Wanna' read along? Here’s a machine-generated transcript you can use. Yes...expect a few mistakes, especially with funky industry terms, interesting names and tagging whoever's talking. If something sounds weird, trust your ears. But...sometimes that really is what we said!
Biagio: Hey, everybody. She is joke. He’s Biagio. We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.
Biagio: Well. Holy cow everybody. Not only is it episode 95.
Joke: Happy anniversary.
Biagio: Yeah! Happy anniversary. Because we are celebrating for years. Honey. Four years of podcast.
Joke: I remember sitting sitting in our bedroom. You had a whole concoction put together, like two rickety chairs and a special thing, because that was the right acoustics for the first couple. And I was like, oh, man, this is not going to hold up if it’s going to be like this every time.
Biagio: Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous. And then now we’ve just done most of them on my iPhone, which has made it a lot easier and allowed us to go for the additional three years and nine months.
Joke: Exactly.
Biagio: So anyways, first of all, thank you to everybody who has, you know, have reached out to us with kind words over the years. You know, when we first started this, it actually sprang out of our blog, joking Biagio, which is which we still keep up, although not as frequently as we used to, but it was a general filmmaking blog, and people would often reach out and ask us two things. Can you tell me more about the reality TV industry and can I pitch to you? And there were two things we really weren’t set up to do at Joe and Biagio. Right?
Joke: Right. And then you were like, I have an idea. Let’s do a podcast.
Biagio: Let’s do a podcast. Probably no one will listen. No one will submit any shows. No one will care. And it’ll last for a few months and it’ll be fun. And it turned out that actually quite a few of you, I cared and listened and reached out. And, you know, I think the goals have always been pretty simple for the podcast. I mean, we’ve been pretty honest. You know, we can’t make every show on TV. So our goal is to give you a lot of great information. Learn a little bit about who we are. If you want to pitch to us, great. And if you don’t, we hope you learn enough to be successful, even if we never work together. Right? That’s right. And so that’s what we’ve been doing. And when we realized that it had been for years because it kind of snuck up on us.
Joke: Definitely. Although I guess we should have realized because we started it when our daughter was like a few months old, like six or I guess nine months old. So now that she’s almost five, we should have realized it’s been a long time.
Biagio: It’s been it’s been a while. We’ve watched our children grow through the podcast, but we’re like, wow, this is this is amazing. And then looking back, we’re like, well, you know what? We should reach out to our listeners. We should be like, okay, what are you taking away? Especially for those of you who maybe are new to the podcast and would like to get, you know, a big picture overview of what we’ve talked about in the past four years. And, and honestly, we even got some responses that sort of surprised us, which was really cool.
Joke: Yeah, I was very, very happily, you know, I wouldn’t say I was surprised, but it was it was a nice reinforcement that I think kind of the main points we keep trying to hit are actually landing. So it was like, yay, everyone is hearing us.
Biagio: So like, yay, go listeners, you guys are you guys are rocking it.
Joke: Yeah. Because sometimes for us we’re just looking at each other talking into a phone and then you’re like, does anybody even listen? Is this this even matter?
Biagio: Care using this. Is it working? I hope so, I hope it is.
Joke: But we’ve gotten some really great, great responses from you guys. Some really nice messages. And it’s it was very nice. I think one of the funniest ones that that was written was a cool thing that’s happened is that I’ve been able to share your advice with others, and now they think I’m a pretty smart guy, which I thought was awesome.
Biagio: That’s fantastic. Hey, keep it up, man. You know, that’s that’s what we do, right? You fake it til you make it. Fake it after you make it fake and fake it. And you’re not even faking it because you’ve learned. And now you’re. You’re sharing the sharing the wealth. No, no need the credit. Us you you you you you you are smart. Well, anyways, we we had I wasn’t expecting this many responses we got. We actually got far too many to to thank all of you individually on the podcast. That would go on forever. But thank you to every single person who did reply. My wife being the incredibly organized person that she is and and as well as some some help we had here at the office, Joe put together the four big ideas that sort of came back from all of your responses. And that’s what we’re going to go over today. So why don’t we start joke with takeaway number one.
Joke: Drum roll? I think you’ll be very happy to know, darling, that the number one takeaway is definitely the message you keep hitting over and over and over, which is ideas are not enough. You have to make yourself valuable and put together a complete package.
Biagio: That makes me so happy. Because, you know, unfortunately, there’s this myth that, you know, you can come up with an idea and that idea can become a TV show or a movie, or it’ll be rich. Yeah, you’ll be you’ll be rich overnight. And it’s it just doesn’t work that way, especially in documentary series and unscripted television. You know, an idea is not enough. You really do need to be. You need to bring more to the table no matter who you are, including us. We don’t walk in with just an idea to any TV network we pitch. We always walk in with at least talent attached and some kind of tape and write ups and a lot of work. Having put in to prove that this isn’t just something we created out of our head. By the way, show notes for this episode will be our producing unscripted. 095 and and we’re going to put some links to previous episodes that hit on some of this. But I was so happy that so many people understand that you can’t just invent something out of thin air. You actually need to build a package, right?
Joke: Which brings us to number two, the number two takeaway, which makes me very happy, which is that it’s not just luck and chains that are going to get you in the Hollywood. It’s actually doing the work. It is a business that requires work, and doing homework takes you a long way. So hashtag homework for all you people out there who are working hard at making their dreams come true and not just sitting around waiting for it to happen.
Biagio: Yeah, again. Another. Another really good one. I mean, I think early on, as a matter of fact, our very first podcast joke, when you compared making TV to selling paper.
Joke: I mean, you know, it’s worked before.
Biagio: Yeah. I mean, you basically talked about like, you know, if you were going to sell the best part of the paper, you would do your homework, you’d go out there and you’d figure out what was the softest material you’d figure out, you know, it was the prettiest print.
Joke: You try all the toilet papers to figure out what you liked about different toilet papers, and you’d be amazed at how many people want to pitch a CV shows and don’t watch television. You’re like, well, if you want to compete with other TV shows, you should see what’s on air. So it’s the same thing. You want to sell toilet paper, you’re going to use different kinds of toilet paper. Figure out what’s already out there. So the same thing with television. You want to make TV, you got to watch some TV.
Biagio: And what makes me happy is that all of these listeners are the ones. And it was quite a bit of them who hit on this point. No, you got to do your homework. They’re never going to pitch a TV show without at least watching some TV for the networks. They want to pitch a show to first. So good for all of you who wrote in with that. With that tidbit you’ve picked up.
Joke: Okay. Number three, the number three takeaway after four years and I you know, listen from from the surface, you think this might be a depressing one, but I actually find this very promising and very optimistic, which is I think people have gotten through this, that the process is a long process and that getting a show develops takes time. And so that persistence is key. And part of that persistence is filling your pipeline with projects. So there’s other things going on. You have other projects because you know it’s going to take a while. So not just put it all on the one to understand the process. So I’m glad people are getting a sense of what this business is and how long certain things take. And, and just to kind of get that and not be discouraged by it, just understand that and make it part of how they go about the business.
Biagio: Yes I agree. No, I mean, listen, I’m just sitting here like I feel like the proud papa, you know, I mean, especially now you have two kids. I’m like, oh my gosh, they really like they really get it. And it’s like, it doesn’t mean, I mean, I listen, I hope we get to meet every single one of you someday. I’m sure we won’t. But it makes me really happy that you found stuff in this podcast. It’s helping you shape your careers and go forward and be successful. I’m just so happy for all of you. And like, like, way to go. Like that’s it’s awesome to hear back that you’ve picked up these things and you’re using them to advance your careers. I mean, that’s just the best.
Joke: And I would say for the fourth big takeaway after four years is people are really listening to some of some of her podcasts ends up being more tool oriented, like very specific about certain things. And that is landing, darling, so you should be happy about that. The number one tool takeaway is definitely been how to write a one pager.
Biagio: I was shocked we did that one so long ago.
Joke: I know, but you know listen people go to it apparently because and this is a big one because, you know, writing a one pager is a is the best and easiest way of getting your project in front of people. They are not going to read huge decks. They’re not going to read, you know, pages and pages worth of stuff. So if you can, if you can, you know, put a good sale sheet together, a good one pager on your show that that goes a long way. So I’m glad people found that helpful. And that is helping them, you know, get get a concise overall view of their show down on on one page.
Biagio: Yeah. But I mean but that was anyways listen to me four years of podcast and it kind of snuck up on us. But I was just so happy with your replies, you know, that we sent it out to people, out folks on the on our newsletter, which you can find our newsletter over at Producing Unscripted. Com if you’re not on it. But but it was really great to hear back from so many people and to, you know, and to see that you guys are picking this stuff up.
Joke: So are we going to do this for another four years?
Biagio: You know, listen, here’s here’s the thing. I’m not going to lie. Like we it’s having two kids and being busy and making TV shows because we’ve always we’ve always said we’re full time TV producers and we’re definitely not professional podcasters.
Joke: Definitely not.
Biagio: But, you know, we’re gonna we’re gonna keep we’re gonna keep doing it for now. And although funny, funny joke that you should mention, it’s normally we do these every two weeks. Our next one is actually going to be in four weeks, four weeks from now. Mainly because we were shooting a pilot yesterday. And it’s actually I’m going to be pretty, pretty busy for the next, the next few weeks. So so I think it’s safe to say that our next podcast will be four weeks from now. Cool. Okay. And I think I’m going to tip my head as to what it’s going to be about. Should I tip my hat as well? It’s going to be about.
Joke: Do I know what this is.
Biagio: Going to be about? I have no idea. I know what it’s gonna be about. I don’t know if you do.
Joke: Oh, well, I guess you’ll surprise all of us.
Biagio: I guess I’m not telling. I guess you’ll just have to tune it in for weeks and see. But it’s definitely something that a lot of people have asked about and we haven’t really talked about before. So. So four weeks from now, two nine in for what will be episode 96. And since four seems to be the theme of the day, just four away from our 100th episode, which I’m sure will be a major letdown. But we’re. But we’ll try to come up with something super cool for it. Way to.
Joke: Sell.
Biagio: That one, I know, right? Well, I’ve been promoting this 100th episode for so long. I have all these ideas of grandeur, and I have a feeling we’ll be in the middle of production and there’ll be a thousand things going on. But whatever it is, I promise it’ll be done with love. And thanks to all of you who’ve been listening. So anyways, listen, this is sort of a a unorthodox episode, even for the two of us, but it was so great to hear back from so many of you. Thank you to everyone who’s been listening to the podcast. And you know, again, lest there be any doubt, you know, we’ve started this podcast. Of course, part of it is we love to meet new talents, but even more so for me, it’s it’s having a podcast where hopefully a lot of you are able to learn and take away and have success. Even if we never meet you, even if we never work together. So hopefully that’s what’s happening. It sure seems like that’s what’s happening from a lot of the responses we got. And and just thanks. Thanks for thanks for letting us help you. And hopefully we’ll keep this going for another 40 years.
Joke: Wait. Hold on.
Biagio: 40 I say 40. I got.
Joke: A veto.
Biagio: That one. I will be in my 80s at that point.
Joke: Yeah. Yeah.
Biagio: No. Well, well, at least for a few more years. Okay. There you go. All right, everybody. See you in four weeks.
Joke: Seen four.
Biagio: Weeks.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
