NEW Schedule for Silm Film!

MithLuin

Administrator
Staff member
For the past 4 seasons, the Silmarillion Film Project has happened at 10 AM Eastern time on Friday mornings (typically every two weeks). This schedule has survived the birth of Dave's son Wally, and Corey's push to have Signum University accredited in the state of New Hampshire. But a disruption was bound to happen eventually!

As you may know, Trish Lambert begins a new job this month. While I wish her all the best in her newest endeavor, it means she is no longer available on Friday mornings to participate in Silm Film :(

As you are more likely to know, Corey Olsen's broadcast schedule is quite booked already. So, alternative time slots when Corey, Trish, and Dave will all be available are rather limited. Corey has suggested moving Silm Film to Thursday evenings, at 10 PM Eastern Time. All three of the Hosts are free at that time and would be able to continue Silm Film moving forward.

Obviously, this time is much less friendly to the European viewers. :( The Twitch stream will be available as a recording immediately, which helps with keeping people in the loop, but does make live participation nigh impossible for those not in North America.

Corey asked me to reach out to everyone here and see what you have to say about the new proposed schedule. He hates to change the current schedule, but doesn't see much choice at the moment. What impact will this change have on people's ability to participate?



Note: Session 4-17 will still happen on Friday June 7th at 10 AM Eastern Time, as usual. Session 4-18 will occur at the newly scheduled time.
 
Yeah, this is a *really* inconvenient time change for our European participants :(
 
I coulnt attend live anyway so, as long as the podcasts are available on twitch pr yt its okay for me.
 
The problem is also that since there is an imformation gap between the forum and the pod sessions, there's always a pressure on those who are active in both to point out certain decisions and ideas. The fewer we are who do both, the bigger the load on those who remain.
 
For me, the SilmFilm project has been showing up at 3pm on a Friday, which means that I can have it on in the background while I finish my work to remind me to prepare for the Gryfflet stream. 3am the preceding morning won't quite hack it, I'm afraid, so my participation will decrease significantly.

I already have enough fun fitting the rewatch of ExpLOTR around my work schedule; I couldn't keep up with Malory so I'm hoping the shorter HoME series will be less strain; I don't think I've watched more than a couple of episodes of the "Hall of Fire" role-play series. I don't think I'll have room for several hours of SilmFilm in addition :(
 
Both are fairly unattainable live for me, but as a day-jobber with a family, Thursday at 8pm (local) is *slightly* more accessible than Friday at 8am. I'm already on the clock for ELoTR on Tuesdays, and Thursday is for Warhammer when I can get free so it's pretty unlikely, but Friday at work is 100% no-go.
 
While it is unfortunate that a night-time broadcast will make it more difficult for European participants (and honestly, I think a 10 PM start time will be difficult for a lot of EST listeners as well). It does, however, work well for me. Both of the ladies in my life are usually in bed by then, and I can participate with almost no interruptions, even if I were to get a new job that required my attention during the day.
 
I believe our other regular European participant is Halstein. So, so far, I'm counting 3 people for whom the new time is a no-go: Haakon, NotACat, and (likely) Halstein. [With NotACat being unlikely to be able to listen asynchronously, either.]

One neutral: Haerangil (not able to participate live in the new time nor in the original timeslot)

Two people for whom it's *slightly* better: Nick, Amysrevenge (Nick was mostly able to do the original time slot and should be mostly able to do the new time slot; Mike was unable to do the original time slot and might *sometimes* be able to do the new time slot).

I'll see if others weigh in, but this does look like it will have a net detrimental effect on live participation. I'm sorry about that :(.

For me, I'm not thrilled about the idea of staying up til 1 AM for this, but it's still doable, most likely (depending on how early a morning I have the following day, really). No idea how a 12 hour time shift effects Australia or other places our participants hail from.


I agree that we should think through some options to help deal with the growing disconnect. There's always been a gap while those who listen asynchronously get caught up, but perhaps we could make that less stressful in some way, if someone wanted to volunteer to take notes?
 
04.00 am Friday morning is a bit early, so I don't think I will follow live often. I do follow Exploring LOTR asynchronously, so I can live with the decision.
 
Just like Not a cat I too have it on at work. I know I haven't be the most active lately due to some personal problems but am hoping to get back very soon now things are looking up. With the new time I will have problems hatching up in time to make any thoughts on the forums but I understand that the guys will have trouble themselves fitting it in at a different time so I will (hopefully) be able to work something out.
 
Thursday evenings are 100% impossible for me to attend. Nights are even worse. I absolutely cannot stay up that late for medical reasons. Considering the extreme amount of time it takes to re-watch a session (up to 5 hours continuously without pause due to the video constantly failing and restarting, plus an hour or more just to find the url), and the many weeks it takes before it's available online, it's already almost always impossible for me to watch a podcast that I have missed. I have missed many and have never been able to watch the vast majority of them, and probably won't ever be able to because I never have 5 uninterrupted hours to watch a podcast, much less the uninterrupted days I would need to catch up a dozen or more podcasts I've already missed.) It's very unfortunate that the podcast design was set up from the beginning to so difficult to access, and near-impossible to catch up unless you started watching back around the year 2000.

I would probably have to quit SilmFilm.

Also I have been taken off the email list and can't attend today because I never received the link in email.
 
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The e-mails didn't go out today. Corey and Trish are aware of this, so hopefully they're working to fix this now. Regardless, the session can be watched on
- still offline at the moment.
 
I agree that we should think through some options to help deal with the growing disconnect. There's always been a gap while those who listen asynchronously get caught up, but perhaps we could make that less stressful in some way, if someone wanted to volunteer to take notes?
For me this is almost certainly the only way I could continue to participate in SilmFilm at all. I don't say that to put pressure on anyone but this podcast has never been very accessible to people with jobs who can't listen at work, and it is simply not possible for me to catch up on podcasts I missed. I already missed many Season 4 sessions that I simply can never watch.

Especially if the schedule is shifting to having a podcast every single week, instead of every other week.
 
There has been no suggestion of having this more often then every other week. Occasionally, Corey's schedule pushes a session back or forwards (as today), but the general schedule for Silm Film is every other week, and will continue to be that.

The twitch version of the podcast is available immediately after the session finishes.
 
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Yeah usually I pop on the Twitch feed almost right after the session ends (I can watch but need to be able to pause when I'm at work, so immediately after is fine).

At this point I don't even sign up for the GoToWebinar.

But I definitely don't need to search for URLs or anything - I just have the Signum Twitch channel bookmarked, and click on it.
 
I am not able to watch Twitch. It does not work on my computer. It has never worked right. Usually I can't find the url and they take down the video after just a week, then wait a month before putting it on YouTube.

Furthermore, there are VAST swaths of the United States with only very intermittent and slow internet access. I live in one of those areas and it is almost impossible to watch videos online because the internet constantly cuts out and I have to start over the video from the beginning. It takes me an average of five hours to watch one podcast. It is simply impossible for me to watch online a session that I have missed. I do not have 5 uninterrupted hours to watch even one missed podcast, let alone to catch up on over a dozen podcasts I have missed this season.

This notion that we should just spend hundreds of hours to catch up on missed podcasts assumes the priviledge of having super-fast internet connection and not having to work for a living. I have a job that I can't just quit to spend every hour of my life catching up on podcasts.


I was cut off from this podcast today and missed almost all of it. I only saw two tiny bits of the podcast because I lost my internet connection repeatedly.


This new schedule means I am almost certainly forced to quit SilmFilm. Which is probably just as well as the Hosts today decided to take it in a direction that upsets me enormously, and dismissed and ignored my concerns.
 
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Instead of editing it into my posts I should ask this question separately

Corey asked me to reach out to everyone here and see what you have to say about the new proposed schedule. He hates to change the current schedule, but doesn't see much choice at the moment. What impact will this change have on people's ability to participate?
Why is he asking, if the decision is already made and we have no say in it?
 
Presumably he is asking because he sincerely wishes to know the impact this change will have on participants. I am sorry if I did not make that clear in my initial post.
 
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