really engaged but fairly, relatively small audience.
Adam
Listeners to this podcast will have heard me banging on about, you know, the value of an engaged audience versus the value of just a big audience. So I'm not, I'm not gonna beat that particular drum again, because I'm sure listeners are sick to death of it.
Cathy
But it's true, though. It really is, you know, and it's not, like, as I said, you know, we're not in it for the money, and we give most of the money away, but I'd rather be making the money we shouldn't be making off it because I understand our audience. And if I had a client, I'd be saying, Yeah, you should be spending x amount to reach that audience.
Dave
We've met so many great people through it as well. And like you said earlier, Adam, it's like, you know, there's a passion there. You kind of don't get in them in other mediums.
Cathy
We would never have thought like we loved the Empire, but you would have never thought we'd meet them. And then Chris, you had heard a better podcast through the British Podcast Awards. And then he recommended us on Twitter and like our listeners shut off because of his one tweet and like, so generous of him to do that. And he's like, I think he's come on our podcast like three times. Like, whenever we asked him, he came on, and we loved hanging out with him, because he's so fun. And to me, that's someone who just loves him. I love talking about cinema, like he's a busy guy, he doesn't have you no, necessarily time to be doing that. Yeah, and like, Helen, you know, like, she's brilliant. She's been on me forever. I'm like, they just, they all love films. And that's like, yeah, you know. And I think that's what, that's why we love doing it. Because it's so fun to do that.
Rhianna
And actually makes such a difference speaking or listening to you talk about film than so many of the other more sort of industry facing podcasts, like I listened to little gold men from variety. And obviously, that's such a kind of academic look at films often and kind of automatic statistics, and all this kind of stuff. And it's just such a breath of fresh air just to hear the audience members love cinema, regardless of whether the film is good or not. And it's just kind of, and I think for film critics, it's really important to remember why you're doing this in the first place. And it's not to be like sneery about movies. And it's not to be elitist in any way. It's because you loved the film. And even if it kind of gets to a point where you forget that because you've been doing it or like you're using you know, you might get a bit jaded about something that you do all the time. Actually listening to your podcast is such a brilliant reminder of why people love film and why you want to talk about film genuinely.
Cathy
And especially bad films because we've really bad taste.
Rhianna
Well, okay, on that note, then what is the worst film that you've ever reviewed?
Cathy
Oh my god. And we always try to be nice, like we try not to trash films purely because someone's made this, but we I mean, we had quite a laugh watching. You're gonna say Blackbird.
Adam
Yes.
Cathy
That was one of our biggest downloaded episodes because everyone was like, I'm not going to watch BlackBird but I want to hear what you think about it.
Adam
You should, anyone who thinks that absolutely, watch Blackbird. It is a tour de force.
Dave
It's quite something and I don't feel so bad. I mean, we don't. As Cathy said, we don't, we don't like to be mean. I think looking at all films is an incredible achievement that so many people came together and made a thing but I don't really feel too bad. dunking on Michael Flatley a little bit. I'm sure he's a lovely guy. There it just reeks of money and vanity. It's just it's quite something to behold. Yeah.
Cathy
I think we talked about Blackbird for like an hour.
Dave
The other one that springs to mind is Artemis Fowl. Yeah, that was a pandemic one. wasn't so bad you know for two reasons. One is that I'm a big fan of Kenneth Branagh and think he's an incredibly talented actor and director and that he should know better. I don't know what happened. And secondly, it is all based on an Irish writer's work. It's set in Ireland. And a lot of the Irishness of it all was just completely unforgivable.
Cathy
I mean, we're so sensitive to anyone having their own culture like we're so sensitive to Ireland on screen. Yeah, we're actually doing it on our Patreon this month we're doing it because all the Oscars were better than we're doing Irish on screen. We might watch wild mountain time because you haven't seen that yet.
Rhianna
Again, I wouldn't watch wild mountain time but I would listen to your podcast talking about what And and finally, do you have any sort of disaster stories about your recording sessions from the back home? You know if there has been if it has been pissing it down with rain or if you're recording just stopped halfway through?
Dave
I've had recording stops halfway through in other situations.
Cathy
Topical and the regional top one we lost half our review. Yeah, we went to Notre cinema and then we just published it anyway, because we were like, sorry. These are the things you can get away with when you have no sponsor. Nobody cares what you're doing with any podcasts. And then remember, we want to remember the new Ghostbusters movie. A few years ago and we forgot the very important piece of tech that goes over your zoom that blocks wind sounds
Dave
On like a very windy day
Cathy
We shouldn't have published it like I don't know that we publish it now. But we did publish it then. And it was like frankly, you couldn't listen to it was just wind.
Dave
Never had any huge disasters, though. There's a lot of environmental and weather effects.
Cathy
Sometimes. We'll be like, Oh, no, the batteries just died. And we'll have to go home and replace the battery. Do it again. And we're like ugh but no we've never had any.
Dave
There was one time when we were I think it was Coco we were coming back from Coco. And we decided to get on the Riverwalk. We just brought our newborn son our eldest, we were so excited to have our cinema trip. And CoCo was so beautiful. And you know, we were crying. I just remember holding him and then we're walking back and I remember the buggy getting stuck in mud. Remember that day? But I think we've got some great squelchy sounds out of it.
Rhianna
Foley on the side.
Cathy
And I think this is why you people used to love blogging in the early days and people love doing their own podcasts because like, it doesn't matter if you do stuff like that. Whereas I think if it's a corporate one, and there's a lot of money behind it, and you're, you know, sponsorships and all that. Like, I feel like it would, you'd have to be really constrained. We're not. So that helps. But like, yeah, so there would be some shockers now in our feed if we went back to probably the first.
Rhianna
No one likes going back. David, Cathy, thank you so much for talking to us. That was brilliant. Thank you for your time.
Dave
Thank you guys.
Cathy
Thank you for having us.
Rhianna
So that was Cathy and Dave from The Cinemile. And as I was saying to them, it is so lovely to hear like a really non cynical film podcast. Actually, I think that's what I love so much. It is just like listening to your mates talking about film in the best possible way. Sometimes that doesn't always work. And as you said at the top, Matt, just hearing the nature outside, which is not something that you put hand in hand with sitting in a dark room watching a film, there is something that's like a breath of fresh air after having come out of the cinema. That is you couldn't imagine that really being evoked through an audio experience. And yet, that's exactly what they've done.
Matt
Yeah, it does remind me of a bit of probably inspired by Cinemile, really Kermode and Mayo used to do a thing where it was like the lobby correspondent. So the voice memos from outside the squinty room just as it finished. And you could hear in people's voices, that sense of like, Oh, that was really sad, or really joyous or whatever, in a way that you can't necessarily get in a normal review. And I would well believe that they might have been inspired by Cathy and Dave, because they really, really blazed a trail.
Adam
Yeah, it's that kind of veritas of having the fresh take immediately after the cinema experience that is so refreshing about it, but also the fact that it's live. And as you say, Matt, in the wild, and on the go, the fact that they barely edit it at all, is simultaneously I'm really jealous. And also so glad that that's not me. Because, like, on the one hand, you know, there's no editing. So the turnaround in terms of production time must be super, super quick. But also, you've got no safety net, as a podcaster. You can't go Oh, actually, you know, I'm not super happy with how I sounded just then or actually, you know, I've realised that I'm kind of just a bit wrong. In terms of looking at this, you can't go back in and cut that out, which is Yeah, mildly terrifying, I suppose for you as a radio broadcaster. That's kind of not really anything, and neither new nor revelatory.
Rhianna
Well, I guess for me, I'm still sort of self edit as I go, you know, whereas Cathy and David feels completely unfiltered. And that's part of the charm. And it's because like I said, it's not cynical. So they're, even if they say something that's wrong, and the other one is like, No, that's wrong, and they're like, oh, yeah, you're right is wrong. That's just part of a normal conversation. So It feels really important to keep that in, and the fact that their opinions sort of change as the conversation goes along. Whereas if you go in for a film review, you kind of have your point and you kind of stick to it right, you might have a debate, and you might end up being kind of turned over to the other person's way of thinking about certain things. But kind of the rule of thumb is that you go in with a very set opinion. Whereas with them, it's just like a sort of verbal meandering coming to a natural conclusion, which is what's so clever. And I don't think you could do that if you were editing it, either. Because what would you cut out? It's a really good idea of making us feel like we're all just eavesdropping on an incredibly intimate conversation, which is the best thing about podcasting.
Matt
But it is the exception that proves the rule, because you should really edit your podcasts. Anyone listening that isn't editing that podcast?
Adam
Yes,
Rhianna
But they are only 25 minutes long. 25 to 35 minutes long.
Adam
Yeah. Like, just as a quick sidebar, the fact that they managed to get you know, 25 to 30 minute podcasts with no editing. And this is already probably going to be close to an hour with editing. Yeah, quite, quite impressive. And the fact that they managed to get so much nuance into the conversation, as part of that is really, really impressive.
Rhianna
Cathy and Dave, brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Adam and Matt, for talking to me all about the latest developments with YouTube. That was fascinating. And thank you everyone who is listening at home. You can find out more on PodPod.com. Maybe one day we'll get into guerilla podcasting where you can do this from the banks of the River Thames perhaps. That'd be very cool though. Do follow us on social at @podpodofficial and sign up to our daily email bulletins, and subscribe to make sure that you never miss an episode. The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media, and I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
