Three Distinct Generations Together To Talk About Anything Here

My name is Brandon Church. I am the owner of the podcasts "Review after Watching" and ".record" For RAW we have two co-hosts, Chris and Joshua Church.

Review After Watching is a family-oriented movie review show, with the added twist of hearing three generations discuss the film. What this does is create an unique environment where we rarely agree on anything because our values and ideas about storytelling are so different. For example my father is more old school and will react to remakes of classic films with disdain, whereas my younger brother may not even know that the film in question IS a remake. This leads to interesting and comical discussions.

I personally listen to a ton of podcasts. I really enjoy story-driven episodic shows that keep me engrossed from week to week. Sometimes I wait to start one until it has a number of episodes so I can binge them while running or doing various chores.
We started "Review After Watching" because my family and I would often argue and discuss films, politics, whatever...and we usually end up craking up before the end of it all. So we thought it might be a good idea to record them and get the episodes out for everyone else to enjoy as well.

We started releasing the show around September of 2018, and had practiced for about two months before we officially launched. We had never done a show before, and we needed to establish a rhythm and style to the show. It has only gotten better with time.

We release at least 1 episode every week, usually on the Monday. Lately we have been releasing more and more each week, and the response has been fantastic. Since it's such a simple show, we didn't really need too much seed money. I already had an audio production company so the equipment had already been purchased. It was just the hosting fees and cost of the films, really. We were fortunate in that regard.

Since my day-job is running a small audio production company that releases audiobooks, commercials, etc...I already was spending copious amounts of time in front of a computer editing anyway, so this was just one more thing to add to my weekly routine.

We have gotten a few sponsors, and are working on making more. We got them pretty early, actually. The show is still in it's infancy, we have not even reached a year yet, but we are trying to grow it as much as possible. The most important thing to us, however, is having an entertaining show. Yeah, revenue is important, but I believe that will come in time as long as we maintain a highly-produced and entertaining podcast. So that is our focus right now. The show keeps growing too. We started with barely 50 downloads a month, to now having grown to over 600 per month. This month is looking even better so far...

I found sponsors by reaching out and asking. Seriously. Persistence can help you achieve great things because most people, I find, are simply afraid to ask. Don't be! Get out there and knock on some doors and meet some people! (Or in this case, email people and make phone calls)

We prepare for each episode by researching the topic and cast of a film, and then discussing them together. The key is to not let our thoughts on a film out early, we wait to reveal it to each other directly on the show. That way, we get the best reactions and raw emotions.
Here is some of the equipment we use:

Microphones: 
- Blue Yeti Blackout (amzn.to/2IoUMdp)
- MXL 990 (amzn.to/2MtY8AZ)

Software
- Recording - Pro Tools (amzn.to/2WgaRqM)
- Editing - iZotope RX 7 (izotope.com/en/products/repair-and-edit/rx/rx-advanced.html)

We market our show by using Twitter, Facebook, and paid advertisements on occasion. Facebook and Instagram have been the most useful for us so far, and we will continue to utilize them in the foreseeable future.

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. I cannot stress that enough. Early on in our show, we had a great following that was growing week-to-week, and then we had to miss a week for some reason, I can't even remember why. The next week, when we returned and released the new episode, our downloads were less than half of where they had been previously. It took us over a month and weeks of paid advertisements to even get us back to where we were before. That hurt. Still we learned a valuable lession - being reliable and sticking to a schedule to a key component to success.

You can find all of our shows on any podcast service - we are on everything. This link brings most of them to one place for you: smarturl.it/qk4qfl
You can also check us out here:
- Twitter: @_RAWPodcast
- Website: reviewafterwatching.com
- Audiobooks: adbl.co/2ytaxdn