Second Helpings #3 - Capt'n Jake Kassen feat. Kathy, Jim, & Michael Cafarelli
Technical Operations Guru, Jake Kassen, joins Kathy, Jim, and Michael Cafarelli to discuss their two decades of working together at Rustic Kitchen producing award-winning culinary entertainment.
Transcript
everyone,
Jim (:Okay.
Michael Cafarelli (:Jim, thanks for coming on episode three.
Kathy (:Hi, how's everybody doing?
Jake (:Hey.
Jim (:Hey!
Jake (:Thanks for having me.
Kathy (:Thank you.
Michael Cafarelli (:times on the last two episodes.
the picture? We're like circa: Jim (:do not describe the importance of Jake
we're going to refer to Jake for the rest of the day as captain
and people would
Kathy (:did that start?
Jim (:were
a dock down in Boston Harbor.
And this tugboat came up and honked and they were generally being abusive to Liz ruin the shoot. But just off camera was another boat. on the boat, it had painted Captain Captain C.A.P.T. slash N Jake. And we turn the camera and I said, Jake, we got to get this. We got to get Captain Jake. So, you know, he goes over and waves away. I said, no, you got to ham it up. So he does, you know.
two or three of these
And that was back in probably: Kathy (:10.
Jim (:have ever produced any of the media that we have been producing now for, think almost 16 years, if it weren't for Jake. And it was one of those things that just sort of happened. We were filming a pilot for the cooking show early on and a friend of mine, Deran Sarafian was a Hollywood director at the time. He was directing episodes of House, know, I if remember that show with Hugh Laurie.
Kathy (:That's true.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yep, House MD with Hugh
Laurie.
Jim (:Yeah. he came into town and we had put an entire little crew together and Jake was hired a sort of a freelance cameraman. I didn't meet him at the time. And when he came in, he was doing some of the location shooting. when they were done with that, and it took, I think a couple of days during the weekend, then they were moving into that little studio that we had created, do some of the studio part of this pilot.
And I was in the studio and people come in and going, I think I was probably on the ladder and I was, was doing something and Jake came in and, I recognized him as one of the camera and Hey, how you doing? We're talking. And my version of this Jake was you looked around and you were asking a couple of questions. you said, you, you, you built all this and I said, yeah, yeah, it's kind of like a copy of our kitchen at home. this is for this, this, yeah, we're doing this.
Jake (:You
Jim (:cooking show here. he said, who's your sponsor? And I said, we don't have a sponsor. And that was like a light bulb moment with Jake saying, who the hell are these people? They're, they were doing this on their own and crazy. We've been called crazy on a lot of levels, but this one here was a labor of love, but
Michael Cafarelli (:crazy enough to do it without a sponsor.
Jake (:Yeah
Jim (:So Jake and I kind of bonded at that moment and we got to know each other. But in that moment, just thought he was a freelance cameraman. So he and there was this other cameraman,
filmed all the different sequences that we needed for this pilot
Michael Cafarelli (:The camera operator, yeah. Hold on one second, I think we lost mom's feed, just
Jim (:happened over that part of a week. And when all of that was done, again, we were talking and I really knew nothing about.
Michael Cafarelli (:on a second.
Kathy (:Can you, can you hear me?
Jim (:television production. And I got to the point where I was asking questions and Jake was answering the questions. So I was at a point where I was like, so what do you do? And that was the first time I learned that Jake worked at Boston University. And what's your title there, Jake, by the way? I know I call you the technical director, but what is your title?
Kathy (:You called me, Mom.
Jim (:manager of
Jake (:of technical operations. So pretty much everything in college communication that is video related or audio related, the stuff that the studios are actually in the space as opposed to things that go out with the students. That's kind of my domain. building studios, doing all the broadcast engineering, that's always been kind of my bread and butter.
Jim (:I've checked the author. Okay.
and
king about, this was probably: Jake (:I got brought into the project, a friend who's early on the show asked me to come and she really basically didn't describe a whole lot of what was needed. I was like, well, sure, I'll help out. chew a little bit. And there's a bunch of other people involved that she was friends with. I didn't really know what to think, to be honest.
I've sort of figured, okay, it's a easy job, day or two of work, a big deal. I did that and I like working with her. think I remember it was actually a little bit, I don't wanna say awkward, but it was confusing because we were getting close to the point in which the video was gonna be shown to you. And I only knew you as a client. there's that whole.
Jim (:Side work, right?
Jake (:The client is the important person, so that's the one you want to impress. Yeah, I mean, you always want to be right by the people who are putting together things, way the other. And I definitely remember there being a meeting a bunch of people, because I think they had me doing a bit of editing on that. My scope kind of grew, and it was really informal.
Jim (:Who didn't know what the hell he was doing.
Jake (:And I remember there being a night, I think it was probably even before you saw that, before it was screened. And I was trying to wrangle everyone together. I'm like, hey, I need some more feedback here. still not sure exactly what this thing is, what you're trying to do. What are you going for? was really, know, it's like, all right, we got a of footage here. We can go lot of different ways.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Jim (:No script, so no script.
What do you wonder with it?
Jake (:But I'm not
the one who this, so me what you want. it was kind of like crickets. I think people that I was working with, were mostly on camera people, they weren't producers, so they didn't have the whole, they weren't really thinking about the structure of it all. were just thinking about individual shots looked. I don't think they were really thinking of how it all came together.
Jim (:Right. Right.
How do look on camera? How do I look on camera?
Jake (:And yeah,
which is common. I remember bringing it in was just a really rough cut of this opening.
you know, the first time I'd been to that location and I was thinking like, well, you know, whatever, never being hired back on this group. You I'm like, they're gonna look at this and be like, what is this? know, and I would legitimately say, well, you know, I was doing what I was told, which wasn't the whole lot. I think anyone who's done freelance in these situations would understand. you know, you were happy and I was happy and
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Jake (:that I saw the location and that's when I was like, wow, this is really impressive. This is not what I was expecting. I like, OK. I knew it was a restaurant, but I wasn't thinking there was going to be a built out studio in this. that was sort of the beginning. And I don't know if you know. And the thing is, so then that was sort of screened I gave the video. And then was sort of it. didn't have a whole lot of feedback after that.
Jim (:Right. Who would do this in a restaurant? Right.
Jake (:And that wasn't really involved for a little while. think I was brought back on when, you were using Final Cut, and I got a call, and I was like, hey, give help with just how to do editing, to get things structured? It wasn't for video runs, it wasn't for photography, it was just like, help us out. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure.
Jim (:Right.
Jake (:do this a lot. then, you know, and that's when I started working with you more. and some of the original people, they sort of, you know, first we were all there as a group, and then, you know, one by one, they sort of stepped out, and I just started working with you directly. That was just much more, because you were someone who even if you didn't have producing training, were thinking like a producer.
Jim (:Yeah, there are.
Jake (:From my point of view, that's what I needed. I needed someone who had this vision, who understood how all the pieces came together. I was absolutely very surprised. figured, well, you must have some connections to the industry and you're just being coy about it or you don't want to get into it and that's fine. but it was great.
working with you. Like I said, I was just so happy that there was someone who really was approaching this from the point of view as a producer and not as an owner and not as talent, but somebody who really actually understood the producing part of it, which is oftentimes the hardest thing to, I think, for people to get their head around.
Jim (:one time when I was explaining what I wanted and I was not quite getting my point across and I was like, you we really, if we keep doing this, Jake, we're to have to get a producer. And you looked at me and you said, you're a better producer than most of the producers I've ever worked with in this industry. And I didn't really even know what a producer was supposed to do. So.
Michael Cafarelli (:Fake it till you make it.
Jake (:Yeah.
Jim (:I was like, well, that's a great compliment. Thank you. And I think I even said, so what does a producer do? And you kind of walked me through and you said, this is what a line producer does. This is what a producer does. This is what the director of photography does. This is what a director does. This is what the writer does. You know what the talent does. And you kind of frame the whole thing. And that connected a lot of dots for me later on.
Kathy (:He had everybody fooled.
Jim (:you actually said, yeah, you're directing right now. And then when you were doing that, you were actually the writer. And then when you're doing that, you were the producer. And I was like, Jesus. But you were helping me with all of it. So you really needed credit for every single thing we were doing because you were a cameraman. were, know, grip. You were best boy. were director of photography. You were director. You were producer. So there were some shows later on. And I remember this when we were doing the credits and the
You would have credit for like tender for things that you were doing. but the, the gap between. Yeah, well, they're there. They're still on our website. As a matter of fact, I'm on rest of kitchen YouTube website. You can go and see all of Jake's credits, but the gap by the way, was when the shooting was done, this guy, Deran Sarafian really, really nice guy helped us tremendously. He took all of this and he was from LA and he went back to LA.
Jake (:I know. just... well... didn't need... didn't need.
Kathy (:Ha
Jim (:And eventually he said, can you come out here? You know, I need you to sort of guide what we want to do here. So I fly out and we meet at this production studio in Hollywood. this is when I started to realize how big of a favor he was doing for us. So we went into a room. met the who was running this massive studio and have all these editing rooms. It's first time I saw the.
Mac towers underneath each editing station. Each room was set up with some chairs, viewing screens so that people could view and talk to the editor. know, some of the rooms are bigger and some are smaller. the corridors of this place were all lined with posters of a very contemporary TV show and movies that you would recognize, you know, from the industry. This was a legitimate big production house. And the woman who was running it was there and Deran was there and I was there.
He introduces me as the client and he says, look, know, we don't have a big budget on this, you know, what we'd like to do is have so-and-so, sort of get this into a timeline for us. And then, you know, we can take it from there. And, know, if we get to picture locked, we'll be happy and, we'll do all the, you know, polishing and color correcting, audio correcting, motion graphics, somewhere else. she looked at him and she said, Deran you send a lot of work our way. said, this is.
Obviously important to you and you said yeah, I think this this guy here is doing something really special and he's got something and you know This could turn out to be something really big and she said look I'll just you know, I'll give you the suite just pay whatever this editor's name was pay him what my cost is on him and don't worry about anything else and When we're all done we walk out of there and Deren looks at me. He goes you cannot believe what she just did I said sounds like she gave us a lot he goes
I'm blown away. for the next couple of days, I worked in this edit suite with Deran and this guy. We cut everything up and got it to pretty much picture lock, which became pilot. And then he layered in that graphics. Remember the animated graphics that he had done? then he had a song written
Kathy (:Mm-hmm.
Jim (:What was that, Katie?
Michael Cafarelli (:using a KT Tunstall song, unlicensed
originally.
Jim (:Yeah. What was her name? That song? Yeah, so we were using that song, Beautiful Girl, and Deran went to guy named Shawn Rorie and he and Shawn created a version of that that is really what
Michael Cafarelli (:KT Tunstall.
Kathy (:Big, big,
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It was a husband and
wife team. One of them was the singer. The wife was a singer and he was like a guitarist. And on the back of an envelope back of like a napkin, Deren wrote some lyrics and they went into a studio and laid down some stingers and a nice like three minute track that we've now used for years. That's the track that when we heard it at the Emmys, that's how we knew we won. Cause all of a sudden they're playing our theme song and we're looking around. It was like, yeah.
Kathy (:and go back.
they went to the studio and laid down stairs.
Jim (:Which we use to this very day. We still use
that.
Michael Cafarelli (:The graphics package we
got a lot of mileage out of and that song we got a of mileage out of.
Jim (:Well, Jake knows better than anyone because we took that graphics graphics package actually just recently. Jake was back in it and we cut it apart and we've used it for a lot of different things. We've used it for openings for kitchen tips. We've used it for teasers. We've used it for commercials. It's sort of our it's our style now, so it's in it ties nicely with Rustic Kitchen. So all of that was happening in LA. We come back, we finished the pilot and. we're continuing with shows and.
I'm calling Jake saying, do you know, so can you know, someone can do this? So do know, someone can do that? And Jake would say, well, let me come by. me see if I can do it In my mind, I'm thinking this is a cameraman. You know, it's funny when you meet someone and you sort of pigeonhole them. that's all you think they're capable of. And to call Jacob, you know, a cameraman is like calling a, you know, I. M. Pei a drafts person. Well, yeah, he does that too, but it does a lot of other things.
Jake (:No.
Jim (:And, so Jake would come by at night and we would work and he downloaded final cut pro for us on one of our computers. And we start working. started doing our own post production work and Jake works up at BU, which I don't know what 15, 20 minutes up the road. You think Jake. And he'd come down on his bike.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:Yeah, if that.
Michael Cafarelli (:This is the last time we were
Kathy (:this is the last time
we're ever going to climb. But at that point, we're going be keeping this rock only for the rest our life.
Michael Cafarelli (:ever a client, because then at that point, we became just our own in-house everything.
Jim (:Right. we, Jake would come down at night and we would work from, you know, five 30 or so, six o'clock till around nine o'clock or so. And then I would take Jake's bike. And for the longest time, he would take the wheel off the front and we'd open my hatchback and throw it, put the seat down, throw the bike in the back. And then I would drive him. He lived north of Boston. I drive him home. And then I drive all the way through Boston to the South shore. We were living down in Canton.
And, know, he would do this sometimes three days a week, sometimes on a Saturday. And this went on for a long time. And it, to me, it seemed like no matter what we needed, whether it was editing, motion graphics, color correcting, audio, reshoots, Jake would just jump in and do it. Studio. Yeah. So the way, you know, he's
Michael Cafarelli (:years.
Kathy (:years yeah
Michael Cafarelli (:A new studio.
Jake (:you
Jim (:Educating me. I'm asking, how do I do this? How do I do that? And he would say, well, you need to get advice from equipment and what kind of equipment he'd listed out. Then he'd say, let me price it out at B and H because I have a discount because you buy so much there. And then we would go to Kathy and say, can we spend some money and we're to do some new lighting here? we're to put some shotgun mics in or we're going to do whatever.
Michael Cafarelli (:Introduces us to B &H.
Yeah, you introduced us to Ketra lights to Gobos, lav mics, shotgun mics, omnidirectional mics.
Kathy (:Can you see me?
Jake (:Yeah, I mean,
Jim (:mixers, switchers,
and it.
Jake (:it's, it's,
Michael Cafarelli (:We go out to NAB,
National Association Broadcasters in Vegas. You show us all that. Black Magic, you're one of the first people to mention Black Magic, what, 15 probably years ago, before that became a household name. Yeah, I think Jim is probably, has to be one of your best students. Has to have had an honorary BU degree at this point.
Jim (:Yeah, we're gonna double back and talk about A and B in a moment.
Jake (:Yeah, I it.
So you are by far the
most enjoyable person to work with. That's why I doing the production, because it's fun. It's fun. You're such a great to work with. And that's a rarity in this business. mean, think from a lot of people, get a lot of friendships that are kind of lateral. people who are...
Michael Cafarelli (:I want to go back to your start.
Jim (:Well...
Jake (:who are on the engineering side or friends with other engineers, people who are shooters or friends with other shooters, and everyone kind knows each other, but it's not, it's kind of rare that you really enjoy working with someone who's sort of the client, so to speak. I mean, people are better than others. mean, hopefully you don't work with somebody you hate. I you're gonna be friends with them to an extent.
you were the one person who was just like, this is so, it's such a breath of fresh air. Someone who knows what they want, you know, they'll be really knowing what you want is probably the biggest part. But also knowing the limitations of what can be done, willing to fund it, not asking for things that were, you know, ridiculous, but also always wanting to push things forward. know, really having an eye for how things looked. mean, like I it was a great project.
Jim (:Yeah.
Jake (:is a great project to work on. And that's why I would keep coming. mean, I'd sort of slog through the day and be like, finally, I'm going to get to some point. I'm going to get to work with someone who is just a joy to be with. I got to say, able to get a good dinner every night, was a pretty...
Michael Cafarelli (:you
Jim (:I forgot about that. We would walk out of Rustic Kitchen, would take home for Emily.
Michael Cafarelli (:What was your go-to dish? Was it a pizza?
Jake (:mean, I love the pizzas. Love the pizzas. Yeah, those guys pizza. mean, I,
Jim (:Crispy pizza, yeah, yeah, but, but crispy. He liked them, he liked them
Jake (:Yeah, and that was Liz's, know, Liz turned me onto that. know, I kind of switched throughout the years. mean, I went through the Arancini phase. You know, a lot of Arancini I definitely got to the point where I was like, I know that.
Jim (:Yep.
You must have a thousand rest of kitchen bags at your house. You must have bags stacked up.
Kathy (:always adding.
Jake (:I think we still have bags of them. Yeah. And then I remember there was a certain point where I was like, okay, you know what? I can't be eating like this every night. And I, I, I switched it over and that's my story of like, yeah, I'm just gonna get salad. That's, is not.
Kathy (:Always adding capers to the salads.
Hahaha!
Jim (:I remember
Michael Cafarelli (:I remember
years ago, I was...
Jim (:you did have these waves, you'd say I'm gaining a little bit of weight. of course, we're going to talk about Jake being a cyclist in a moment, but Jake being a cyclist, if he put on a couple of pounds from a rustic meal, he'd just take his bike on a weekend and go ride 600 miles. you
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Kathy (:I'm
Michael Cafarelli (:Not exaggerating.
Jim (:You know, whatever, whatever he packed on, he tightened the belt up again and he was fine. It was amazing to watch that.
Michael Cafarelli (:I remember
asking, we were doing a new website a long time ago and I think Google Analytics was relatively new and I asked him, there any reason not for me to install this on the backend? And his response was, Google Analytics is like butter in a rustic kitchen dish. It's in everything.
And then I felt comfortable doing it.
Jake (:I mean, that is true.
Jim (:Yeah, by the way, another thing. One time
we needed to do something and Jake says, you're going have have code written for this. And I said, well, who do we call for that? He goes, I write code.
Michael Cafarelli (:You had a Raspberry Pi
running something at one point that you had coded too. Some lighting system, right? You would put a Raspberry Pi up in the ceiling and it was running something.
Jim (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (:Yeah,
mean, it's, I mean, I really, not, take a very different approach than most of my, most of my colleagues, counterparts. I mean, I'm really, really into how can we do this? can we do this sort of on our own locally? You know, generally all these studios get built and there are a bunch of off the shelf products and you kind of tweak them.
and they're all really expensive and you sort of chain them together and that's what you have. You talk to any AV installer or anyone who designs the studio, know, a nine times out of 10, that's just what it is. Here, this is the standard way of doing it. You you buy these 10 things and you hire, you know, an integrator that's gonna go and, you know, chain them all up and then you're done. And then that person walks away and then if you ever need a color change, you gotta call them back and spend a lot of money to have them. Yeah.
Jim (:That's how they get you,
Jake (:And I've never liked that. I've always been about, we the technology? of it's pretty easy to manipulate directly. yeah, that's what I do lot of. At this point, I shoot a whole lot of video. mostly doing studio designs and that sort of integration of
you know, let's talk directly to the device, let's write our own drivers so can do exactly what we want. We don't have to go through one of these big elaborate systems that's going to be really expensive and time consuming to set up and then ultimately not do what we want.
Jim (:How many studios do you think you've built?
Jake (:lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, it's double digits between in higher ed and with us and yeah.
Jim (:A lot, a lot, yeah.
Well, we did four, but he, I mean,
he's, he's building them over at BU.
Michael Cafarelli (:You've done radio stations. Yeah.
Kathy (:You got ready?
Jake (:Yeah, I've done a of radio stations, bunch of AV types, corporate stuff. didn't do any cooking stuff before I met you, but it's a really fun thing to work on, and I've learned so much about that whole side of things. So I did that project that you helped me out with, made the connections for TriMark, and that was a great project. Working with them, and that was the case where it was...
Jim (:Yeah.
Yep.
Michael Cafarelli (:In the seaport, right?
Kathy (:you
Jim (:That's the same part,
Jake (:was great because I knew all the food. I knew what they were going to be looking for in terms of the food shots, in terms of working around kitchen equipment. is different ways of working around an actual kitchen than you would in otherwise a clean studio, for lack of better word. you've taught me so much about food and that whole business, is
Jim (:But the trick on our studios... Go ahead, Mike.
Michael Cafarelli (:Did I just make this up or did you, were you a roadie
Kathy (:And that has made this up a huge deal. We were
in the day, back in the early: Michael Cafarelli (:on Britney Spears back in like the day, back in like the early 2000s or late 90s or one of the, maybe the boy band.
Jake (:Yeah,
no, I did a bunch of... Because I used to work in concert lighting. worked with them. else? Dixie Chicks. I guess they're just the chicks now, but they were... Yeah, because I remember actually I was... And these are doing the big arena shows, and I was doing lighting for that. I definitely...
Jim (:yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Now the chicks. Yep.
Kathy (:Not
the truth, no.
Jake (:was one time I was carrying around a and they used to call these intelligent lights, like to sort swing around and you can program. And I was carrying one, it was really heavy. Dixie Chicks were talking to someone and they're like right in my way. I was just like, you please move? And they were nice about it. I probably should have just gone around.
Jim (:Ha ha ha ha ha.
Jake (:Yeah, so I did a bunch of those big arena shows. it's a different world. For a long time, I thought that was what I was gonna be, my career path was gonna be. But I'm glad I'm not a roadie and those were really long hours and lousy pay. I mean, the only time you get to sleep is actually during the show.
Jim (:Yeah.
Jake (:I can't tell you how many big arenas, I would do the set up on the strike, and many of these shows I'd be on the catwalk on top of a pile of cables or something trying to sleep during a concert, does not work. it's like I've been working straight for 15 hours, and now it's going to be a four hour show.
Michael Cafarelli (:yeah.
Jim (:Right.
Jake (:And then it's gonna be another 15 hours of, you know, a strike. So I gotta take whatever, whatever few minutes I can get. You know, you can't go too far. So early 20s, yeah. and I was working around New York and part of a production company did a lot of TV jobs. So I'd be going around to a lot of the big arenas in DC and New York.
Jim (:Follow it out, yeah, right.
This one you were your early 20s? You were your early 20s doing this?
Jake (:Philly working those, basically the TV concerts that my, company I was working for, we do work primarily for HBO and a lot of those kind of related shows.
Jim (:Right.
Michael Cafarelli (:Very cool.
Jim (:And from that, you want to be you.
Jake (:So yeah, and then that was a case where I never thought I was gonna be working in higher ed. Job came up, I got a call from someone there, I knew, and he's like, hey, can you come in? Can you do this? And I was like, well, all right, I need work and I'm gonna do this for one year, that's it, one year. I am not gonna be there for a long.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Kathy (:you
Jake (:I do not want to be one of those people that all their life in higher ed. And that was 21 years ago or so. Yeah, that was... nice thing about actually working in this is that actually get to work with a lot of really new stuff. What we're working with is always changing.
Kathy (:And here you are.
Jim (:Wow.
Kathy (:Wow. Wow.
Jim (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:and there's money to do it, and there's so many companies like Blackmagic. was talking to them, and they had bought a company that made video switchers, company called EchoLab, and they were based in And Blackmagic bought the company only for the intellectual property, essentially the entire staff, saved one person. And we had...
some of these Echo Lab switchers. And so I was trying to call them and saying, well, I need parts, I need to make this work. remember this pretty vividly. This is before the whole ATEM. This is before Blackmagic was known. And the guy goes, well, you're actually the, your education, that's what we want to target. we send you early unit? we get some feedback? And I remember I...
kind of read the whole studio around all this ATEM stuff. again, this is something where I feel like a lot of people know of this today, anyone who, know, because it's so common and podcasting and small productions and big productions. we got the first box I was talking to them because they were in Australia. So I would come in really early in the morning at like 4 a.m. and then one of their engineers would be staying up really late at night.
Michael Cafarelli (:you
Jake (:And we'd be sort of going over and then troubleshooting bugs in the software. every day there'd be another firmware update where they fix something. that was sort of my, that's how I got into doing Blackmagic stuff.
Jim (:which helped us tremendously because you know, black magic is, you know, they're, they're a very unique company. What they did was they would look at a product that was on the market that was expensive and they would figure out what the essence of that product was. And they'd basically deconstruct it and then make their own version of it. They just had really what mattered without all the unnecessary bells and whistles and sell it for a fraction of the cost to the point where you
Jake (:No.
Yeah.
Jim (:You couldn't believe how cheap it was. But the caveat was if it breaks, don't even call us because you were making these things so affordable and just buy another one, which is kind of bizarre. But look at them now, you know.
Jake (:Yeah.
Yeah, mean, and they're somewhat of a controversial company in the industry. I everyone uses their stuff one capacity or another. a lot of people really don't like using their stuff of the, it's really expensive. Certain things work really well. then, know, but it's not as stable as some of the things that are much more expensive. So it's that, you know, what do you...
It's that trade-off. Do you buy two of their products because they're still, you know, 30 % of the cost of their competitors. knowing that, hey, you know, probably one of these is gonna, you know, it's gonna need some work later on. know, they really have, they've changed the industry dramatically. mean, I think they're kind of like the, I always think of them as the Tesla of broadcast, you know, where they came in and they kind of disrupted a bunch of,
Jim (:Right, comparison.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:long-standing companies, approach things much more from a software point of view. another one of their complaints sometimes that a lot of products designed more software people who seem like software engineers. bring in a lot of really cool features, at the same time, don't have the stability some of the long-standing brands.
So the best thing to do is just be really flexible, know what they're good at, you get certain of their products, you get things from other companies. overall, Blackmatch has been great for, I think, for broadcast because they've made it just so much more accessible and really made everyone step up their game in terms of innovation.
Jim (:And they're huge.
Yeah. We have, we bought a lot of black magic. I have a lot of black magic equipment right around me right now, all of which Jake spec and bought. when I went to my first NAB, black magic had like a little pavilion
Michael Cafarelli (:Our mixer, our switcher. Yeah.
Kathy (:.
Jim (:I didn't go for a few years and I would be going with Jake. And then the next time I went out,
had the biggest pavilion out there. They had exploded. we love black magic. story about NAB, when I went out there with Jake,
Michael Cafarelli (:I loved walking that, that,
Jim (:You know the story I'm gonna tell?
Kathy (:You're
Michael Cafarelli (:I
Kathy (:not
Michael Cafarelli (:think we're going to tell the same story of walking the booths with Jake. It was like being at, when we went to Napham with Jerry Hyman, who was the head of Trimark, and the same way that they would see Jerry Hyman going and get scared. When Jake would go up to the booth and start pestering with questions, was, no. Because he knew their product better than they did.
Kathy (:even gonna tell the state for it. I'm walking with this much of a cap and nothing with that. It was like we went to April with Jerry Beinley, who was the head of the fire department. And the same way that they would see Jerry Beinley going, see him. When Jake would go up to the room and start pestering questions, it all that. See, they're probably better than April.
Jake (:Hehehehe
Jim (:Walk in the woods with Jake, yeah.
same thing.
Well, sometimes it was just the one succinct question. know, these guys, this is the biggest sales event for them for the year. And they have huge pavilions. It's expensive to be there. And you know, these guys can set up their entire year with clients if they do it right. And of course, technologically, these products are changing rapidly. And so they're putting products out there that
maybe they shouldn't really be putting out, they certainly shouldn't be representing that it does certain things. But Jake would know this. So we'd go up to a booth, they'd know him. are you? bit of small talk. And then Jake would just ask that one question. So tell me, have you guys solved the problem with the whatever? it was like you had hit the guy in the head with a hammer.
Kathy (:Go to left way.
Michael Cafarelli (:a left phalange.
Jim (:And he would just look with those glazed eyes and say, well, we're working on it. And we've had some advances. And in mid sentence, Jake would say, OK, great. stay in touch with you. We'll be off to the next booth. And he'd just leave the guy flat. And then the guy's looking around to see if anyone saw it because he just this guy a salesman. And that happened.
Jake (:Yeah, right, yeah.
Kathy (:Okay.
Jim (:On several occasions in the different booths. And it would just be that one question. Are you doing this yet? Are you solved that yet? know, some of them were nicer about it than others, but I, I I'm walking out of there, just dying, watching these people melt in front of them. And, you know, we had great times. When the last one you've been to? You were there a couple of years ago, right?
Kathy (:you
Jake (:Yeah, I know, it's...
Yeah, I I go usually every year. go last year, went the year before that, and then, you know, was the one pandemic year that they didn't have it, so I skipped that. And that was basically, I've probably been 10 times or so. I'll probably go again April. You know, it's a great show. It's great to meet colleagues and see
Jim (:the second biggest show in Vegas other than the Consumer Electronics Show. know, this is 100,000 people a year.
Michael Cafarelli (:It's like CES, World of Concrete, AB, I think you're the top
Kathy (:the CES World of Concrete,
Jake (:Yeah, yeah, right. I it's the same.
Michael Cafarelli (:three.
Jim (:Right, right. And then question.
Jake (:Yeah,
one side's for consumers, the other is for the creators. So NAB is the creator side, and the side is different.
Jim (:Jake was a big buyer for BU. So he was a good customer. of course, then you had one studio that had a fire you know, Jake never tells a story. I love telling the story, but you know, he saved a bunch of students lives. You know, they, they had plugged all their phones in a little power cord somewhere. And then they threw all the jackets and coats on top of it. Forgot about it. He did it up and, know, poof, this thing ignites
Jake (:You
Michael Cafarelli (:He's a hero.
Kathy (:in Europe.
Jake (:Yeah, would
say they never officially came up with what happened. Yeah, a power strip is probably the culprit. mean, we know it was electronic. certainly wasn't. They never said anyone did anything that they shouldn't have been done. I it really was sort of a freak thing.
Jim (:never, that was...
course.
Well, it burned half the floor in this building and Jake got all the students out. was the adult in the room and took care of everyone.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, it might have come from the grassy knoll, but it's probably the power strip.
Jim (:saves their lives. How many, like a whole, I can't even count how many kids were there.
Jake (:Yeah,
Kathy (:was a class.
Jake (:I mean, mostly, I mean, a little backstory. It a small electrical fire. There was a lot of smoke. don't think anyone was really ever danger. It's sort of funny because a bunch of students were in. This is the radio station. This is the old WBUR studios. for those that remember car talk, this is where they kind of got their start. very well-made studios, very isolated.
Basically, I mean it was not it was not like fire and flames, you know, cinematic type stuff I mean, this was one room really filled up with smoke the students were in our studio
Michael Cafarelli (:way I tell it, there's flames and smoke.
Jake (:Yeah, I mean and and the students were in the studio that was so sealed off and had dedicated because you know for acoustic reasons And they didn't even realize that you know anything was happening outside of that and then someone you know went to the door and they realized okay
Kathy (:You
Jim (:Jake,
Jake, I...
Jake (:there's smoke out here and so they ran out. And then I didn't know this and so I was trying to run once I realized the alarms go off, I was trying to run in there worried that they were the studio, I didn't realize how many people had left. it was funny because we go back in, fire department comes and all the restoration in that studio that they were in,
you know, was pristine. mean, there wasn't any dust on it. It was perfect. You would never know anything happened. So outside, there was lots of smoke and, you know, the remnants of, again, there was not like huge flames, but a lot of smoke. the studio itself, where the students were, you know, it was completely fine. actually, had the students known that they could have just stayed there, they could have...
been there, kept doing their show, that the power never went out, so they kept going. we've happened around them, but that's a mark of a good studio right there.
Jim (:Well, look, my story is way better. So you were you were Superman you saved all of their lives. That's the narrative. The fire department tore this place apart. The whole place had to be gutted. did build. That's right. That's
Jake (:Hehehehe
Kathy (:You
Michael Cafarelli (:And he saved the recording of the show.
Kathy (:And he saved about a quarter of an hour to shut up.
Jim (:I've seen that studio.
Michael Cafarelli (:So other than being
a tech and a hardware and broadcast ops guru, the first thing that comes to mind with Jake is the cycling, which we haven't really touched on, but we were not exaggerating when we said 600 miles is like a weekend ride for you. So I can never pronounce the name of it. It starts with an R. What's the name of the cycling that you do?
Jake (:Yeah.
t that goes back years, early: Michael Cafarelli (:Okay. It's a non-competitive sport, right?
Jake (:this French for roughly translates to short tour. So if you think about doing a long cycling tour that might be a couple hundred miles, you know, and a cycle tourist, you know, the people you see on the roads and times, they got all the big bags and sleeping bags and the tent and all that, you know, and they're riding and maybe they're going to do 50 or 70 miles in a day. And they'll do that over the course of a week or, you know, months. are essentially doing the same route, but
,: Jim (:Right.
Jake (:So you can't just do this over the course of a week. are limited, you have to keep moving more or less. there's such a feeling of camaraderie. That's why I really love these. I don't like any of the competitive cycling, but everyone is trying to just finish. everyone's having a good time, and everyone loves cycling. So you're on the road with a bunch of other people, and you can be with people who are extremely strong, who otherwise race.
ve been doing that for, since: Michael Cafarelli (:You, you got a very, you got a community award a few years ago from the organization. You'll never bring those stuff up yourself, but yes, you are a
Kathy (:You've got a community of warrants that you need to go to a coffee organization. You'll never bring this up yourself, but yes, you are to
renown, think, ren-dor? Ren-dor. Ren-dor. Yes.
Michael Cafarelli (:renowned, can't Randor, Rand on door, random or, and yeah.
Jake (:Randonneuring randonneuring yeah.
Jim (:randonneuring. How many states have you
been in? How many states have you done? You've done this all over the country, right?
Jake (:Yeah, I mean, when you really start spending a lot of time with this, I mean, you do the rides locally and then you kind of get the bug and you want to go to other places. And I can't say enough good things about it. It's so much fun because rules of the sport are the same. They're kind of run a little differently in different parts of the country, but overall the rules are the same. so you can go to some place, you can go to...
Arizona or Texas or California or Iowa, anywhere, and meet up with these groups that run these and you'll do a ride and the ride may only have five or ten people on it. But you immediately have that connection because you've, you know, you're all, you're all seasoned cyclists, you're all in the same event, the rules are basically the same. it's great. It's like having friends everywhere in the country. that's kind of what I
That's what I really like doing and then everything else is just day job stuff.
Jim (:And how many how many bikes do you have? How many bikes hanging up do you have?
Kathy (:And yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:and had, yeah.
Jake (:Yeah,
people ask a lot of time and there's not really a good answer because, you know, what's a bike? mean, it a frame? it completely, you know, is it something that I can hop on and ride right now? Is it still a bike if I might need to spend an hour, put some wheels on or something? know probably have 15 bikes, I'd say, that are assembled and more or less ready to ride now.
Kathy (:When does the light come on?
Michael Cafarelli (:When does a bike become a bike?
Jim (:Well, I counted more than that.
I counted 21 time when I pulled up to your house and looked through the glass.
Kathy (:Thank you.
Michael Cafarelli (:And did you
Jake (:I mean, that's
possible. Not all of them get written the whole lot, so that's...
Jim (:And you have specialty bikes. have the bike that folds, right? That's the one that you... Yep.
Kathy (:Now, you already? Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Were you already? Yeah.
Jake (:Yeah, bunch of folding bikes, bunch of
folding inseparable bikes. would use folding bikes to come down to Kingston a lot, because you can put them onto a train. folding bikes, which is one bike that folds up, and then there are separable bikes. The separable bikes are the ones that have a piece that separates. those can go into a special bag that
Kathy (:to fly.
Jake (:is under the airline size limits. And those are the ones that you fly with. So those, when built, they look like a normal full-size bike, and they are a normal full-size bike, but they do come in two or three places. I have a few of those.
Michael Cafarelli (:And now were you already doing this when you met Emily or that's how, so your partner Emily is also into this sport. She's actually has records, national records or world records.
Jake (:Yep. Yeah, yeah, mean,
she's far more... stronger and at doing all these than I am.
Kathy (:you
And
Michael Cafarelli (:And
Kathy (:so
Michael Cafarelli (:so she didn't get you and you were already doing it when you guys met?
Kathy (:if you can get your foot on the ground, you've got that.
Jake (:both got into doing the long distance stuff together. was a racer and he'd also done other rides. again, randonneuring is really, it's a very unique sport. nowadays there's a lot of information on the web that didn't used to be. Emily, is before I met her, she was living in Somerville, right side of Boston.
she would occasionally do these rides where, you know, a common that's sort of like a big pinnacle capstone type ride that people sometimes do is a ride from Boston to Provincetown, the end of the Cape. And that's about 125 miles from Boston. so she would do that, then differently from most people, she would then turn around and ride back. know, so that was sort of her.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Jim (:It's.
Kathy (:You
Jim (:Good
Michael Cafarelli (:Like Forrest Gump, when
Kathy (:So, you
Michael Cafarelli (:you
Kathy (:can't walk, let's turn around and see what happens.
Michael Cafarelli (:hit one coast, you just turn around and start running back to the other coast.
Jake (:Yeah, mean, pretty
Jim (:Right, want to be the other one, right.
Jake (:much. that was of Emily's. And Emily would do other kind of long distances. Emily loves to ride. she doesn't even have a driver's license.
in that time that I'm worrying about Randa Noring, Emily's doing really well. she ended up winning her category, qualified for Race Across America, which is a really big, long endurance ride. here's like a sports, you heard of a sports podcast. This is the story ago. So we're riding and there's not a lot of people in this category.
and there's another person riding a fixed gear and it's the middle of night the person was ahead of Emily. Yeah, I mean, you don't stop. mean, just keep riding. take a nap at the side of the road if you want, but the never stops ticking. It's a race, so you have to factor that in. Yeah, and they get a snack or something. So it's not like she doesn't get off the bike, you're not taking long.
Michael Cafarelli (:You keep riding, you ride through the night, you just keep driving, yeah.
Jim (:ZZ
Kathy (:Well she's gotta stop to go to the bathroom at some point.
N-E, yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:You just gotta turn and pee.
Jake (:Long type stuff.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Jim (:You
Jake (:So we get riding and then up in the distance. This is desert out there, so you see a long way ahead of you. We see the light from another rider that we know is someone who's ahead of her. we get closer and closer and closer. And then in the support vehicle, you actually have to figure out how do you navigate this because you don't want to... You need to be behind your rider when the two riders are...
basically neck and neck, you know, have to figure out, you don't want to, you're not going to pass the other person's car until you're further away. so we're almost, we're not side by side with the other support vehicle. We're very close because we can see them. And Emily and this other rider are now riding more or less neck and neck. And this is a guy, you know, definitely much more experienced than doing this for a long time, longer than Emily. And Emily's having a great time and Emily's like, hi, how you doing? You know, it's, and
You know, and in this guy's defense, he's been riding now for probably 30 hours, you know, a long time. I think the idea of having a young woman pass him, you he snapped. And he, he puts his head down and he goes like, you know, balls to the wall as and as fast as he can. he like shoots off. And you know, he's just sprinting. He's giving every...
Kathy (:You
Jim (:Ha
Jake (:And so, know, okay, you know, so his support vehicle passes and kind of, you know, goes up and he can sustain this for, I don't know, five minutes, 10 minutes. You know, can see him going further and finally he just explodes and like, he's almost falls over and, you know, he has to stop. His support people sort of run out to go and help him. And then when he just, you know, keeps riding and waves, you know.
Jim (:Right, and he's done.
She blows past him.
Kathy (:Do do do do do do do
do do do do do do do do do do do
Jake (:Yeah, you know, a good ride. And
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Jim (:to you.
Jake (:yeah, she
ended up finishing two hours ahead of him. But it was definitely one those classic sports moments where, know, yeah, just, know, he... And Emily being a good supporter. mean, when we finished this, I was completely tired. You know, it's actually probably
Jim (:Wow.
Kathy (:Bye.
Michael Cafarelli (:Met a girl.
You
Kathy (:Tortoise in the hair.
Michael Cafarelli (:and he was never seen
from again.
Jim (:Guys.
Jake (:It's a lot of work being a support vehicle. You can't sleep either. so I was so to be done and just, you know, like, I'm like, please, let's go to the hotel and I need to go to sleep. Emily's like, no, no, I want to wait here. I want to see the guy come in. I want to like, congratulate him. sure if he wanted to see her, but.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, that's a lot of yours.
Jake (:But yeah, he was really good, I he would. And he was friendly, I mean, there wasn't bad blood. it's definitely one of those famous sports moments there. keep your cool when you're, yeah.
Jim (:So,
It's an ESPN highlight. It's on pardoning the
pardon
Michael Cafarelli (:And does she, is she still doing Dill Pickle?
Jake (:Yep, yeah, and that's sort of turned into a business for her because we would... Emily makes bags, she does everything, person. there are these overnight, there are these group rides called Flesh's and they're really fun. And you have a small group of people and you ride as a team for 360 kilometers, so about 225 miles.
You ride in exactly 24 hours. So you start at 7 a.m. and you ride overnight and you finish at 7 a.m. the next day. so the first time she done one of these, made bags for me and for her. These bags go underneath the saddle bags. when we get to the finish, there's much of our teams. There's probably 25 or 30 people.
And everyone's getting around and looking at their bike and going like, wow, that bag looks so nice. That bag looks awesome. was like, Emily, maybe you want to make these. A lot of people were asking, were like, can you make me one? mostly a professional musician. The bag thing is her day job. kind of turned into what she started doing. mean, first it was just.
Kathy (:Hmm.
Jake (:kind of a side project, and now her primary business outside of music is making custom specialty bags for and for instruments. She's a recorder player, recorder and Transverse Flute, and so she also makes lots of instrument cases.
Kathy (:Renaissance.
Michael Cafarelli (:And the instruments she plays are not just regular instruments. These are antiques or these are, what's the proper word? These are all renaissance, right?
Jake (:Yeah, well,
I mean, it's in the genre of or the grouping of early music, is pretty broad period. so plays historically informed music performance. basically playing instruments that are of what was found primarily in the Baroque and Renaissance period. And these are recorders. And that's sort of the...
the time period that recorders were primarily used. so the instruments he plays, not all of them are replicas of historic instruments, some of them are new, but they all work the same way. mean, and his various sons are the ones that principally, a lot of people are music, but if...
People have heard recorder music outside of elementary school. It's probably a Bach cantata.
Michael Cafarelli (:So Jake, can say no because we can cut this, but I want to embarrass you. I think it's a beautiful story of how did you actually get connected with Emily? you tell that story to us?
Jake (:Hehehehe
Kathy (:How do you actually get connected?
Jake (:when people laugh I just say cycle.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, but I know the truth. think this is a good, I think this would help people find their true love.
Kathy (:But we know that's not true.
Jake (:Yeah, you
know this.
mean, one will be able to do it again in the future. our method is gone. truth is that years ago, there was a little site called Craigslist. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Kathy (:I'm dying.
Michael Cafarelli (:I have found many roommates on Craigslist.
I know that sounds scary to people, but most of my roommates have come through Craigslist.
Kathy (:Awesome.
Jake (:Craig's List is an amazing
site. they had personals. And I was looking to meet someone. I posted an ad. I actually got a bunch of responses from my first ad. talked to a bunch of people online. Didn't get to the point of seeing anyone. lot of college students at Wellesley.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:for whatever reason. I was also, know, I'm 22 or so, so this is not, you know, I'm not long out of college myself. would make sense that there would be people in kind of a similar age group. the thing I like about Craigslist, and again, this is, I feel like I'm really dating myself for my way of thinking about things. It's before, yeah, mean, well, I mean, and some of
Kathy (:You
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Kathy (:It's
way before eHarmony and Batch and all that stuff.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yes.
Jake (:Right, and I think some of those sites were around and people were using them, but the beauty of Craigslist, and it's a shame that it's gone, is that it's completely free-form. So it's not like one of these new dating sites where it's very templated and you put in your interest and then it tries to do the matching and you know, when you select people and you know, very... And for a lot of people, that's what they want.
Michael Cafarelli (:Right.
Jake (:I really like Craigslist because I did not want to go through the whole template. It was tied back into how I design studios, where I don't want to use the standard way of things, even if that's what most people do. For better or worse. I posted an ad, got some people I was talking to, didn't really go anywhere.
Michael Cafarelli (:Hmm
You're a DIY punk rocker at heart.
haha
Jake (:And think I was more bitter than anything else. so I sort of posted this long... Yeah, mean, was like, you know, and I basically posted and the post up and I described myself and I said, you know, I'm not, let's not go into the whole photos and like, I don't need to see you like here are my interests, here's who I am. If it sounds like I'm someone who you be...
Michael Cafarelli (:That's what I love about it. It's so honest. It's so brutally honest.
Jake (:Interested in let me know we'll go from there. I don't care how tall you are If all you care about is looking for someone who's you know? six foot five know then It's not gonna work then I heard nothing unsurprisingly
Kathy (:Hahaha!
Jake (:I'm sure 99 % of people out there thought, who is this like, bitter guy? know, in an Craigslist time, you know, like really anything, you know, know, classifieds, usually if you don't hear anything within the first 24 hours, it's gone. I mean, you know, no one's digging through things. But I did mention bikes and how I like to bike. and I got a, you know, like a week later, I got a message from, from Emily.
saying, hey, I saw your profile, or I your post. It's not profile, it's a post. You sound kind of interesting. And exchanged emails. We met up. We met up for coffee. then kind of went from there. that was a very long time ago.
Michael Cafarelli (:So the message is just be honest and let the forces of the internet connect you with whoever it may connect you with.
Kathy (:and beyond.
Jake (:Yeah, I mean that's,
you know, I mean that's the way I see it. I mean Emily and I are probably not the right models. I've always wanted to, you know, at some point, Emily and joke about this. want to, we need to like sit down and do like a little handwritten letter to Craig Newmark and say like, thank you for Craigslist.
Kathy (:Hehehehe
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Will you guys be on my reality show? want to have you guys, you can be like the Summerville Cup, are you in Summerville still or no?
Jake (:No, we're in Medford now. Yeah, next in Somerville.
Kathy (:Best
Michael Cafarelli (:Medford,
right, yeah.
So yeah, we're gonna do a reality show of you two, Medford Love, about your renovations in the house. Don't you have a giant snake?
Kathy (:See you all in a bit.
Jake (:That's not a giant snake.
has a ball python. are very common snake. Yeah, I mean, it's about five feet long, about... Yeah, sorry, Kathy. Yeah, I mean...
Kathy (:When you're pilot, I think you can say...
Michael Cafarelli (:When I hear Python, I think big snake.
Kathy (:I have night now I'm gonna have
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, Kathy's not sleeping tonight. She dislikes nothing more than snakes.
Kathy (:nightmares.
Jake (:You've
probably seen ink in ancient dynomers that are the thickest part. Great guy, named Tusek. ball pythons are the golden retrievers of snakes.
Michael Cafarelli (:Lovely way to describe it. And Jim's finally back.
Jake (:I mean, they're
really laid back, they're really friendly, they make great pets. a scaredy snake. couldn't... You know, unless you happen to be mouse or a rat, you really have nothing to fear from him. And even that, I think he'd be scared of critters of that size. So yeah, that's... the story. shouldn't say this.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
now you definitely should tell it. That's the gut telling you to it.
Jake (:probably no no because I'm gonna get in trouble because I don't
Kathy (:You can't!
Jake (:you I want to you know there could be some some some PETA people watching I want to you know
Michael Cafarelli (:That's true.
There goes our PETA sponsorship. the one, last thing I want to, the last thing I want to, so we've talked about, so you've built for us about four studios, two in Boston. There's the one in PA, there's the one in Kingston. We did the live shows, we did the pilot, but then The Foodie was our foray into actual linear television. But to me, it's kind of a blur because we,
Kathy (:All right. no.
That two Bostons, with one in May, and one Kingston, we've...
But then the OOB was our 480.
me, it's kind of learned from me,
it lost during the
Michael Cafarelli (:It launched during like
the March of COVID, I think is when we premiered. So that kind of got lost in that. And it was around the time we closed two different restaurants. But what is your memory of the television episodes we did for NECN where we went up to, we did oyster fishing, we went lobster fishing, we went to a beef farm, we went to Flour Bakery with Joanne Chang, Fenway Park. had the GoPros on the lobster fishing.
Kathy (:Fenway Park.
Jake (:Yeah
Michael Cafarelli (:So yeah, when you think of our last time filming together was probably The Foodie. What are your memories of that?
Jake (:I just have a fun project. And that was actually much more, I feel like in a lot of ways that was much more traditional TV. I mean, that is, were shooting that the way that a documentary or to a lesser extent reality TV would be shot. I mean, it's not a reality. I feel like that's a very loaded word. it's more of like a documentary. So we're going to...
on a lobster boat and here we are at sea going up and down. And he did, yeah. take the blame for that. I probably didn't attach it as securely as I should have to the top of the mast of the boat. Yeah, mean, that was a really hard shoot too. Because those lobstermen were not... were good on camera.
Kathy (:You lost it.
Michael Cafarelli (:We lost one of
your GoPros. Remember that. That went overboard.
You
Kathy (:the
Michael Cafarelli (:boom mast
yeah.
Jake (:but they were not waiting around for anybody. That was like, were out here to catch lobsters. Yeah, yeah, like, know, and very much so. so, you know, being on that boat, you know, going and down and up and down and trying to get good audio and trying to get good shots and, you know, it's a teeny little
Kathy (:Yeah.
I think salty would be a good way to describe them. They were some salty Mainers.
Michael Cafarelli (:I think salty would be a good way to describe them. They were some salty Mainers.
Kathy (:Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Jake (:how do you this? And we didn't have a chance to go in there. Normally, think we would give one to put more smaller cameras hidden where the people were going to be speaking because there's just not much room on one of these boats. So we didn't have to do that. We didn't have the ability to do that. We had such a short amount of time. that was a difficult shoot. And that was sort a much more traditional videography.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:know, mean, episodes were all lot of work. There was a lot more editing than some of the other projects. think all really interesting. I mean, it was really fun going to a bunch of those places that I hadn't been to. I mean, think going to Flour was probably my favorite of all of them. Going to that kitchen and yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
The bread quarters.
Kathy (:report.
Jake (:they ran a really nice operation, every single shot really good. mean, everything lended itself well to show, to the foodie. I think it lended well to what Liz was interested in. And that was a really fun shoot. And the Lobster Pot up in May, and that was fun, too.
Michael Cafarelli (:The cows, I gotta say, speaking of PETA, no personality in an Angus beef cow. They are just a thousand pounds of smell.
Kathy (:The cows, I gotta say, people have no brutality. They are just a thousand cows of smell.
Jim (:you
Jake (:You
You
Michael Cafarelli (:They were tough on camera. They did not cooperate.
They wouldn't move.
Jake (:Yeah, yeah, that was, yeah. Yeah, that was a shot. It was funny because I'm up there. hadn't spent a lot of time in that part of New York. And I just remember thinking, is, know, cows aside, it is gorgeous up here. I need some more time riding up around there. Yeah. I have since been back there because usually...
Kathy (:What?
Yeah, I'll see you in a minute, New York. Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, it's beautiful. I want to say Ghent, New York. Yeah.
Jake (:I kind of stop around the Berkshires and this is right over the mountain range into New York.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Very
nice.
Jake (:You know, this is something though that will really make me Kathy unhappy the Kathy. an area so not far from where that farm was. This is I know I guess last spring. Emily and I were doing a ride.
and it's, you know, this is a 125 mile ride and we kind of go over the mountain range, over the birch years. We started in Great Barrington and it's a really fun ride and we're on this long bike path. It's the Harlem River bike path, which is new and it's a, we don't usually do lot of rides and bike paths, but this is a really nice path and we're riding and we're talking and having a good time and this is in the morning, it's 10 a.m. or so and we see something going across the path and
We both sort of perk off because we're looking for animals. And at first I thought, you know, is it... What was that? Was that, you know, like, you know, like a bit of a turtle? Emily immediately knows it's a snake. Emily's really into snakes. And so we stop. We turn, you know, put the bikes down. We look around. And there on the side of the path is a big, gorgeous specimen of a timber rattlesnake.
Jim (:You
Kathy (:yay!
Jake (:That Timber rattle snakes are really cool snakes. They were the only venomous snake that we have New England. Yeah, so, know, and it's, you know, and they're are, you they're endangered in Massachusetts, very small communities in Massachusetts. They're they're threatened in New York. you know, they're really only in a couple of different spots. So seeing one.
Kathy (:See you at home.
Michael Cafarelli (:So you got closer.
Kathy (:We have them here in New Jersey.
Jake (:I mean, and actually there's more of them the further you go South. I never see one in person. It was definitely like a bucket list thing. yeah, when we're there, we're taking tons of photos and yeah, the snake doesn't care. mean, they're not, if you don't harass them, you don't try to like poke at them or pick them up, you don't really have too much to worry about. get bitten usually when, either when they're trying to harass them or when they surprise the snake. But in this case,
Kathy (:Hahaha
Jake (:We see the snake, so we're not gonna surprise it. Emily's bike, Emily is beside herself. She actually loves snakes. her bike is lining across the path. There's no one up there. Thankfully, it's, know, path is very quiet. And the snake kind of goes to one side of the path. know, we think, okay, you know, like, it's gonna go in the reeds, it's done. And then it turns around, it slithers back, it actually slithers over Emily's bike.
through her rear wheel we start getting nervous. It's like, don't get stuck in there or I can't even get you out. slur's away. You know, it's, mean, we're about to leave and the snake is like not, across the path. We don't want to get.
Jim (:Alright.
Kathy (:You didn't put it in one of her bag, in the bag, the special made bags and bring it home?
Jim (:In a pickle bag. In a
Jake (:run over we want somebody to be surprised you know in some ways using your bike wheel and trying to like you know just nudge it just gently being like could you maybe you want to keep going son
Jim (:How long was the snake? How
Michael Cafarelli (:So you brought it home and here it is.
Jim (:long was the snake?
Jake (:mean it's bigger bigger than the Tusek don't know six feet or so You know they're there pretty but you know, but it has you know It has the rattle so and you can tell it's aged by not exactly but think it was a four or five year old snake because you know that the rattle Has yeah, cuz every every time the shakes that every time the snake sheds gets another segment on this rattle So that's
Jim (:Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.
Kathy (:my god.
Michael Cafarelli (:Cathy, you just, you changed. yeah.
Kathy (:how long a rattle is.
Jim (:Right.
Michael Cafarelli (:Very cool.
Jim (:so all these years, Jake never owned a car. He would rent them whenever we would go out on shoots, zip cars or, or, you know, vans. And, you know, we now live down in New Jersey, but we were in south of Boston for all these years when we were doing this production. I talked to Jake a couple of months ago and he said, guess what?
Jake (:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jim (:And I bought you bought another house. You just know more more important than that. I bought a car. I was like you bought a car. You know I bought a van now.
Jake (:Yeah,
it's because every night you'd be like, you know, Jake, one day you're going to get a car. And I'd always be like, nope, not doing it.
Jim (:And you would swear to God you would never do. I mean, the projects
that he did at his house and they would figure out a way to get like they have a bike called a cargo
Jake (:Yeah.
Jim (:a photo of them and they have like sheets of plywood. On this bike and then driving through Medford Center, you know, back up to the house.
two by fours up to those, they did the whole job on this bike. Like, why don't you get a car? No, I don't need a car.
Kathy (:That's crazy.
Jake (:Yeah,
well, we're lucky. There's a great plywood store, Boulder Plywood in Medford. Yeah, see if they can be a sponsor. nice people. And so not that long of a ride. And they have hardwood, so we get a lot of maple and other. Yeah. And honestly, Emily does, know, Emily is more, will get to the point where I'm like, damn it, I'm just going to rent a car and get this stuff. Emily will top it out and get the, it home.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Jim (:I'm not joking. He read sheets of plywood on this bike.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah.
Kathy (:Well,
she's never had a driver's license, right?
Jake (:Yeah,
she doesn't have a driver's license. Never want one. it really was just a matter of, can only go, unless you want to five hours riding to someplace you really want to start the ride from, there's only so far you can go and you can take the train places. we were renting cars every weekend go on rides and go in other places. For years we did this, for a really long time.
Jim (:And then you did the math. You did the math, right?
Jake (:And then finally, there's like, you know what, enough of this. Like,
like, let's just buy it. Yeah, so we bought a used Ford Transit Connect, great little car, one I could find. And yeah, you just the, we roll the bikes right into the back, bunch of corn down, drive to someplace, you know, can do a ride, same thing. And the best part about it, it's the one with the raised roof, so you can, really easy to change in the back of it.
Jim (:Michael knows about those. Michael knows about those.
Yeah.
Jake (:That's sort of my favorite part. know, you put
Jim (:Yeah.
Jake (:the bike there, take the bike out, change into your clothes, do the ride, come back, immediately change back into street clothes and keep going.
Jim (:So Michael, that's a podcast. That's an episode right there to talk about your we're not going to do that tonight.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, speaking of the van, The height
Jake (:Yeah
Michael Cafarelli (:of my adult hubris was when I said I could convert a van by myself and very quickly needed to enlist Jim to build it, but then Jake to do the wiring. yeah, you helped. had a Ford Transit 250 high roof extended that I converted in 2020, 2021-ish. Fully off-grid, I had solar at a 60 gallon water tank.
Jake (:You
Kathy (:you
fully off-grid, solar-emitting, 60,000 water tank inside
Michael Cafarelli (:Inside was like a cabin. did all the shower in there. But eventually I hit the wall on the wiring and the lights and had them call Jake in and he to the rescue figured out how to get this thing fully powered. But yeah, that's a whole.
Jim (:Shower.
Kathy (:of the cabin, and I had a shower in there. But eventually I hit the wall on the wiring and the light, and then I called Jake and he to the rescue, figured out how to get this thing full of power. Yeah, that's all that's left it.
Jim (:Great kitchen, great kitchen.
Jake (:Yeah,
that was another fun project. I not done that before. I'd done a lot of wiring, but usually it's usually low voltage video. still low voltage, but for a van.
Michael Cafarelli (:You
Kathy (:Yeah.
Jim (:Well, I'm glad you have fond memory of it
because we're never doing another ever, ever. So.
Kathy (:Earth.
And just
Michael Cafarelli (:And just
Kathy (:to
Michael Cafarelli (:to illustrate to people how Jake is truly about the love of the game and that his life is cycling and everything else is second, is that like once a year, Kathy would have to remind him to cash his paychecks because he would just, all his paychecks, I think you put them in a drawer because you never cash them. And we have to remind you, hey, we're trying to close the books this year and you have 26 paychecks for the year that haven't been cashed yet.
Kathy (:illustrate to people how to treat the food and the love of the game and that it's like deciding who's to be second. Is that like once you hear, have an app remind you to tap the paychecks. It's just a little bit like you were putting them in the door. You enter the app, you get the remind, you're going to go to the host this year, and you have 26 paychecks and you hear that. Yep, yep.
Jim (:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He thought he was worked all
Jake (:I am
Jim (:that
Jake (:too.
Jim (:time. He thought he was just working for food. He didn't even know.
Michael Cafarelli (:Pizza and espresso. It was
Kathy (:Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:good espresso.
Jake (:mean, I a lot of espressos. Yeah, I mean, it's great working with you. I will say, think if you ever said, like, you know what, no more food. Like, we're cutting you off.
Jim (:Yeah.
It's over. That's it. That's a deal breaker.
Michael Cafarelli (:I think our only failure
is we never got you to come off of well-done stakes. We never brought, I don't think we ever got you towards the medium.
Jim (:Yeah.
Jake (:Yeah
Kathy (:Yeah, hockey puck steaks. But every time,
Jake (:I know, I at this point,
Kathy (:every
Jake (:yeah. I buy the giant bottles from Costco of capers right there.
Kathy (:time I see a caper, I think of you. Every salad, extra capers.
Jim (:Right? Right.
yeah. Yeah, that and
you have a great taste in in our crafted beers. You sampled so many of them on all these bike rides and spicy infused vodkas.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Kathy (:Mmm.
Michael Cafarelli (:There was a strawberry
liquor you introduced me once, it like a strawberry beer or something that we had that you, yeah.
Jake (:yeah, there's all
the, the name of it? Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of the, all those Belgian, Belgian sours, have so many fruit ones there, they're great.
Michael Cafarelli (:He was German-nading? Yeah, Belgian, yeah.
Jim (:So I want to take a minute and talk about the Emmys a little bit because we've talked about them in the two prior episodes. And I think this sort of puts a bow on it because the Emmys became a big part of our life and we couldn't have done them. We couldn't have done them without you. We didn't even know how to do them, how to get involved. And you sort of...
Michael Cafarelli (:We know how to export a file, you know, let alone...
Kathy (:You
Jim (:Michael, didn't
I wasn't a Mac guy when I met Jake. He got me into, you know, I was a PC guy. Put me on Mac. I think of all the kind of all the millions of calls I would call you when I got in trouble editing or whatever. And I'd interrupt you during the course of a day. And you always had patience and you'd walk me through it. And there were always these dumb, stupid mistakes because of my ignorance. And, you know, I do it now like when I'm in avid now and I'm doing things and I actually will say, I can't believe.
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, and Jake's not a Mac guy, yeah.
Jake (:at it.
Not at all. Not at all.
Jim (:some of the things that I called Jake about, you know, hundreds, thousands of times. But anyway, I digress. The so as, as we're growing and we're our production quality is getting better because of you. and we finally, start submitting for any consideration and, you know, the whole Comcast thing was happening. We were a bit of an honor roll and, I'll never forget when
you know, we finally were encouraged to submit for the Emmys and you said, well, you know, first of all, you're never going to get, you're never going to get an Emmy. So you'd be lucky to get nominated, which is so true. And that came back many, many times. I heard that ringing in my ears. Some of those years when we lost, you know, and we had eight nominations and we'd walk out with nothing. And I would be thinking, hearing Jake in the back, just be happy with the nomination, but
Jake (:Okay.
Jim (:When we were doing this and you sort of coached us through it and you showed it, you know, the applications alone are just a ton of work and they have all kinds of rules and you knew all the rules and we would put these in. And then each year we were getting nominated, sometimes a lot of nominations, and we would go to these Emmy awards and they were wild. You know, the years that we won, we were like school kids jumping up and down, up on the stage, me giving.
Jake (:Hehehehe
Jim (:acceptance speeches that were way too long. Yeah, the alcohol definitely contributed to that. so you have you have two or three enemies, Jay.
Kathy (:that alcohol contributed to that.
Michael Cafarelli (:when he used to drink.
Kathy (:Ha
ha ha ha!
Jake (:three.
Jim (:You
have three, right? And you have them in your office at BU. And students come in and they see those. They've never seen an Emmy before, right?
Jake (:Yeah. Have my office.
Yeah, that's...
Jim (:And do you like just hang your hat on them or do you have them prominently displayed?
Jake (:I mean, they're, they're, they're, you know, directly across from the door, but, you know, I'm...
Michael Cafarelli (:It's a doorstop. You use it as a doorstop.
Jim (:It's a
joke.
Jake (:You know, mean, it's, you know, it's all expression here. You're always good as your last project. I don't, I'm not, really proud of what I've done. It was, it's been great working, you know, done a lot of good things with them, but, you know, you're always looking forward as to what, the next project is going to be.
Jim (:Well, now it's the podcast. what do we win for what are the awards for great podcasts, Michael? What what cat what what who oversees this?
Michael Cafarelli (:I think it's a Webby's or
something. Yeah, we're not getting anything. Let's get a sponsor. Yeah.
Jake (:I think it's viewers. think the award is a lot of viewers.
Jim (:it's probably
right. So, well, we're not done yet, Jake. You know, I, I'm, just turned 65, so we got a long way to go. And, you know, it's just, it's just another turn in the road, you know, and that's what these things are all about. But,
Kathy (:Good job.
Jake (:Yeah, well, I love working with you, with Kathy. it's so much fun. Working in food is really fun in general. never would have thought that going on way back when I first got started. didn't think that the whole culinary side would be interesting. it really is, and it's enjoyable. so I'm up for...
I'm up for whatever you come up with.
Jim (:Yeah, we might do some right here. We have a great kitchen here at this location. one thing we didn't talk about was the studios that we were building were functioning kitchens. They weren't sets. So we would have real cooking, real noxious odors. We'd have to make sure we had real ventilation, which caused sound problems. So we had to make sure we were ventilating, but we weren't
Michael Cafarelli (:Yeah, real smoke, real water, real everything.
Jim (:ruin in the shoot. So sometimes we'd have to turn the fan off, cook, get the shot, and then turn the fan on so that we could exhaust the room so you could see each other again. And then there were cameras that we would put right over the cooktops. And they'd start to get greasy. And you'd have to take cameras down and clean them off and clean the lenses and all kinds of different things because we were actually running a real kitchen. It was a real cooking show. People were dining. They were drinking.
And we were recording it all and then turning them into these television assets. And that was, I think of all the different things we did that added component, which complicated things so much really was what had to keep you thinking. And, know, how many times did, you know, we have a problem in the studio and we just walk out, go right in the kitchen, grab what we needed out of the cooler, come back and set it up.
And you'd say to me, Jim, you if I were doing this out on a location shoot, that would have just shut down. We'd have been down for an hour while someone ran down the street and, know, with us, just go in the kitchen, get it, cut it all on, bring it back out. And that was this added benefit of, of these shoots that were done inside a studio that was inside of a restaurant. And, you know, we learned over the years just how special that was to the point where it is unique. We still have not bumped in. Anyone has ever said, yeah, we do that.
Jake (:Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's completely unique. I mean, feel like there is, you know, there's a lot cooking online. You know, there's a lot of people who want to go and, you know, think of themselves as Martha Stewart and, know, they're going to do a show and have a hot plate and, you know, they're cooking on a small burner. And even in a professional setting where they built somewhat of a studio, it's a TV studio first and the kitchen part was just kind of tacked on.
Jim (:Right.
Jake (:and there's one burner that's being used at a time and there's no hood and there's none of that. the shot may look good because it's pretty narrow. to be in a kitchen that has to pass all the certifications, I've been nervous that one day I'm going be walking by one of the poles for I wouldn't forget what it's called, but the...
Jim (:The propane tank, right.
Yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:If you have.
Jake (:The special extinguishers, if you had a grease file. Yeah, right. I've always had this fear. mean, walk by and catch on it. Well, and then it's not like there's just production people there. mean, there is a room that has 25, 30 people, more than that.
Jim (:The Ansel heads, yeah. And then we're gonna go off, right.
Michael Cafarelli (:the Ansel system. Yeah, the phone. Yeah. knock on wood. I can't. We've never set the Ansel off. That would have been disaster. God. Yeah.
Jim (:Yeah, that would shut down the shoot.
People, right. And people, yeah. Yeah, we never had a
Michael Cafarelli (:We'd have kids
Jim (:disaster
Michael Cafarelli (:pressed up against the glass in the dining room.
Jim (:like that. Right, exactly. Yeah. Fortunately, we've never had.
Jake (:Yeah, so
that's a really fun, yeah, that's a fun and challenging aspect. think that's really not... something that other people do. There's no other studio that's focused around food where you really are going to have people from the outside are enjoying the food and they are there for the food. They're there for the food and for the instruction, but they're not there
Jim (:And then, yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:They're not actors, yeah.
Jake (:for TV, know, so if you have a studio that's in or, you know, Disney or something, I mean, it's TV part is and foremost, know, whereas everything you've done has been, you know, it's the host and the food and we try to get in the way of that.
Jim (:Right. The, do you remember the on the blinking on air sign that we used to have over the door? How many shoots did we have in the studio while the restaurant was functioning and we forgot, we'd forget to lock the door and we'd be in the middle of filming and people would come up and we, we, we were used to that and they were in the glass and they'd wave whatever. And then all of sudden they'd open the door and just come walk it in. Hey, this looks great. know, ruin the shoot you know, stop.
Jake (:Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, anyway, you guys do in the here? Yeah.
Jim (:Stop cooking and you had to be nice to them. You didn't want to make them angry and you talk and answer the questions and you sort of shuffle them out and make sure you lock the door behind them and reset up the whole counter. You know, take another hour, style the whole thing, start all over again. And that happened more than our fair share of times. And, but it was, was always a lot of fun. And, you know, none of which we would have been ever been able to do without you, Jake. You were, you were.
Jake (:Yeah.
Jim (:Literally the backbone. I've said this. you know, by the way, I don't know if Michael mentioned to you, but we're going to move to premiere. We're not going to do.
Jake (:Well, you're the visionary.
Michael Cafarelli (:TV DeVinci or Premiere, we still have not decided. But Avid is dead to me.
Jake (:You
Jim (:Well, I thought you, I thought you did it today.
thought you actually did the subscription today. No.
Michael Cafarelli (:To be determined. Adobe,
Jake (:Yeah, I feel like
Michael Cafarelli (:you're welcome to give us a subscription.
Jake (:for the at home, we mentioned Final Cut, so when you first came into the project, it was Final Cut, and we did a couple things with Final Cut, and that's when you said, is this really the right thing to do? And I'm an Avid person, that's kind of my background. so we switched over to Avid, and I was a little apprehensive, because a lot of people, is a much more difficult program to work with.
Michael Cafarelli (:Mm-hmm.
Jake (:And really to your credit, become an Avid editor and that's great. is still but there are a lot more companies and there's so many things you can do very quickly with Adobe Suite and with Resolve. I think it's worth making those transitions. It's not...
Jim (:Fewer steps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jake (:It's not through the binary that it used to be.
Jim (:the value of for me now and staying in Adobe.
Michael Cafarelli (:I don't stop Jim, he will restart
and we'll go for another hour
But yeah, Jake, we would still be doing the Caesar salad, Hill Caesar, Friday night shows only. And no one would have ever heard of it if it wasn't for you supercharging all the tech, all the cameras, all the monitors, all the mics. We literally could not figure out how to export a file without it for you. Yeah. And the patience. Yeah.
Jim (:And the friendship, the friendship, the patience. Yeah.
Jake (:Yeah, well, it's a great project.
It's great working with both of you. Kathy's not here, but working with her
is fun. it wasn't fun, would have been, I would have hugged my hat and moved on a long time ago. just such great people to work with. really good people, at the beginning, mean, really good eye for being a,
feel like first and foremost, a good producer. know what it takes, you know what you want, you know what's realistic, you know what's a push that we can do. don't compromise. I you really want something to be good and you're gonna keep working on it. But really reasonable. mean, I think everyone who's working in this business has worked with difficult producers and either they...
Jim (:Yeah, yeah.
Jake (:They don't know what they want or they're just demanding. worst is they don't know what they want, but then they want something. So they just get really demanding. And it's not the way it's been with you. No, no, no, no. There's one or two, one or two. That's it.
Jim (:Yeah, yeah.
Michael Cafarelli (:Are you saying the entertainment industry is full of jerks and incompetent jerks and mean people and egos?
Jim (:Ha
Michael Cafarelli (:I haven't run into that in LA yet, so I'm looking forward to it.
Jim (:Yeah
Jake (:Yeah, there wouldn't be in LA. No, not at all. Boston would be the most.
Jim (:Well, Jake, you know...
Michael Cafarelli (:Well, thank you so much for doing this, Jake. Really appreciate it. And yeah, we will have either more podcasts. Yep. Keep going. Sorry, But just today, this Pencil Music Venue will be working on that you'll be involved with. We just got that coming through the pipeline. So yeah, we will be building more, but no snakes if Kathy's going to be involved. Yeah. Great to see you.
Jake (:You're welcome. You're welcome.
Jim (:Yeah, a lot of fun. We'll continue where we're on to. Yeah.
Jake (:Awesome. Can't wait.
Jim (:We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
Yeah, right.
Jake (:Next time.
Okay,
likewise.
Jim (:Say hello to Emily for us. I'm sure we'll be talking. I'll be talking to you shortly when I start editing this damn thing.
Michael Cafarelli (:Alright.
Please.
Jake (:We'll do.
Michael Cafarelli (:When we get
our first roadblock on this.
Jim (:Right, right,
Jake (:You'll never find me.
Jim (:All right. Thanks, Jake. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Kathy, wherever you are. And we'll talk to you soon, okay? All right, thanks.
Michael Cafarelli (:All right, take care everyone.
Alright, that's a wrap.
