I posted this on Purrsia’s site first and I’ll post it here too. No disrespect towards TCL.org about my post.
I hate to admit it but I did download this and barely listened to it…it was hard to listen to and I’ll explain why. For starters, the opening theme music was almost embarrassing to listen too. The interview with Larry and Kim could barely be understood as it was so muffled. So I fast forwarded it.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a ***** here, but every Tcat interview has that same opening song or music and nothing else has changed. Congratulations though for being able to interview Larry and Kim.
Perhaps you should consider interviewing fans of the show instead of Larry. Everyone has interviewed Larry, so there is never anything new.
Honestly, I’m not trying to be mean here. Towards the end of the interview, it did get interesting but after the interesting parts, it turned to be a shameless plug in and advertisement of Thundercats Lair. Org. Don’t get me wrong, I like the website, but it was nothing more than just an ad.
How about trying to interview the U.S. fans?
And last but not least, like most interviews, you had to put in the out-takes. Sorry but that is so over used.
Like writing fan-fiction, constructive criticism should be welcomed.
Look, it’s wonderful to have a new interview coming out to listen too and I commend you for putting this together, but I’ve heard every other interview out there and it sounds the same.
I’ll have to re listen to it to count the times of the mention of TCL.org.
Good luck and I suggest you do a follow up interview.
And I always appreciate honesty. So much thanks for replying.
First of all, the choice of music, IMO, was right. It’s different (it isn’t The Rembrandts’ version of the theme which IS commonly used) but it sounds good and it begins brilliantly with the guitar solo of the beginning. Might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I did get feedback beforehand on the music and mostly everybody agreed it was a good start. The problem was that I couldn’t riddle it full of original music because of music rights and such. The out-takes, to my knowledge, aren’t owned by anybody so they’re free to use.
Also, the quality of Larry’s and Kimberly’s interviews were very difficult to make listenable as it’s from telephone-via-Skype. I did edit the interviews as best as I could using different software and found that most of it was listenable - I’m sorry you couldn’t listen to them. But I do recommend them - they’re very insightful.
And if you listen to the entire documentary from scratch, I did interview a fan of the show. But please don’t think this is some ‘advertisement’ of Thundercatslair.org - that’s unfair. In fact, I may have mentioned the website only a few times just to give listeners an idea of how famous the show is and how dedicated websites have been spawned. The rest of the show concentrates on the show in general.
Again, I very much appreciate you gave your fair and honest criticism. You don’t need to tell me why - it’s what I’ve asked from the very beginning since I did the project. But to be totally fair, you said ‘why not interview fans?’ when there is a fan interview which means you skipped a fair chunk of it.
But much thanks - apart from the documentary, there’s also two full interviews. Take a listen.
No offense, but I think to fully critique the documentary, you probably should have listened to the entire thing.
I listened to the entire thing and while he interviewed Chris who works on the site, he really only mentioned TCL because of the petition and how the site first got started.
As for interviewing fans, Nick made this thread asking people to participate in the documentary and no one really replied to him about it. It’s not his fault U.S. fans didn’t bother helping in the interview process.
Anyhow, no biggie. He made this for a college project, not for the site and I personally think he did an amazing job for a school project. I actually think the sound quality is better than some of the podcast episodes we’ve done.
I’m kinda glad he left out my interview…I wonder if people would have said he’s endorsing the site because he interviewed two TCL guys.
Hey Queen Lynxana, just picking up on some of your points here!
For myself, I can’t really comment on the music as I must confess I haven’t listened to that many ThunderCats audio interviews (actually, I have to say, I wouldn’t have said that there were that many audio interviews centering around ThunderCats on the Internet - there’s a large number of them involving Larry Kenney, most of which I’ve heard at some point, but have never heard of any others). However, in fairness to Nick, unfortunately there are only so many versions of the ThunderCats theme kicking around - really, if you want ThunderCats-related music as part of a TCats-related audio project, your options are a) to use something that already exists (and thus something that someone will have used before), b) to create your own (which you can only do if you have both the musical ability and the expensive specialist software to do it - I’m a musician and I don’t have any such software because I can’t afford it), or c) to use music that has absolutely nothing to do with ThunderCats!
In terms of the sound quality of the interviews - yeah, if I’m honest, in Larry’s interview there were a couple of bits I found slightly muffled too. However, I think folks need to be realistic in their expectations of sound quality - both of those interviews you cite I imagine would have been conducted down the TELEPHONE, and thus are subject to distortion, etc. Yep, the problem could be avoided if the person being interviewed downloaded Skype, purchased a headset to plug into their computer, and conducted the interview that way (hence why the other contributions to the recording came out clearer), but if Larry & Kim don’t have access to those facilities then a recorded phone conversation is the only option. And, with a telephone line signal, you get what you get, LOL!
I agree that Larry is definitely the most interviewed man in the entire universe of ThunderFandom - but, I think you’re missing the point here. Nick’s whole pitch with this project was to present a concise, mini-documentary about what ThunderCats is, and a discussion about it, as a college project. On that basis, he would have to assume a lack of knowledge on behalf of the show’s potential audience - because, if the BBC or somebody were to ever create a documentary about ThunderCats for broadcast on TV or radio, that’s the assumption they would have to make. Assuming that all of that audience are ThunderCats fans would leave half the audience scratching their heads going “WTF is this guy talking about?!”
Now, if this had been created specifically for hardcore ThunderCats fans like us, then you’d have a valid argument - but, what Nick has done is created a project for a mass audience (or at least, a college project in the style of something created for a mass audience!) and been good enough to share that with folks on these forums in case there’s any material in there that they find enjoyable. If someone doesn’t, then IMO that’s cool, but I think folks on these forums should be aware that if they think that this was created specifically for them, they need to look again, and look at this in context.
Quick question here - if you were still involved with EOT.net, and the project had mentioned EOT several times, would that have bothered you as much?
I must admit I was (pleasantly) surprised how many times Nick mentioned this site, but I think in the main those things were in context - talking about the Larry Kenney petition, talking to me, as a fan, about what motivated me to become one of the founder members (along with the other guys) of this site, etc.
See Manny’s response above mine. Also, whilst I agree it’s good to try and get a balance with these things, if you watch a documentary about a pop culture phenomenon such as TCats, you’ll find that 9 times out of 10, the fans that will be interviewed as part of such a documentary will be fans from the country that documentary is being produced in. In that scenario, that will be based primarily around the issue of money - because otherwise, the documentary makers would have to fly a whole film crew out to another country simply for the purpose of interviewing a fan with a different accent!
Obviously in this case that’s not an issue, and so with that in mind it would have been great if some US fans had been involved in Nick’s documentary, but that’s up to both him and them. At the end of the day only a couple of fans were actually involved, and those guys happened to be based in the UK! shrugs
For a hardcore ThunderCats audience, yep, absolutely. However, like I said earlier, this wasn’t created specifically for a hardcore ThunderCats audience, Nick decided to share it with us for us to take out of it what we liked, and I for one am mighty glad he did!
I definitely agree (as I’m sure Nick does) that constructive criticism is welcome, because it’s the only way that folks can improve! However, I will be honest and say I think a lot of your remarks are a bit unfair - if this was billed as a professionally-produced documentary targetted directly at hardcore ThunderCats fans released specifically through a hardcore ThunderCats website, complete with a budget of several thousand dollars, then I think all of your critcisms would be very valid. However, the reality is that this is something Nick created for his college project with the resources he had and decided to share with us - I enjoyed it (and before you say it, no, not just because he interviewed me - listening to my own dreadful speaking voice back was the worst bit of it for me, LOL!), hopefully others have (and will) too!
Look, I know nobody likes what I have said. I know I have some valid points as so do the rest of you. But instead of saying more about it, I’ll just keep my mouth shut about it.
Yeah it’s a college project that perhaps the professor never heard of the other interviews but heck,…ugh, I’ll keep my mouth shut about that.
Okay, let’s go on a different approach about this…perhaps next time, instead of focusing on Tcats, perhaps next time interview Larry about his career without Tcats…how did he get into radio, how did he find that job, how did that take off…how did he get onto bowling for dollars, what did his parents think about him going into radio because this was the 1960’s and back then, parents had influence on what they wanted their kids to become. Back then, parents wanted their sons to become something with their hands like firemen, and such.
I’m also curious…does he have any brothers or sisters? What are his parents like? What was his childhood like? He grew up in the 1950’s during the post WWII era. These are questions nobody ever asked him. He started out in radio…how did he make it into T.V.?
Perhaps you can do a follow up interview, even if you don’t have a homework assignment to do so. If I had a microphone, I would ask him these questions myself.
And for the record, even if I still owned part of EOT, I would never mention the site because of pride. I would focus entirely on the guest of honor. If I ever mentioned EOT, it would be at the end of the interview as “you can hear this interview on EOT or TCL.org…etc”
Okay, let’s go on a different approach about this…perhaps next time, instead of focusing on Tcats, perhaps next time interview Larry about his career without Tcats…how did he get into radio, how did he find that job, how did that take off…how did he get onto bowling for dollars.
Just to answer this; I did ask him about how he got started in Radio, the transition from Radio to TV, Bowling for Dollars etc. There are two full interviews in this thread from Kimberly (writer) and Larry. So if your looking for insight and such into the persons themselves and not just Thundercats, take a listen to the full interviews themselves. (not the documentary but there are two full interviews seperate from it which are in this thread.). You might like the interviews more than you like the documentary.
Okay, I’m going to listen to the entire 24:58 minutes of the documentary.
Then I’ll give my full opinion of it.
queen_lynxana listens to it
Merged Post:
Well, I listened to the documentary and didn’t hear anything about his prior career, so I guess I’ll have to listen to that other one.
Either way, after listening to the documentary, I think I’ll send Larry an email and ask to interview him myself about other things. Perhaps he might like that. Who knows? It doesn’t hurt to ask.
Larry about his career without Tcats…how did he get into radio, how did he find that job, how did that take off…how did he get onto bowling for dollars, what did his parents think about him going into radio because this was the 1960’s and back then, parents had influence on what they wanted their kids to become. Back then, parents wanted their sons to become something with their hands like firemen, and such.
Without taking sides here, most of the things listed here have been answered by Larry many times over in past interviews that can be found through Google. Yes, even the “Bowling for Dollars” topic as been discussed.
I have one interview saved that is about 30 mins long and he goes into great detail about his career outside of Thundercats, (Making millions off a 5 second job for a beer commercial for example).
I think what it all boils down to is that Larry is the most accessible actor associated with Thundercats, so there are quite a few interviews out there, and only so many times you can listen to them before you’ve “heard it all before”.
I love listening to Larry’s interviews, but there is only so much info the guy has to divulge. Now if we could get some interviews with the folks responsible for the art, production, initial concepts, toy designs, etc… that would be some new and fresh material.
[COLOR=“Blue”]Edit: Here is the link to one of the interviews I mentioned. If I find others I will post in a new thread (Don’t wanna change the topic of this thread). There are also a few interviews out there that are in text format, not audio, but full of info as well. http://www.mattblank.com/interviews/larrykenney/index.html
Again, based on what the project is supposed to be about, which is ThunderCats…I don’t think Larry’s childhood really relates to what the project is suppose to be about. No offense to Larry, but I’m not interested in his childhood and I’m pretty sure he’d like to keep some parts of his life private.
I guess the point is (and this will be the last post I make in this thread) that the College Creative Project is focused on something Nick was passionate about and he tried to use the resources that were available to him. Would he love to have interviewed other people linked to ThunderCats? I’m pretty sure he would have. And hey, he did an interview with Kimberly Morris and for what it’s worth, all the information she discussed in the documentary is entirely new to me.
The audience of this project knows very little about ThunderCats and the information in the documentary is geared towards that particular person. I’m sure Nick knows this (being this is his major), but it’s important to know your audience and emphasize the content to fit their needs. Larry’s childhood has very little to do with that aspect of the documentary.
As for the site plugs…we didn’t ask him to do it. In fact, people that know me probably would have thought I’d apologize for that…that’s my personality. However, in this case…I see no reason to and I’m tired of the whole “competitive” nature between sites. A plug is a plug.
That’s funny…he emailed me back today twice and he’s looking forward to talking about his childhood…but eh, you don’t have to listen to it and because of that, I’ll post it on Purrsia’s site. I told him I’ll arrange this in a few weeks due to me having a new job today and I also know he is a very busy man.
I guess the point is (and this will be the last post I make in this thread) that the College Creative Project is focused on something Nick was passionate about and he tried to use the resources that were available to him. Would he love to have interviewed other people linked to ThunderCats? I’m pretty sure he would have. And hey, he did an interview with Kimberly Morris and for what it’s worth, all the information she discussed in the documentary is entirely new to me.
Well the Kimberly Morris is new considering nobody has every recorded her…so kudos to Nick. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good interview, I never said it was bad.
The audience of this project knows very little about ThunderCats and the information in the documentary is geared towards that particular person. I’m sure Nick knows this (being this is his major), but it’s important to know your audience and emphasize the content to fit their needs. Larry’s childhood has very little to do with that aspect of the documentary.
I know the target audience (the class) didn’t know anything about Tcats but however since Nick did, he could have added a little bit more, he could have surpassed the others that did interview Larry in the past. In all honesty, nobody ever asked Larry about his childhood and that’s a shame because there is so much to learn.
As for the site plugs…we didn’t ask him to do it. In fact, people that know me probably would have thought I’d apologize for that…that’s my personality. However, in this case…I see no reason to and I’m tired of the whole “competitive” nature between sites. A plug is a plug.
I’m not being competitive, the only one I ever saw being competitive was you. When I was part owner of EOT, I never needed to be competitive, the site was always alive without advertisement…when I was there, EOT was like the Club 54 of the Tcat fandom. My days at EOT are over since late September…not only due to my major mistake but also for the fact of me becoming a single mother over night and I had to protect my children.
Well you did say this was the last post you would make in this thread. Hopefully you will reconsider that idea. Please don’t get me wrong, I like Nick’s interview but heck, he listened to the others that happened and he has such a good clear voice that he could have easily surpassed the others. What did you really want me to do? Just be like the others and say “Gee, great job Nick! You were awesome!” Now you said this is his major in college…how is that going to help him in the long run if I just agreed with the others?
Okay, so I look like a bad guy in your eyes, but whether you like it or not, I got Nick thinking and I know he can do better. If I didn’t give a damn, I would have kept my mouth shut or agreed like everyone else. College is expensive and I hate to see money wasted…also, I know Nick is very intelligent…morons don’t go to college unless they are on athletic scholarships because they can throw a ball. So yes, I’m going to push him to do better like my parents, family and friends pushed me to do better.
Nick, I like you, I hope you don’t think I was just being a b**ch because I have nothing better to do. When I was in college, I took a speech communications class (which got rid of my introverted behavior…education was my major and this class was a prerequisite.) and I had to record a t.v. commercial and do a speech about it. I had to make mine sound better than the others. All I got was a “B” but I know I could have done better because I was lazy and waited till the last day before it was due and recorded a funny commercial about natural gas. (the project was to record a commercial and do a speech promoting it) I put on a pot of coffee and busted my a$$ writing a whole speech about it…my class was at 9am and I was up all night writing. The point of this is I do know what it is like to be in a communications class. So no, I’m not just throwing stones at you.
Honestly, I never thought this thread would get so many posts.
Just to kind of explain a few things.. obviously, college is alot more different here (in Glasgow, Scotland) than America. It’s less grand. So it’s not a paid thing and you kind of just sign up and have to get certain qualifications and such beforehand.
The project was a final which determines my mark for the entire course - it’s an A, B or C. Or fail. But your awarded an HNC grade and that goes on your CV and that.
Generally, I admit the documentary may have its faults. Looking back, the mentions of TCL.Org was simply to remind the listener of how dedicated fans can be to create websites - I didn’t actually find Pursia until later otherwise I would have mixed it up and mentioned them, too, as it’s also a nice website (although the forums are dead mostly). But it was to remind the viewer as documentaries usually find a point and it gets lost in the lots of information - I like to remind people of what Thundercats spawned, my guests and such.
Also, I had interviewed Manny who was a US fan, technically (although I do agree that interviewing TWO TCL.Org would be a little bias) but the interview had some real technical glitches and so I discarded it. Hated it though.
The documentary itself is aimed at both casual fans of the show (students/adults from 18 - 30). It’s also aimed (loosely) at casual people who may not know Thundercats firsthand but heard of it and such. That’s why there’s so much detail - yes, alot of it has been covered. But alot of these people wouldn’t know that. And the difference between interviews before and now is that they were held so long ago that opinions may have changed and such - so my goal was to offer the listener a new insight into Thundercats but to offer them information that they may not have known. Alot of it, though, is generally what I think people would want to hear - and to be frankly honest, being a documentary about Thundercats, you couldn’t really add the childhood of Larry in there without listeners either getting bored or fastforwarding - it’s a real shame because I love Larry Kenney but the interview/documentary can’t really start with “So what was it like growing up?”.
Unless it’s asked to rappers, rockstars and people with interesting childhoods.. I wanted to focus more (in the single interview) about his career in Radio and such because that’s his career. Generally, you never hear celebrities being interviewed asked about their childhood because they’re going to think your going to comb through every part of their life and such and people may already know about it. So since I didn’t know alot about Larry growing up and just based off how he began in Radio, I focused on that building up to Thundercats. If anything, I regretted not asking Larry about Silverhawks because that’s an interesting topic there.
I actually tried getting ahold of alot of people involved in Thundercats including Arthur Rankin, Jules Bass, Earle Hyman, Lynne Lypton, Leonard Starr, Peter Newman and Peter Lawrence. So I wanted to get a star-packed documentary where I could get a general idea of what it was like. Not getting any of them, I got Larry Kenney at the very last minute and he saved it. I also had to get a perceptive from the viewpoint of fans - Jeremy’s a casual fan and He-Fan is partly responsible for TCL.org being online. I did suffer from a lack of interest for interviewing but Manny was supposed to be my casual American fan and also a viewpoint of the Admin. It didn’t go as planned but it doesn’t matter that two of my guests were both British - they were fans regardless. And the only thing American fans could offer instead of British fans is what channel or what the reaction was like to it in the US. That’s about it..
So looking back and listening to the feedback, there are issues with it - Skype is a very strange tool and the connection was good but it’s not fantastic for phoning phones so I had to do alot of editing to make it listenable. What you hear is the absolute best I could make it. Obviously, it’s not going to please everybody but I always appreciate getting constructive criticism and such from anybody. So I’m not taking it personally or getting mad because it’s cool - I really worked hard on it, like you Queen, spending all day and night until I had to go to college editing my documentary, putting it all together and making sure it worked. And overall? I loved it. So no, this wasn’t lazy by any means. I probably could have done better but with what I had and what I used, I think I did a good job. So much thanks for the honest feedback and thanks to everybody for putting forth their opinions and such.
I have not listened to the documentary yet but I can say that I dont really care about Larry’s personal life outside of what has done with Thundercats. The Thundercats are the reason I know who he is and everything else does not matter to me. Im sure I am not the only one who feels this way. Just my opinion.
Actually, can’t say too much because I admit I have not had time to listen to the interview. So I can’t really offer an opinion on the interview, or support one person’s opinion here over the other here.
Just wanted to say, sorry you didn’t get much of a reaction at my board to this Nick. We suffer from chronic fatigue, as it seems you’ve noticed :lol: I don’t even remember if I gave you a proper welcome over there - been a very shabby hostess indeed. Thanks for giving it a shot, though.
On an unrelated note…hi Chris!! Miss our chats…I need to pop by here more often.
I leave you all with a gratuitous Lion-O smilie :liono
Hey Angie, that makes two of us! We need to catch up, I really miss talking to you - I’ve been so busy this year, my whole “online life” seems to have suffered - I spoke to Neil (blackiecats) the other night for the first time in months! I zoomed by your forum very quickly the other day but didn’t have time to post anything - leave it with me though and I’ll try and get back over there!
Could have sworn Queen had another post here.. shame, it was quite nite.
Just wanted to say, sorry you didn’t get much of a reaction at my board to this Nick. We suffer from chronic fatigue, as it seems you’ve noticed :lol: I don’t even remember if I gave you a proper welcome over there - been a very shabby hostess indeed. Thanks for giving it a shot, though.
Ahh, I love the website but the forums kind of vary in posting - it’s like here, in a way. It’s popped back up now for some reason which is good - kinda expect that from a Thundercats forum anyway. I mean, there’s only so much discussing you can do.
