SUMMARY KEYWORDS

jumpsuit, podcasting, interviewed, tv, filming, lavalier mic, hours, town, blood, thin eyebrows, wear, drink, restroom, pictures, cbs, makeup, holding, toilet, sweater, strange

SPEAKERS

Penny

Penny  00:00

Hi I'm Penny Dearmin. This is Season Two Blood Town on Trial

Penny  00:20

Hey, Blood town listeners, we have a special announcement. 48 hours on CBS is going to be covering the case. And the episode is called "The Strange Death of Professor Shockley." You can watch it on October 15. This Saturday at 10pm. Or stream the next day as it is for most of us. If you would have told me way back in 2019, when Blood Town first started that I would be on TV, I would not have believed you in the slightest. I do not like watching myself on TV whatsoever. But I put all that aside in order for the case to get the coverage that it deserves. TV is very strange. It's not like what you think it is, not that podcasting is at all what I thought it would be. But TV is even more foreign. The trial was in April, and the crew from CBS came into Milledgeville in May, didn't really have a lot of notice ahead of time, and ended up having to kind of throw things together last minute just like I did when I went to the trial. Since I live two hours away now, I had to plan to get up super early, not have a lot of time to get ready knowing they're going to do hair and makeup there, which is also very strange. And just like court, had to come up with something to wear that would...[laughing] had to come up with something to wear that would hide all of my tattoos because you don't really want to be that person on TV with all your tattoos showing or maybe you do. I also brought my podcasting equipment so we could film some scenes of me podcasting there. 

Ironically, we were filming in a building on the central state hospital grounds, which was very creepy, as it always is to go to Central State Hospital. There's a beautiful room that they use for the bridal suite at this location, and got my hair and makeup done. It's always really weird when other people do your makeup as a child of the 80s. We maybe have very thin eyebrows leftover from those 90s days, where thin eyebrows were in. And now they're bushy and very dark. And so that was very interesting. When I look at myself, the pictures that they took of me while they were filming, it doesn't look like me. I will show some pictures from the set of me podcasting and then I will show you a picture that I took of myself when I got home in the same hair and makeup. Somebody's lying. I don't know if it's their camera, maybe it's my iPhone is betraying me because I don't feel like that's the same person on the screen as the the way that I view myself every day. It was kind of interesting, interacting with the professional sound people. And they were very nice. And we talked a lot about different things related to the audio and made jokes about what kind of microphone I had and does it require phantom power and all those kind of podcasting things that audio files geek out on. I was there from very early in the morning until the afternoon. So a full day of shooting a balance of being interviewed by the correspondent. Hopefully I can say his name right, Jonathan Vigliotti, he asked some very poignant and relevant questions, some of which I really had not spent a lot of time thinking about. I have not seen the episode, so I have no idea how it came out. I think we all are nervous when we get interviewed that we might say something the wrong way or it might come across the wrong way. So I just hope that I was able to contribute in a positive way for people's understanding of the case. So here comes a word of wisdom from someone who did all of this the wrong way. Understand that you're going to be filmed for hours and hours and hours. So you should probably eat something before then or your energy drink will kick in and it will overcome you have fashion forward tip, don't wear a jumpsuit. So ironically,

Penny  05:19

I, why'd I say ironically? [Laughing] Oh boy. Adverbs. Don't wear a jumpsuit and then have a sweater over it, you will be miked with a lavalier mic. And while absolute top notch high levels of professionalism, the audio engineer you know has a witness and they ask for consent before they pin the lavalier mic on your lapel. However, know that if you have a jumpsuit on you can't tuck it into your waistband. This means that it will go through your shirt and you'll be holding it on your bra strap in the back. You will be full of coffee and energy drink. Did I remember to mention the energy drink? And you will at some point after many hours need to use the restroom. This will be after you've been interviewed for hours. And now someone wants you to bring in all your podcasting equipment. And all you could think about is how badly you need to use the restroom. So you will run out to your truck. And you will grab all of your equipment and you will basically throw it on the table because you have to go to the restroom so bad. And then when you get there, you think to yourself, how am I going to do this without dropping your mic pack in the toilet. So you'll take off your thin sweater and luckily your or unluckily, your jumpsuit has buttons on the front of it. And you have to make sure that you're holding on to your lavalier mic and you're taking your top off oh wait, the collar of your jumpsuit is getting stuck on the mic pack that's on your bra. And you have to try to again not drop this in the toilet. Did I mention you drank a lot of coffee, you had an energy drink, and you have to pee, but you also have to not drop it in the toilet. somehow, miraculously, you get everything off and you're holding your lavalier mic on the front, and you're holding a battery pack on your back on your bra. And finally, you get to use the restroom. All of this is to say, Please don't wear a jumpsuit if you're going to be interviewed on TV. It will be very challenging for you. Eat something. of course, I'm not going to tell you not to drink as much caffeine because we all know it's a requirement to exist right now. So after your interview with the correspondent and your unscheduled bathroom debacle, then you get to do some podcasting. And of course, you know, as a podcaster, your mic is supposed to be close up to your face, but you're on TV and you don't know what you're supposed to be doing. This is kind of how podcasting has felt to me from the beginning is I really don't know what I'm doing. I'm just doing my best and figuring it out as I go along. And then they tell you Oh, that was great. Is that a script? Can you do it again? And I'm thinking to myself, Ah, hell no, I completely just made that up. And I have no idea what I just said. Then the producer will sit down and they'll just be filming you and he'll be asking you questions. And at this point, you're exhausted and there's no energy left in your body from caffeine or any kind of drink otherwise, so eventually you get back in your truck, but we're not done. We're gonna film you driving away in the truck and I'm just thinking to myself, Oh, dear God, please just let me go home. I guess they like what they see they give you a call back and say yeah, we want to shoot you some more. As far as getting some of that B roll of you.

Penny  09:14

You know what you're gonna picture me looking out onto the lake and pensively walking through a forest and folding my arms and contemplating the universe so that they can have that while they play the sound of you saying something hopefully brilliant. This time. It's three hours away from my house. Okay, this is fine. It's the summer now I don't have to work around any schedules except for my dog. Of course. This time I'm smart. This time I do not wear a jumpsuit. Don't let anybody tell you I am not teachable folks. It is something that finally happened. The moral of the story is that TV takes a long time and is not as easy as it looks not that I thought that it was but it is significantly harder than it looks. I thank God every day that I get to be behind a microphone and not behind a camera or in front of the camera. So I hope you will check us out on CBS' 48 hours this Saturday, October 15 at 10pm. And that's Eastern Standard Time, I know that they were able to interview a lot more people obviously than we would ever have the resources to be able to contact and of course, since it's a different medium though, there'll be a lot of you know, a lot more pictures and a lot more video that you'll be able to see that can help you kind of place the locations and the individuals that we've been talking about over the last two seasons. Thanks as always for listening and supporting us. You can always email us bloodtownpodcast@gmail.com with any questions or comments. Join Patreon at patreon.com/bloodtown for early access and bonus content, or leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts, Good Pods or Spotify. You can visit our website bloodtownpodcast.com or follow us on Facebook or Instagram @bloodtownpodcast and on Twitter @bloodtownpod