The Difference Between a Passion and a Hobby - Filmmaking with Jon Mabee

To those of you listening from the MSU campus community, happy Midterm!! We have Thursday and Friday off this week for Fall Break. The podcast will be taking time off for fall break too, so we’ll be back Monday the 23rd with a brand new conversation.

This week my guest is Jon Mabee, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, Journalism and Film. Jon’s many classes include Fundamentals Media Production, Principles of Cinematography, and special topics classes including Advanced Directing: D&D Storytelling. We talk about D&D and nerd culture, from noble paladins to evil dragons. Jon explains what aspiring filmmakers can learn about storytelling from studying the character dynamics in role-playing games.

We also talk about the TV and film industries, which Jon’s media students are preparing to enter. The writers guild was on strike from May 2 to September 27 of this year. The actors went on strike July 14, and that strike is still ongoing. We talk about topics related to the strike including AI, what TV is doing in the meantime, and the future of the industry generally.

Instead of recording a housekeeping segment this week, I thought I’d put housekeeping here in the show notes and let the episode start right off with the guest. What do you think of the format? Can I get away with putting the housekeeping only here in the shownotes (shoutouts, announcements, previews of the episode conversation topics, etc) or do you prefer to hear me talk about it at the top of the episode? I think it can work well both ways, but sometimes I like it when a podcast host omits the preface and get right to the meat. Let me know all your thoughts. [email protected].

As always, I want to say a hearty THANK YOU to everybody listening. The podcast audience continues to grow. Thank you for telling your friends about the podcast. Analytics show a lot of Springfieldians are listening. And beyond the campus community and the Springfield area, we’ve got people listening from as far away as Germany. Very cool.

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