That's the great thing about incubating something on the web: you have the potential to go to other platforms. Every single platform has a different audience that you find.
I'm a big champion of people doing things outside the system.
I still do commercial work as an actor, which I love, because it's very quick, and it definitely pays my bills.
As far as the MMOs go, especially with the voice chat, it becomes like hanging out with your friends in a chat channel, and you're playing at the same time. So it becomes a lot more social than people would probably think.
I think me getting into performance stems from my mother's inability to do those things. I guess you have these things you want your kids to do that you couldn't do, and you have to start early to do them.
I'm always doing things that scare me, because I feel like that's how you should live life. If I'm terrified - and I'm often terrified - then I should be doing that. Like trapeze class, or singing in front of 5,000 people.
I love sitcoms, and I grew up on sitcoms. That's my tasty junk food. So I wanted to create a sitcom and have some really quirky characters, because most of the stuff they make now is just so marginalized. How interesting is a white guy who's 28 years old and lives in New York? What story have we not seen about a character like that? Just as a writer, it's so much easier to come up with comedy when you have a really oppressed Indian boy. Or a mother who is an addict but still has to take care of her kids.
Doing this web show - people underestimate what it takes to do a web show successfully. They underestimate the amount of work that you have to do to get it to your audience after it's made. I think you have to work so much harder, especially if you don't have a huge budget. You have to know how to get your audience engaged, because the Internet is so distracting, and there are so many choices. People, even if they love your show, will forget to go back for episode four, because you know, people are busy.
We knew how important it was to have a DP, because most web videos are horrible, because they shoot against a white apartment wall with no directional mic, you know? Those simple things, like knowing you have to have a sound guy, and that a YouTube video needs as much color as possible.
In making a web video series number one, you need to have a script that you think is really funny, and it's true to yourself. I think some people use things as a stepping stone, and they want to please people and show them, "Hey, I can do hip guys in Judd Apatow style," and it's not true to them. If there's something you know about, like motorcycles, do something about motorcycles first. Do something that's really true to yourself and find a voice, and make the script as good as possible.
I've been trying to communicate with other people online all my life, because I was home-schooled, so I moved around. And that was pretty much my social life. That's how I grew up, meeting people and just expressing myself and socializing through the Web.
Geek and Sundry has an eclectic line-up of shows all targeted around things I love: Comics, Tabletop Games, Books and more.
I always enjoyed acting. My aunt was actually an actress.
I could go off into the wilderness and write fantasy novels for the rest of my life and probably be happy; but I always want to challenge myself.
What I love about what I get to do is that I'm allowed to create the stories that I want to tell with minimal interference by some very big corporations like Microsoft and Sprint and EA and BioWare. The advantage that these tech companies have is that they understand the space organically, versus traditional media companies.
Surprisingly, I think if you're known on the Internet, you're probably an introvert.
I love sitcoms, and I grew up on sitcoms. That's my tasty junk food.
Comic-Con has become more of a pop cultural festival, and to not be included feels like you're missing the biggest celebration of the year.
For the vlogging channel, I wanted to build the infrastructure and build up all the personalities in a way that felt like weren't just forcing the audience to watch everyone we have.
I'll be in a series for three or four episodes, but then I'll be off the series, and downtime, as an actor, is a little more than most people understand. Most of the time you're just sitting around taking coffee with friends.
I have a little obsessive-compulsive personality. You can tell because I played online games for eight hours a day.
My dad was in the military, yeah. He was in the Air Force, and he was a doctor, so he would go places for six months here, and two years there. And I was home-schooled because I played the violin, and I did a lot of competitions.
'TableTop' is packed with gaming celebrities and independent game creators. This is a huge subculture that really doesn't have a vehicle to rally around or educate people with.
Now that we've transitioned to more Smart TVs, where people are broadcasting their cable box, I hope that Geek & Sundry is something that people will click on in the future, knowing that they're going to get content that they love.
People don't appreciate that when you're on the Internet, it's a 24/7 job. Even if you're not releasing episodes, your show is living and breathing on the Internet because there's a community around it. Ninety percent of the work is after the web series is shot, and you have to constantly maintain your community, because it's all you have.
