---
layout:          post
title:           "MAG176.02 - Rusty Quill Company Chat"
date:            2020-07-30 11:00:00 -0400
categories:      incomplete
tags:            []
voiced:          []
episode_title:   'Rusty Quill Company Chat'
episode_number:  '176.02'
summary:         "Take a peek behind the curtain at Rusty Towers as Alex sits down with various members of Rusty Quill Ltd for insight into what we do and the values we work towards as a company. <br/><br/>Featuring: <br/><br/>- Alexander J Newall <br/>- Jonathan Sims <br/>- Helen Gould <br/>- Tim Meredith <br/>- Mike LeBeau <br/>- April Sumner <br/>- Hannah Brankin <br/>- Anil Godigamuwe"
content_flags:   []
acast_url:       https://play.acast.com/s/themagnusarchives/rustyquillcompanychat
formats:         
official:        false
unofficial:      http://www.youtube.com/
unofficial_name: YouTube CC
unfinished:      true
wiki_url:        
---

[Music]
hi everyone this is alexander janual
founder and ceo
of rusty quill limited if you are
listening to this you
probably have heard my voice before
either on adverts or
maybe as a performer but this episode is
a little bit different to things that
you might have heard before
today we are going to be talking about
rusty quill limited as a company
because we realize that a lot of people
who listen to our shows maybe only
listen to one show or
maybe don't even really know much about
how these things get made and this is
going to be a lot more than just how do
we edit things it's going to be a lot
more
talking about the company as a whole
what are our values what other things
that we work towards what are the things
that we are doing in the background that
you might maybe even want to get
involved
with so with that in mind rustic limited
uk company that makes the shows that you
know and love
we are going to be introducing you to
some people today a combination of
performers
show runners administrators in the
company
and letting you get a bit of a broader
feel for the things that we do
so the way we're going to do that is i'm
going to be interviewing a few people
throughout the company
and we'll maybe be playing like segments
of clips and things that they've made
and stuff like that so you can really
get a sense of what we're about
so without further ado it makes sense to
jump into our first interview
which is with jonathan sims of the
magnus archives
so why don't you introduce yourself
johnny and tell us a bit about yourself
i'm johnny sims
i'm the writer narrator and showrunner
for the magnus archives
i've been with rusty quail for all four
years now i think
almost since the beginning and i do a
bunch of
writing and performance and game design
work outside of that but
mainly i am the main character
jonathan sims the archivist no relation
let's not even dive into the kind of
narcissism required to choose your own
name as a main character it was such a
mistake alex i regret it so much
i take great solace knowing that you
have paid
in the complications it's created in
your life yeah i mean it's been fine for
the series but for me personally ah
what a headache so this show of which i
might have heard vaguely but i'm going
to assume
no i haven't heard of what is it what is
this thing of which you speak
oh you probably wouldn't like it fair
enough cool so our next person right
okay that was that was uh that was
quicker than i thought actually
justify yourself to me johnny yeah okay
so the magnus archives it is a
horror audio drama anthology podcast the
conceit is
there is an institute in london called
the magnus institute which
deals with investigation into the weird
and the supernatural
and they have a new head archivist whose
job it is to
go through this incredibly poorly
organized archive
initially create audio versions of a lot
of the statements that have been
logged there and do a little bit of
supplementary investigation
so to begin with that is very much the
format it takes each episode is
uh the statement of someone who has had
a horrific experience as read
by the archivist followed by a little
bit of supplementary investigation
but of course as it goes on new
characters are introduced
and well things take a dark turn
darkness in a horror
how intriguing and novel i like to push
the bow tie and i like to
really stamp some originality so am i am
i given to understand this
is this is merely story time is is there
is there is there action is there
adventure what happens in this there is
action there is adventure there is just
horrible things happening to characters
you grow to love in season one
obviously there's uh myself uh there's
also
some of the archive assistants uh
including martin blackwood terrible man
played by
our very own alexander j newell hello
there's uh sasha played by lottie
broomhall
and tim played by also rusty quill's own
michael lebeau and obviously as the
season goes on more characters are
introduced
and some depart ominous much no so okay
i confess to a minor interest in your
horror audio drama
anthology not anthology johnny you're
too generous
but i mean ultimately i only i only ever
follow anything that has critical
acclaim so i don't know why i should
bother boom
2019 discover podcast award winners for
audio drama and fiction podcast
boom five different audioverse awards
this year
boom nominated for the this is horror
award we've got critical acclaim
coming out of our eyes did i say
critical claim i i hate critics i always
hated critics i
don't like them like what have they ever
done for me that's what i want to know
so
frankly unless someone was to recommend
it to me i don't really see why i should
bother johnny i sure hope
that you don't run into anyone who's
contributed to our 35 million listens
boom huge audience it's good you're
getting really good at the pr
side of things johnny professional
bragging
you have you're getting there i think
the key is saying the word boom
okay so i okay fine it seems worth a
listen
but i mean the podcast is all the way
over there and i'm
here so unless you can literally put
part of it in front of me right now to
make my own decision on i really don't
see
that it's going to happen boom spooky
three-minute section
so like i got you to prepare a clip the
same as everyone else for that
what's our clip johnny so this is uh
about three minutes from episode 15 lost
john's cave
it is the statement of a woman who
encountered some pretty
nightmarish stuff while going cave
diving and i think it really
sets up the anthology statement horror
aspects
so uh yes enjoy
i was eager to get back and be above
ground in a way that i had never been
before
i got my equipment ready and dived back
into the water heading back towards
death said hole
that's when everything started to go
really really wrong
to begin with the water didn't end
i tried to surface as i had on my first
time through and again there was that
clunk as my helmet hit the roof of the
tunnel
i moved on and tried again but still no
luck
i began to fight down the rising alarm
told myself that the tunnel had a
definite end and i just had to reach it
but it just kept going
no light no surface
nothing but this cramped waterway
pressing on
every side waiting to claim me
i don't know how long i was desperately
swimming forward but i almost
screamed with relief when i reached my
hand
and felt it break the surface of the
water
it wasn't the cave i expected
what stretched before me was a tunnel
even smaller than the water-logged one i
had left
i scrambled forward into it not because
i wanted to go on into that unknown
passage
but because i was worried about elena
being able to get out of the water
behind me
i must have taken a wrong turn except
that didn't make sense
i hadn't turned at all and more than
that there weren't any turns or
junctions in this part of the cave i had
checked all the maps of this area
over and over and they all put it as a
straight line
i waited wanting to talk to my sister
when she surfaced and
discuss where to go from here
she didn't emerge i don't know how long
i lay there
it was too cramped to check the time but
it felt like hours
i wanted to go back and check but i
couldn't even turn around to see
i just waited for a splash that never
came
i decided to go on press forward until i
at least found somewhere wide enough
that i could turn
as i crawled on i scraped
against the jagged rocks until i felt
them pressing into my bare skin where my
clothes had ripped
i can deal with it when i'm out i kept
thinking but the passage just got
smaller and
smaller until at last i couldn't move
any further
i finally accepted that i was going to
have to try and squeeze back the way i
had come without even turning round
i started to shuffle backwards and my
feet
touched against solid rock
the tunnel was gone
it was then that i screamed and my light
went out
i said earlier that i enjoyed the pure
dark of the cave
i was wrong
hello and welcome back so now i am
joined with helen gould of rusty cool
gaming why don't you introduce yourself
helen hello everyone i
am helen and i play an enormous orc
called azu on the rusty quill gaming
podcast so i feel like given how
how some people might not necessarily be
aware of this show i might need to give
a little little smidge more context than
i am an enormous orc why don't you tell
us a bit more about rusty cool gaming as
a podcast
right so rustic cool gaming is a podcast
in which we play
a fantasy tabletop game called
pathfinder
this game involves rolling a lot of dice
to see how well you do
at doing things while you tell a story
with your friends around the table
if you have ever seen the dungeon
dragons episode of
community it is basically like that
and with with voices as well we all do
special character voices
as do you alex i do a couple that's true
and so this is a world that features
orcs and dragons
and magic cloaks it sounds very simple
i'm sure it's not been running that long
right
interestingly i only came in about at
this point
halfway through only two years ago
only two years ago yes so this has been
going
sadly very very sadly it started without
me in 2015 but we're now
at time recording we just released
episode 157
i think it was that sounds about right
we have finally started to win awards so
last year
oh i know i couldn't believe it i mean
not because we're not not because we're
not good but just because i was like oh
we got like three awards in the
audioverse
awards in 2019. ah heady days
i remember 2019. it was much like this
year but
better in every way yeah remember
outside
i do remember outside
let's move swiftly swiftly on
but yes i believe those three awards
were
for improvised production so if you're
into your improv comedy at all we are
apparently the best one for that
which i can agree with because we
actually have improv comedians on the
podcast
also play a direction of a production
which you want alex
and i'm not gonna say it's undeserved
but we do sometimes run away with the
show it is
best cat steering yes absolutely
and also my good friend and colleague
lydia nicholas won
an award for player in an improvised
production for a character called slash
a racket
who everyone adores so all in all then
it sounds like
not just another actual play like i
think we are one of the longest running
and you got awards coming out the wazoo
helen yes
and we also got like shortlisted for the
bbc audio drama awards and that was just
for
best podcast full stop so you know you
know just just say you can just go to
the bbc if you want you know
they have opinions about what we do and
obviously we have specials as well
and uh guest specials where we change
the game change the system just to shake
things up a bit
so if anyone's wanting to sort of give
it a try i'd recommend probably trying
one of the specials first possibly
yes you should try the one where i came
on first oh right which
one i'm into the best ones you should
try things with beowulf
oh there we go then so actually
curiosity then what characters are the
normal characters
at the time of recording we have my
character who is the best character and
she is called azu and she is an orc who
wears
bright pink glowing armor and has a
massive axe and also cares very much
about all of her friends there is also
cell
who is a tall and gangly and rather
kooky alchemist they are
generally having a pretty good time i
think they are very enthusiastic
about everything about almost everything
then we've got
hamid our tiny little halfling boy
i say i mean technically he's an adult
but he's so small
and he is our sorcerer he has a
particular spell called fireball which
you will
notice and lastly we have zolf
our grumpy former pirate
current cleric who has some issues
and no legs
so that's my definition of them for you
well i i if if nothing else i know that
some people must be intrigued so we we
will probably
give people a taster at this point so we
asked you to to pick a clip something
that
you thought was was representative of
the wonder that is your show
uh what did you end up picking helen so
uh i have chosen
a few minutes a few eventful minutes i
should say
from episode 103 in which
we are rattling down a mountainside in
damascus
sasha is attempting to steer
the horse-drawn limousine that we are
all cocooned in
and um we are all about to make some
quite bad decisions
is there any way for me to get out of
the carriage
oh you can try would you like to give me
an acrobatics to climb out of a moving
limo
and up onto the roof it's just i've got
handle animal
and if you were driving you'd probably
be really good but getting from here to
there
and you've got your armor penalties as
well and let her make silly decision
i was just mentioning it so that helen
knew what so what that means
when you sorry if if you fall it won't
hurt probably
oh i could just get out of the carriage
in some of my cable and then keep
placing the carriage immediate decisions
what are you doing ah i'm gonna try and
get out of the carriage
okay give me an acrobatics check what
are you doing
that's a terrible idea
have you remembered to factor in your
penalties on armor check
so what's your what's your acrobatics
you haven't got any uh skill in it
what's your decks
minus one so that and then your armature
six
it's about minus six so you're probably
you've probably just rolled a zero i
think you might have rolled it
wow really yeah so as you opens the door
badly i'm not going to allow really i
used to catch her jumping out yeah
you couldn't catch her if you've tried
to go with her
that's his goblin arm i would just be
crushed
by her give me an acrobatics check yeah
okay so my
bonus is 3.
that's bad that's bad both of the
paladins have fallen out
of the movie we all jumped off a roof
except there's no reason for this one
i don't remember what happened so sasha
can't hear she's saying that she can see
oh right now
to the empty carriage around okay so
sasha's got
16. okay yeah you do notice here you
have your hemorrhaging powder
okay so sasha passes the reins to the
goblin
and then she jumps up
i haven't even rolled damage for the
first give me the acrobatics
because you are moving at like high
speed you're now alone in the limo honey
i'm gonna deal with other people's
damage once you decide what you're doing
everyone for no reason has just left out
limo the water is lovely
said the bloody corpse has this happened
alex
like ten minutes into a new episode
we've left the emotional problems behind
us
and the half the party just jumped out
and asked them
for literally no reason whatsoever we
need physical
can we replace the rest of these people
the damascus with someone who
has people who are competent i cannot
work under these guys
would be relatively similar and welcome
back and now with me
i have tim why don't you tell us a bit
about yourself tim my name is tim
meredith
uh i'm very glad to be here thank you um
i am the
show runner and co-creator and co-star
main star i like to say but technically
co-star or still a firmer which is a
improvised sci-fi comedy podcast
nestling
rusty quill's heart tell us a bit more
about your show what's it about like
what what's the deal with stella furman
what's what's the deal let's get to the
rub tim stella firm limited is
a futuristic civilization which is
comprised of basically
all of the bits of humanity that made it
off earth before it went
whoops and it has now become the
universe's premier terraforming and
planet creation
business much like say a magrifier for
those who uh
like hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
and i play trexman who is sort of a very
a very high ranking but much despised
and
reviled planet designer and consultant
and i work with a clone assistant david
seven who is
innocence personified and i proceed to
ruin his innocence
over now two series you say despised and
reviled i mean we have we have magnus
which you know has
as jonathan sims this sort of slow
burning and an arch and we have
we have rescue gaming which as we've
we've seen is a little bit more
kind of friendly and uh that's probably
not a word that i would
necessarily use how would you say the
characters what would you say
characterizes this show
so some villains are arch and trexel is
arch in that
you might find him asleep drunk under an
arch
uh in that his his evilness comes from
his incompetence and lack of willingness
to admit it or improve or change in any
way so you know
very much the human condition so yes
it's a very sort of high energy chaotic
show
in which david 7 is just desperately
trying to keep things on track
whilst trexel sort of aggressively and
sometimes near fatally ignores his
even his own basic duties um which which
leads to a certain sort of
fun panicky vibe that i like to uh i
like to create
as the younger baby sibling of rusty
quill on its network
how are you finding things did you feel
like you're being warmly welcomed into
the
fan bosom i mean i i say this to the
person
who funds all of this so you can be
assured ever just a kind and honest
answer but no it's very it's very good
and what's really nice is it's an
improvised podcast and improv is
improv is a tricky thing because in in a
live setting you're probably really fun
because it can go wrong
um and you don't know where it's going
and in sort of a live theater setting
that's sort of understood but as soon as
you start to record things and you're
sort of laying it down forever
it can sometimes lose a bit of its spark
so what i think we found is a really
nice medium of we've got all of the fun
and excitement and sort of lack of
predictability of improv
but we've also got such a strong
production team around us in terms of
the editing and the soundscaping and all
of the extra stuff that goes along with
it
that you kind of have all of the fun of
improv but with all of the high
production values that rusty quill
lovers
have come to know and appreciate and you
do have a
a plan right tim you didn't you didn't
just tell me on lies right you do you do
know
eventually what's gonna happen there is
a story in here right tim right oh sure
yeah yeah that's there what we've done
is again we've gone for a best of both
approach in the
we know where the story is going so
there is an overarching plot
we are making a point well i assure you
we're making a point eventually
and that's all worked out we know where
we're going with it but how we get there
precisely in all the elements of that
that's
all going to be improvised and that's
all sort of up up for grabs and it's
been
yeah it's been going it's been going
really well the listener reaction has
been
overwhelmingly positive um we won some
awards
we won some awards and we won
two awards at uh last year's 2019's um
audio audioverse
awards for best new improvised
production i believe and
uh best new improvised performer so
still oh you're one best new improvised
performer congratulations
we can't go into the details of it alex
we can't go into the details
well done tim you specifically for
winning that it may have been ben
my co-star and brother who won the
specific one about him but the important
thing is that we won two awards one of
them was for the show and the other one
is unimportant
so with all of this in mind then i've
asked you to pick a clip that you think
is representative for
for people who might not have heard
stellar firmer something that they can
sink their teeth into and see if they
like it which
is a task uh how did we do well liking
the podcast is the task is that what is
that what you're saying to me alex
i'm just saying that there's so much to
like how could you possibly isolate
a short two-minute segment that isn't
just utter chaos
yes and that that is a challenge it's
hard to point to anyone bit of it and
say this is what it's all like but
i picked one one section that i think
really sort of captures many of the
elements that makes the show the show
and so this is from episode 21 and uh
david and trexel are discussing uh the
galaxy's
sort of most popular schlocky romance
novelist you know the kind of person
that wrote a thousand books in their
lifetime and you know
it was about 30 a year that's that sort
of person and
because it's improv it's sort of a good
demonstration of one of the classic
elements of improv which is here's a
complicated thing that i'm now going to
ask the other person in the room to
explain
and we do everything in my planet must
speak to the romantic soul
i need sparkling stars breathtaking
views billowing shirts and as much as
possible of it needs to be pink and
frilly
interesting interesting interesting
interesting just want to confirm
something yes this is lula bella we're
talking about
lulabella annas marum the
self-proclaimed
universe's greatest romantic novelist
well i have to admit in this case
as a self-proclaimer myself they are not
lying
they are a wonder david best selling
author
bon vivor of the of the literary world
they are a towering figure in
short to medium length romantic fiction
okay so well in which case for us to get
an idea of exactly what lula bella might
be after
um could you run me through sort of the
typical plot of a lullaby
[Music]
of course let's pick a classic um let's
uh
the star venturer of quadrant j story
time
disbelief suspended now the star
venturer is
a a rapscallion a buccaneer of sorts
pirate trader perhaps to his enemies but
in reality
a merchant venturer until he catches the
eye
of a young pullman jonathan swiftbeak
he looks across the star port in which
he's actually tending to a
poorly maintained pool and sees seize
the buccaneer there
yes yes that's the man for him but their
love is forbidden
for a lowly pullman cannot cannot
consort with a merchant venture of
of of this class so they steal away in
dead of night which is confusing because
on a stop off there's no night because
it's not like an actual
it's not important they steal away their
parents are furious and they
pursue them across galaxy to galaxy and
everybody loses clothes and then at the
end it's all just naked and sex
story time over disbelief reinstated
okay so confusion followed by sex yeah
mostly it's
people being hot and confused and then
they have sex
right so that's how lula bella sort of
sees humanity
and and and gets to their essences as
they say yes well
if you really boil your energy down and
i must stress not actually because you
actually boil humanity down it's just
sort of
mash in those bones but if you boil the
essence of what makes a human down
it's basically confusion and sex mostly
confused sex
well and also i've noticed here it
doesn't say and welcome back and now i
am with
a mike lebeau of internet and video fame
hello mike tell us a bit about yourself
why are you here
why have you graced us with your
delicious presents
hello uh yeah hi everyone i'm mike i'm
the head of video for rusty quill
and i'm here to talk today about the
projects that i work on predominantly
the stuff i've done on youtube
the stuff i've done through twitch and
the behind the scenes content that we
also produce
okay okay that's lots so baby steps here
mike
now i've i've listened to an episode of
one of these podcasts
of which i've heard video what yes we
have a youtube channel uh youtube.com
forward slash rusty quill
on there you can find all of your
favorite podcast content so stella firma
rustical gaming and the magnus archives
they're all up there the reason why i
put them all
onto youtube was so that one we could
expand the
uh audience base so if people prefer to
listen to
rusty quill through youtube instead of a
cast and audio platforms then
they can go there plus through youtube's
closed captions
we're able to allow people who are hard
of hearing
to listen to and enjoy the podcast that
we produce as well
it was actually really useful it's
something that i'm going to continue to
work on
and through youtube we're also able to
house our streaming content through
vods as well video on demand so you you
talk about streaming now i've i've
read about streaming it's it's some kind
of fishing thing right
almost um so streaming in our sense is
actually through
a channel called twitch.tv forward slash
rusty underscore quill
and through that we don't necessarily
stream fishing but we do stream
uh potentially fishing related content
it's a
variety channel that we have called rq
streams and on there
we bring in people from around the rusty
quill to stream
various pieces of content live for you
so my show for example focuses on gaming
based tutorials
so i allow people to sort of see games
we discuss them
and we also talk about how you actually
play the game as well the raw mechanics
of it to
enable people if they're a new gamer
potentially
to come and join in as well or if they
like what they see
to buy the game and play along and but
there's other stuff as well
right that's right yeah so there's like
i say it's a variety channel so
there's a lot of other bits and pieces
on there like for example we're
trialling something called sandbox
sunday which is a sandbox slot
it's not available every week but
through that we're able to
just play around with new ideas in the
past we've done baking
we've done character-based work we've
done
quizzes game shows that sort of thing so
there's plenty available on there for
you
so does that mean that if if i really
like that one show that i listen to
which i'm not going to give the specific
title because it might be any of them
are you saying there's a chance i might
get to see some of the people who were
working on that and or even the
personalities thereof in your
streaming that's a very specific
question alex and the answer to that is
of course
yes one of the big things that i wanted
to do in the rusty quill is make the
people who are behind the curtain
basically more visible and more
available often in the creative
industries you don't really get the
opportunity to
meet your favorite artist or your
favorite voice actor or whoever
so through rq streams and through the
video work that i do
my goal has always been one to make the
rusty quill
brand more available in more places and
two
to be able to bring to the forefront our
talent
so that you can interact with them more
well one last tricky question for you
then mike
you might not know about this but
secretly okay although i

i've listened to one of these podcasts
for reasons beyond
anyone's understanding although i
listened to that podcast i hate everyone
involved in it whatsoever perfect
is there any reason to partake in your
streaming in addition to the fact that i
will be engaging with these people who
for some reason i listen to but also
hate
i mean yes um because this is an
entirely new avenue
this is an entirely new avenue of
content that we're trialling here
so through rq streams it's not actually
tied necessarily to the podcast content
that we're producing there will be some
overlaps and there will be some
crossovers inevitably
but ultimately through twitch and
through youtube we're creating something
that's
totally different in a lot of ways but
still is true to
rusty quill it's true to the people that
we are
as i say whether you go there for trying
to meet the people
or wanting to meet the people who
produce the content that you're
listening to
or you're going there to take part in
the variety of stuff that we produce
it's entirely up to you the floor is
yours as the consumer so
you guys basically tell me what you want
we'll try and make it happen
okay okay well i'll i'll admit to a
passing interest but i i
promise you nothing unless i hear some
kind of clip to
help contextualize what you're saying
and otherwise demonstrate so do you have
anything that you could possibly meet
that need with
well thank goodness that i prepared this
thing on this shelf just over here alex
um
actually i'm just gonna pass this over
to you now so this is our little vt
uh which sort of explains well how
rq streams works and also is a little
highlight reel of some of the best
moments so far predominantly on the
gaming side
hello hello everyone welcome
welcome to rq streams uh thank you very
much for joining us here today
um it's myself uh mike we're hot for
damp
birds
that's not a phrase i ever expected to
hear oh i don't understand
i'm joined by anil hello what did i just
do
i just kicked the bin
[Music]
hopefully going to be a fantastic few
months of streaming activities
ah sitting at home is so relaxing when
you live in a cave
in the middle of nowhere with no door
or anything and you have to dig your new
room
look we do have a plant though the whole
concept that we've come up with uh for
this
is that we're going to be teaching you a
little bit about gaming we're going to
be giving you information to be able to
like get
into the world of gaming and hopefully
encouraging some new players into some
of our favorite genres
yeah uh content warning
blood anil i think we are
we are so far beyond content warnings
now
that's fine yeah i'm happy with that i'm
happy with that i'm glad all of my life
decisions i'm i'm happy with right now
this is what exactly what i needed we i
didn't realize that what we were going
to do to try and create a further
emergency
was to literally cause a career a
reactor to collapse
this was not a good decision right can
you just shoot that and blow it up well
i think
i think i'm gonna have to can i not just
can i pick it up
[Music]
and welcome back and now we're with
april sumner why don't you introduce
yourself april tell us a bit about
yourself why you're here
what are you bringing to us now hi alex
uh
i am the current wearer of many hats
i am production manager over here at
rusty quail i also am the patreon
producer
and currently gaming producer but may
not be by the time that this comes out
so queen of the producers that's what
i'm hearing i like to think professional
alex whip cracker
so that sounds closer to the mark yeah
so we've got you here to start
discussing our patreon a little bit
explaining it a bit more
why don't you uh talk some of our
lessons through a little bit sure thing
so our patreon is a way that our fans
and
listeners can get more involved with the
company so
in exchange for them contributing to us
on patreon
at one of our different levels which
i'll explain in a second
they are able to not only enable us to
be able to
grow our company but in return they also
get access to exclusive content
so we have three different tier levels
that are available we've got the
citizens level which is two dollars a
month
and for that one you get access to
exclusive content such as
early release news so that you know what
the titles for the episodes are going to
be at the beginning of the week
you also get access to exclusive
pictures information about our editors
and behind the scenes
such as that we have our nights level
tier which is our five dollar tier
for that one you get access to exclusive
special gaming episodes
you also get some special access to fan
writing competitions that we've done for
our show the magnus archives and then
special stella pharma access
such as david's fat corner and trexel's
horrible history
which are a lot of fun for our nobles
tier which is ten dollars
you also are able to get access to
amas which are ask me anythings with
either like yourself
or editors or brynn who is in our gaming
show he's done a couple of them so far
where you get access to a chatroom and
discord and can ask pretty much whatever
you like of the creators find out more
behind the scenes
it gives you a little bit more
one-on-one conversations and then you
also get access to other special
extended special content as well it
sounds like you've got enough to be
getting on with with patreon alone never
mind trying to take on all the other
stuff as well
yeah patreon definitely has a lot uh we
have
loads of exclusive posts um well over a
hundred of exclusive content
um but between exclusive content and
early access there is over 600 posts on
patreon so
i stay busy with planning those out i
also know over the next year we're going
to be
accelerating even more content right now
we drop at least one new
content a week and then moving forward
we're hoping to accelerate that even
more
okay so what i'm hearing is that for for
a small amount i you can get like a lot
because of all the backlog which is
pretty cool
but here's something else then i am i'm
giving money and
helping keep the lights on at rotty
quill which by the way totally a thing
this is very much our bread and butter
this is how i have a job
where is this money going what's it
doing what's what's the
point well besides keeping me employed
which i very much appreciate
it also goes to getting us new equipment
so without the extremely generous
support of all of our patreons we
wouldn't have been able to move as
easily as we did from
studio to setup to remote setups so we
were able to get remote equipment for
everyone
we've also been able to expand
a lot of our offerings so one of the
goals that we had on there also was
expanding rq streams
and being able to bring more people in
to that series so now instead of just
mike and annel we're able to have a lot
more people involved with that
and then moving forward we're also going
to be extending our content
one of the things that we've got coming
out later this year is actually going to
be a patreon exclusive show for freaks
roll call
which has been in the works for a very
long time and is finally
going to be coming out so in that case
then i'm getting all these wonderful
things i know that i'm helping the
company
what more could patron possibly be doing
what more could it possibly do for
anyone april so the other thing that
we've started
doing recently is because of the global
pandemic with coved
we are donating 10 of all of the funds
that we collect through our patreon
to the who covet relief
solidarity response fund so by
joining our patreon and contributing to
that you're also helping a good cause
because we do make a charitable donation
through that well i think at this point
then you know what i want to see i want
to see you put your money where your
mouth is
we've talked about the patreon i think
it's only fair that at this point we
show what kind of thing is on there so
that people can
have a taster of it and i've asked you
to pick a clip just like everyone else
to put you on the spot a little bit in
return so
what did you end up picking so the clip
that i enjoyed picking is one of our
novels exclusives
it's part of our martin poetry segment
so martin blackwood from the magnus
archives has
uh proclivity for doing poetry and he
likes to read them to the tape recorders
he's a prodigy he's a true just
exceedingly talented
mozart of poetry he definitely doesn't
have a ghost rider named daniel uh who
does all that work for him
but yes so martin blackwood likes to
read uh his poetry into the recorders
for their lo-fi charm and we have little
snippets of him doing that throughout
season one we're also starting to work
on season two this particular clip
is during martin's extended homestay
prior to episode 22 of the magus
archives
visitors by martin k
unfamiliar circumstances have come
knocking at my door
surprising from all angles surprising
from the darkness
there's a woman at my door there's a
woman at my door and she's insistent
wanting in but she is outside
outsider lots of outsiders are on the
other side of my door
knocking knocking crawling
crawling seeking seeking
i cannot welcome you in strange visitors
i cannot make you a cup of tea if you're
the woman
i think you to be you'll have to stay
outside my door
and i will stay within
why do you stay there outside my door no
words to speak of
yet silver syllables are trying to
breach my door
are you waiting for something are you
waiting for someone
someone special to let you in
because that someone isn't me
i am safe in my sanctum
patience is my friend for now i can
resist you
i am strong enough to handle this but i
do
wish i had another door
and welcome back i hope you enjoyed
potentially the peak of my career
like my genuinely the best thing i've
ever done with me now i have
hannah brankin of uh ceo
extraordinaireism
won't you say hello hannah tell us a bit
about yourself hello hello so
my name is hannah brankin i am the chief
operations
officer for rusty quill and i've been in
post officially
for about a year at this point yeah give
or take so company was founded in
2015 so i'm guessing then that coming in
last year was mostly just
shaking a lot of hands and telling
everyone job well done everything is
finalized
yes everything was absolutely flawless
and i've had very little to do ever
since
um or or the truth yes uh
the company obviously started off as one
man and his friend a blanket
it has since obviously evolved quite a
significant way
from that point so we now have around 25
to 30
people behind the curtain working for us
at any given time
plus performers which is like another 70
on top or something like that that's not
even including our regular performing
set and cast either so it's a pretty
significant
operation at the moment what are the
things that make us
tick as a company how do we work well
obviously first and foremost we
are a podcast uh hold the zone
then put it down unless you're using it
to listen to podcasts
we are a podcast company first and
foremost so
the main priority is obviously putting
out content that
we are proud of and that we think that
other people will enjoy
but in terms of the behind the curtain
there's actually a huge amount that we
do in terms of bringing people into the
industry
and training those people up so we
specialize
in bringing people on that we see have a
real
spark and a real potential but for a
plethora of different reasons
possibly haven't had those opportunities
elsewhere
and bringing those people into the fold
and training them up to make
like truly awesome content but wait
hannah that sounds like an international
situation
are you saying that we employ people
outside of the united kingdom
i am saying that yes
obviously we are a uk-based company
but we do have people working for us in
the us
we have a smattering of people across
europe it's a surprisingly international
set of people which makes the old
meetings
during uh during a pandemic an
interesting one for time zones
i hate all time zones all time should be
the same time
[Laughter]
double plus good um okay cool so we have
all these people how do we make sure
that everyone is is being treated fairly
hannah how how tell us how we're all
we're all desperate to know these
leading questions and their answers
yes well in terms of being treated
fairly we have a wonderful wonderful
head of hr that makes sure that the the
nuts and bolts of that works really well
we like suzanne susan's the best
yes but in terms of how we operate as a
company to ensure fairness
we have a flat pay structure
which means that myself alex and anyone
that comes in
bright eyed and bushy tailed uh is on
the exact same
hourly rate um as those payments go up
they go up for everybody okay cool so as
far as i'm aware
we make stories everyone enjoys the
stories and
everyone just works for those magic
beans that you have a big sack of
that is as far as i understand how the
company works
i have a confession you are the
only person who is currently being paid
in those magic beans i thought
hang on i thought we need to make sure
that everyone's paid the same amount of
magic beans
no no uh everyone else gets coined for
their where oh that's fine
um the way that we get hold of those
coins
um varies drastically
one area in particular is obviously
patreon another area
of income is advertising one of the
distributors we currently use is a cast
so when you hear that bing bong bing
yeah and
a uh toothpaste i love toothpaste bye to
face comes on
um that has been what we call
dynamically inserted by acast
when you hear possibly uh alex or johnny
or ben or whoever it might be
saying i like toothpaste toothpaste by
toothpaste
those are called baked in ads and those
are the ones that we
produce in house based on a client spec
we have
showno ads on the website we have slots
available for those
youtube provides a steady income stream
as well
twitch again uh mike has gone into
detail on this already but there's an
income stream from
twitch one of the really interesting
areas is
production for hire one of the good
examples of that would be
outliers the seasons that we've made in
association
with historic royal palaces uh the long
and short being
cool people come to us they say hey do
you wanna make a cool thing and we say
yes that'll be this amount of money
please and they say cool and then we go
away and make a cool thing
now i think you might have missed
possibly the most important way we make
money which is
for only three magic beans you can buy
uh my used pencils and that keeps the
company going right
we're not whistling any more pencils
with your initials into post to people
alex we've
we've covered this well then i'm curious
how exactly you intend to
make any kind of merch money if it's not
via whittled pencils there
are other avenues to explore when it
comes to merchandise i don't believe you
that's a lie
yes there are chief marketing officer
callum
has been working to create a number of
what we would say sort of merchandise
waves which have been dropping and will
continue to drop throughout the year and
beyond
some of this may or may not include
alex's whittled pencils
tbc and if people are interested in per
chance purchasing some merch where would
you suggest that they go to
so the best place to get hold of
our various different merchandise is
always going to be through the website
we're adding various suppliers all the
time
so website is the best place to access
things like
our redbubble site and and various other
things that we've got
in the mix and upcoming over the coming
weeks and months
obviously an area that we haven't
covered yet
given that it's 2020 is obviously live
events
this is something that we're very much
interested in but
we're just obviously not in a position
to do anything about that currently
there are an awful lot of digital live
events that are
happening at the moment which we are
partaking in
the live events that we've done so far
this year haven't been so much an income
stream but have been
charity events yeah at the moment we do
charitable things occasionally or so i'm
told
we do charitable live events be they
in person or obviously now uh currently
digital
but we also give charitably
anyway so i don't know how aware people
are of it but we currently give not our
profit margin but
everything that we earn from patreon we
give 10
to the covert response fund i've been
doing that for a few months now and
we'll be continuing with that as long as
we possibly can but in the meantime the
important thing is that we will be
giving them a steady supply of magic
beans
um to keep things growing yeah
unfortunately again you're
you are the only a recipient of of the
magic beans
everyone else gets okay i'm gonna say it
now on
air for everyone which is i will ensure
that everyone starts getting some magic
beans it's completely inappropriate i'm
the only one getting uh magic beans here
and
i'm gonna i'm to make a point of
addressing this for everyone i'm sorry
about that
and and on that really peculiar note i
decided to steer us into against my
better judgment
we're now going to jump across to a
conversation with anil who's going to be
talking to us about
our community and ways people can get
involved in us uh beyond just sort of
listening to the things we make but
thank you for your time hannah thank you
very much
that'll be three magic beans please no
and now we are with anil godigamui of
our
community manager our leader of coms our
general
professional lovely person why don't you
introduce yourself tell us a bit about
yourself why are you here anna what is
it that you're bringing to our
delicious smorgasbord of content to this
very day uh yes hello
uh my name is anna gunigamura and i am
aware of many hats uh chief
communications officer community manager
social media manager basically if you
interact with us
on social media in any way it's me
you're probably talking to uh why don't
we first sort of dive into a little bit
about what we even mean
by community like is this a thing where
we all
just listen to podcasts at the same time
what do we mean by community oh that
would be lovely and actually listen
alongs do happen
but what we mean by community is that
there is a vast
number of people who not only want to
listen
to a given show but they also want to
engage with other people about it they
want to talk about their favorite
characters
they want to talk about where they think
the show is going
and all of this contributes to you know
people reaching out and trying to find
platforms on which to discuss these
things
and there are multiple ways you can do
that on the internet and we have chosen
to
to try and engage on many of those uh to
help foster this
this sense of community and you know to
foster these conversations
so i'm i'm a podcast listener who's been
listening to the show but not
necessarily engaging in the community
but i've decided
today is the day i am going to reach out
and say hello what are the easy ways for
me to do so just quick and click and
there we go i've said hello yeah
just you know drop us a message on
something like twitter or on facebook
you can find us on twitter
at the rusty quill or you can find us on
facebook at facebook.com forward slash
the rusty quill you know just drop us a
message drop us a line say
hi just let us know you're out there and
that's a
a great start all of these are nice but
i'm feeling i'm feeling the instinct for
a bit more discussion i don't want to go
crazy you don't want to go too far don't
go
completely beyond the pale but uh yeah
okay i i kind of fancy some kind of
discussion with
other fans maybe not necessarily
directly with the creators every single
time just
discussing nuanced elements but also
there's probably quite a lot of fans if
only there was a way to
sub organize those conversations into
some kind of threads annal is there
is there even such a thing it sounds
like you're talking about
reddit right never heard of it yeah
reddit.com so this is a global community
like site organized into different
boards where people can talk about you
know various niche interests and such
we have a small part of that in the form
of two subreddits
you can join a community of about 11 000
archivists over at
our slash the magnus archives that's a
small quarter
11 000 people uh in comparison to some
boards maybe a bit larger thing but yeah
i mean
it's uh it's a cozy community
from what i have seen now um or you can
join
uh our slash rusty quill to talk about
uh our other shows and you know
on there you will find discussion
threads about episodes as they come out
various bits of fan art discussions
about theories that people might be
having about the show
you know all in a kind of like threaded
forum like manner
okay okay so i'm you you're getting me
you're getting me interested but
you know what i've changed my mind i'm
gonna go completely book wild i'm diving
so deep down this rabbit hole that i'm
never gonna climb back up out of it okay
i i wanna i wanna talk with the creators
i wanna talk with all the fans about it
i want enormous
long dedicated discussions on a
dedicated
spot that i know is being handled
correctly is there even such a thing or
do i
do i need to create it myself well you
could create it yourself and
there is not say not to say that other
people haven't we are aware of various
fan servers like that
but we've also taken the decision to set
up our own
official community space on a platform
called discord
and you can join our discord through
various meets the links are
scattered throughout our social media
and
about two years ago we decided to take
this leap and set up a space where
not only could the fans form a community
around our shows to talk about them but
talk to each other
but through text and voice channels and
but also have the creators of these
shows you know
have a little bit more of a closer
engagement with fans
over the last two years this has grown
from from very humble beginnings to a
community
of over seven members not just chatting
about
our shows although there are specific
channels for that but
i've expanded out you know talking about
their day to sharing pictures of their
animals and plants to talking about
things like linguistics and music and
you know other interests
than just what they are listening to
seven thousand people
all in a room yelling at one another
that this is just coconuts that sounds
like madness this sounds
sounds awful how on earth would you make
sure everyone's nice not all in one room
there are multiple rooms there's like
over 40 channels on our discord
for the various conversations to to take
place
some of these are specific to our
patrons some of these are specific to
shows
but they're also like a lot of community
and general interest channels
and not only that people coming to this
space
we we want them to feel welcome we want
them to feel safe so we've got a
a very coherent set of community
guidelines and a community moderation
team
in place to ensure that you know
conversations stay on track and that
people don't get
too fraught in their discussions with
one another oh well that sounds much
much nicer that sounds far more coherent
okay
okay cool well it sounds like there's
quite a lot of ways for me to be getting
involved should i want and uh
are there any future plans for things
that don't exist yet that maybe we will
be doing eventually or oh yes is this
the final but the final
i was about to say final nail in the
coffin
i hope not um no um as we are able to
engage
on more platforms we will so we have
plans for instagram to be able to
showcase more of
the visual side of shows like podcasting
is not just
an audio medium as contrary as that
sounds
people are creating fan art people want
to see the the people behind the
microphone
mostly cows last time i checked yeah
pictures of cows
not not a bad thing to to see but also
we want to
expand into blogs and like tell people
more about
the people they are listening to find
out more about us
okay so that's that's that's quite a lot
you know
you've given me a lot to be thinking
about but let's say i uh i'm just about
to
dip my toes into this as a community
space is there any like one piece of
advice one takeaway that you really want
to encourage so that
people know what to expect before they
start or anything like that
the thing i would say is it doesn't hurt
to try it out
you can always view our um
social media or look at the platforms
that we are on without necessarily
engaging in any particular way
even on the discord you are able to join
up it's free
we don't put any barriers on that and
just listen
and check out what is going on there and
then see if you want to engage
and even if if you don't you never have
to lurking is perfectly fine
just you know seeing what the community
is on uh
is doing is is perfectly good as well oh
well that sounds
lovely in that case then thank you for
your time annal very much appreciated
and welcome we will be rounding out this
this
extravaganza of uh rusty quill i think
now thank you for having me
and that concludes this extra special
episode where we have been looking
behind the scenes and talking with
the people that don't just make the
shows but keep the company running so
that you can get the stories and stuff
that you like
i hope it's been informative for you i
know that a lot of people who were
involved in this enjoyed making it and
you know shining a light on the way that
they work and things like that
obviously we are an ongoing concern we
are looking to the future and we are
making new shows and so on and
when we do maybe we'll do another one of
these to give people an update on how
we're working
but if you've made it this far thanks so
much for your time thanks so much for
showing an interest into how we do what
we do and as always if you are
interested in us if you're interested in
what we do
do visit www.rustyquill.com that is
rustyquill.com
we put things on there like job postings
when they're relevant you can get
through
links to the community to the store to
the shows that we make
if you've heard that show sounds
interesting give it a go we've
deliberately picked and made
shows that we think that if people like
one they're probably going to like the
others
and if you haven't already do get
involved in our communities as anil said
there are a lot of people in there who
are really keen to talk about stuff
if you enjoy the things that we make
you're probably gonna have a good time
there as well
so all i can say at this point is thank
you so much for taking the time for
discovering us and for
sticking with us and as always look
after yourselves keep happy keep healthy
and we'll see you all on our regularly
scheduled programming
introducing peacock the new free
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