Latest / Next Act with Jeff Ornstein / Nick Blanchette – Emmy Award-Winning Videographer & Editor, Chaos & Kindness

Transcript

Nick Blanchette – Emmy Award-Winning Videographer & Editor, Chaos & Kindness · Next Act with Jeff Ornstein

• 0:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Hi everyone and welcome to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 0:05
  Jeff Ornstein: I am Jeff, and on this show we celebrate people on the cusp of greatness.
• 0:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Those building on past successes in some of the curious and inventive and sometimes unexpected ways they have achieved those, and stepping into moments that could define their legacy.
• 0:21
  Jeff Ornstein: We'll talk about current projects, lessons learned, and the extraordinary opportunities ahead.
• 0:26
  Jeff Ornstein: So the best is yet to come.
• 0:29
  Jeff Ornstein: Nick went from dancing in front of his dad's clunky 1987 VHS camcorder to winning an Emmy two years ago for editing Chaos and Kindness, the wild Amazon Prime, very local series with recycled percussion.
• 0:43
  Jeff Ornstein: In between, horror shorts on public access, car commercials at 19, Werner Hertzog QA's at the Coolidge Corner Theater, seven years cutting peer-reviewed science videos at Jove and getting surprise entered into a Spartan race on national television.
• 0:59
  Jeff Ornstein: Sure to talk about that.
• 1:01
  Jeff Ornstein: Right now, he's quietly writing a sci-fi pilot about ghost hunting apps that accidentally make the ghosts real.
• 1:07
  Jeff Ornstein: And he's pretty sure the best is still yet ahead.
• 1:10
  Jeff Ornstein: Nick, welcome to the show.
• 1:12
  Jeff Ornstein: Thank you so much, Jeff.
• 1:13
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for having me.
• 1:14
  Jeff Ornstein: Appreciate it.
• 1:15
  Jeff Ornstein: You're welcome.
• 1:15
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, I have to say your profile is precisely the kind of people that we're interested in speaking with.
• 1:21
  Jeff Ornstein: People that are not in their early stages of their career, but have a little time under their belt and have explored a couple of different options and have found that that sort of melange of different experiences has led them to yet a new plateau where they're going to take off from.
• 1:37
  Jeff Ornstein: And you've certainly done a little bit of everything and achieved some success along the way.
• 1:42
  Jeff Ornstein: So I'm excited to hear about these experiences firsthand.
• 1:46
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, it's it's it's been a trip.
• 1:50
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, I gotta ask about getting the Spartan race.
• 1:53
  Jeff Ornstein: Can you share a little bit about that with me?
• 1:55
  Nick Blanchette: We were doing a tour of 30 days on the road, traveling all over the United States, just the three of us, me and the two drummers for recycle percussion.
• 2:03
  Nick Blanchette: And we made it to, I think it was North Carolina, where he mentioned, hey, we're gonna do a Spartan race.
• 2:08
  Nick Blanchette: That's gonna be one of our stunts because every day we're gonna do a stunt and an act of kindness for 30 days straight, and we're gonna, you know, broadcast it on Facebook Live.
• 2:17
  Nick Blanchette: So they were mentioning a Spartan race happening um that weekend, and they were asking me, kind of joking around, because I'm not an athletic guy, and they know that.
• 2:24
  Nick Blanchette: They're like, hey, Nick, do you wanna do the Spartan race?
• 2:27
  Nick Blanchette: And I was joking, like, yeah, sure, why not?
• 2:29
  Nick Blanchette: Uh little did I know that they actually did sign me up, uh, but they didn't sign themselves up.
• 2:34
  Nick Blanchette: Uh the tables were turned, and they were like, You're gonna do the stunt, and we're gonna Facebook live it.
• 2:39
  Nick Blanchette: And honestly, I did pretty well.
• 2:42
  Nick Blanchette: I'm pretty proud of myself, I should say, uh, not being an athletic person.
• 2:46
  Nick Blanchette: I did throw up uh towards the end of the race, which was two obstacles away from the finish line.
• 2:53
  Nick Blanchette: So I took a moment, 10 minutes, like kind of like huddling, like in fetal position.
• 2:58
  Nick Blanchette: I'm like, oh my God, knowing that I'm live, and I'm like, I'm hoping that they didn't see me puke, or at least they didn't see the the aftermath.
• 3:07
  Nick Blanchette: But uh, so I ended up finishing the race and we continued on the tour.
• 3:11
  Nick Blanchette: We went to Nashville, we went to Texas, uh, we went to Little Rock.
• 3:15
  Nick Blanchette: There was this deep, extreme cave system, one of the biggest cave systems in the United States.
• 3:20
  Nick Blanchette: We went extreme caving in five feet of water, having to go through like one foot clearance at one point.
• 3:28
  Nick Blanchette: It was it was pretty extreme.
• 3:30
  Nick Blanchette: It was uh definitely uh unexpected.
• 3:32
  Nick Blanchette: I I've done a lot of things that that month that I've never even dreamed I'd do.
• 3:36
  Nick Blanchette: The tour kicked off with um we went to an amusement park because my boss is a roller coaster enthusiast.
• 3:43
  Nick Blanchette: So that was like the first week of the trip was traveling to to do roller coaster rides.
• 3:49
  Nick Blanchette: So it's it's a lot of fun.
• 3:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, with roller coasters, but I think you kind of lost me on the Spartan race, and once you were in the cave, I was totally out of there.
• 3:57
  Jeff Ornstein: So I commend you for that.
• 3:59
  Jeff Ornstein: So that's really dedication.
• 4:00
  Nick Blanchette: Got a I got a text from my wife after the cave system finding out.
• 4:04
  Nick Blanchette: Like I had to find out on Facebook Live, you're in a cave, you don't call me beforehand.
• 4:08
  Nick Blanchette: I could leave.
• 4:08
  Nick Blanchette: I'm like, oh, sorry.
• 4:10
  Nick Blanchette: Question though, would you do it again?
• 4:12
  Nick Blanchette: Would you go caving again?
• 4:13
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:14
  Nick Blanchette: I mean, it was scary, but the cave guide that was there was very calm.
• 4:20
  Nick Blanchette: And I didn't get stuck, but my boss got stuck, and he was like ahead of me, and he was panicking.
• 4:27
  Nick Blanchette: And the way she was calming him down, I was like, okay, like she knows what she's doing.
• 4:32
  Nick Blanchette: She's not gonna like let us not gonna leave us.
• 4:35
  Nick Blanchette: So it was it was definitely like the the guide really helped ease the the anxiety of going in there.
• 4:41
  Nick Blanchette: It was it was scary, but I'm scary, but it was fun.
• 4:45
  Jeff Ornstein: So I love the fact that you've been through these different reiterations and now like you're kind of hitting your stride on yet this new one after you face like unfair termination or some such thing.
• 4:55
  Jeff Ornstein: Is that how you termed it?
• 4:56
  Nick Blanchette: The whole, yeah, the whole uh company, uh the whole office in the United States was let go.
• 5:01
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah.
• 5:02
  Nick Blanchette: And went overseas.
• 5:04
  Nick Blanchette: So it was it was everybody that was in the team was gone.
• 5:07
  Nick Blanchette: We were like, what happened?
• 5:09
  Nick Blanchette: It was a sudden, it was it was so sudden.
• 5:11
  Nick Blanchette: And for four months after that, almost six months, I was having a hard time even landing an interview.
• 5:16
  Nick Blanchette: And I was getting scam responses like through WhatsApp.
• 5:20
  Nick Blanchette: Oh, if you go through WhatsApp, and I'm like, that's a little fishy.
• 5:24
  Nick Blanchette: And I I ended up taking the bait on one of the the interviews, and it was uh a text interview.
• 5:31
  Nick Blanchette: It was through WhatsApp, which they can do like the video calls, but they uh I tried to call them, but they're like, nope, do text only.
• 5:38
  Nick Blanchette: And I'm like, this is a scam.
• 5:40
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 5:40
  Nick Blanchette: I mean so many, there's so many out there.
• 5:42
  Nick Blanchette: And now now I use Chat GPT when I get a like an email around.
• 5:46
  Nick Blanchette: I'm like, is this a scam?
• 5:47
  Nick Blanchette: And they'll show me the red flags.
• 5:50
  Nick Blanchette: Uh so but it's they're still out there.
• 5:52
  Jeff Ornstein: That yeah, it's crazy.
• 5:53
  Jeff Ornstein: But you know what?
• 5:54
  Jeff Ornstein: That seems like it's in your rearview mirror a little bit.
• 5:57
  Jeff Ornstein: Yes.
• 5:57
  Jeff Ornstein: Tell me about Back to the Future with Legos, because that was my favorite toy growing up.
• 6:03
  Nick Blanchette: Yes.
• 6:04
  Nick Blanchette: No, Legos is something that I I haven't let go of.
• 6:06
  Nick Blanchette: I still have my old Legos from when I was a kid.
• 6:09
  Nick Blanchette: In fact, my son, he uh has his own collection, which his dwarves mine.
• 6:13
  Nick Blanchette: Like he has so much more Legos than I've ever had.
• 6:15
  Nick Blanchette: And the Legos that I wanted, like the Technics or whatever, like the he's not into that, so I'm I'm waiting for him to get into the like the electronics and and building robots and stuff, but uh he's uh he's into VR now.
• 6:28
  Nick Blanchette: So he's in and out of Legos, but I still I still uh play with Legos.
• 6:33
  Nick Blanchette: I still do I have any Legos?
• 6:34
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, I have a couple Legos over there.
• 6:36
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, no, Legos are multiple.
• 6:37
  Jeff Ornstein: I can't even I can't even recall how many hours I spent building houses.
• 6:41
  Jeff Ornstein: You know, now I'm a designer, so I built houses a million ways, and my like preferred piece was the actual window that you can nice with a glass pane.
• 6:50
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, you just you snap right in.
• 6:52
  Jeff Ornstein: Right.
• 6:53
  Nick Blanchette: So that was but that was like Buco De Nero back in the day.
• 6:56
  Nick Blanchette: Oh, I'll watch YouTube videos on engineering on how people build Legos, like they build like a pneumatic pump and they build like all sorts like a piano, like a pipe organ piano with Lego pieces.
• 7:07
  Nick Blanchette: There's a whole whole YouTube channel on it.
• 7:09
  Nick Blanchette: It's it's fascinating.
• 7:11
  Jeff Ornstein: So now your new role that you landed, was it I'm sorry, give us a time frame.
• 7:16
  Jeff Ornstein: When did your company move overseas?
• 7:19
  Jeff Ornstein: What year was that?
• 7:20
  Nick Blanchette: It was like two and a half years ago.
• 7:21
  Jeff Ornstein: Okay.
• 7:22
  Nick Blanchette: Jove, Jove um went over.
• 7:24
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 7:25
  Nick Blanchette: So now tell us a little bit about what you're doing.
• 7:28
  Nick Blanchette: So after six months of unemployment, someone reached out to me about a job posting on Facebook about this band Recycled Percussion.
• 7:35
  Nick Blanchette: And then I've heard of them.
• 7:36
  Nick Blanchette: They're local, they're from the same town that I'm from, Manchester, New Hampshire.
• 7:40
  Nick Blanchette: So and I'm familiar with them because they were on America's Got Talent back in 2012, and they got like third place, I think.
• 7:48
  Nick Blanchette: They almost won.
• 7:49
  Nick Blanchette: And so they're they're like celebrities in New Hampshire.
• 7:52
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 7:53
  Nick Blanchette: So I was familiar with them, but I didn't know they had a TV show.
• 7:56
  Nick Blanchette: So I saw the posting saying that they're hiring a videographer and editor for their for their TV show.
• 8:01
  Nick Blanchette: And uh it's a six-month gig, you know, potential permanent.
• 8:05
  Nick Blanchette: And I mean, I've been there for almost two years, so it's it's definitely permanent.
• 8:09
  Nick Blanchette: But I it started off as being just as a camera guy, following them around.
• 8:15
  Nick Blanchette: My first week they did a 24-hour Facebook Live, and they had uh they have fans all over that will come in person to participate.
• 8:24
  Nick Blanchette: So we had um a polar plunge in the Merrimack River.
• 8:28
  Nick Blanchette: Oh uh, and it was February, so it was freezing.
• 8:31
  Nick Blanchette: I actually participated.
• 8:32
  Nick Blanchette: I went down into my underwear, I had a GoPro on my chest, and I went in the water.
• 8:38
  Nick Blanchette: They also did for that first couple weeks, they had me do things that I uh that's not on my radar, like design, graphic design, because they do clothing.
• 8:46
  Nick Blanchette: Brian, he's the designer, he does all the designs, but if there's something that he can't do, he'll come to me and ask me, like, oh, can you put this box together, uh, a Christmas box, and and you know, I'll do that.
• 8:57
  Nick Blanchette: So so my core functionality there is very broad.
• 9:01
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, it sounds like I do I do more than just uh videographer and editing.
• 9:04
  Nick Blanchette: I'll even they just opened a uh burger restaurant at the mall in New Hampshire that I designed all like I pretty much designed the the layout.
• 9:13
  Nick Blanchette: My boss asked me to put a layout together on, you know, take a photo of the old restaurant and put like the new graphics on there.
• 9:19
  Nick Blanchette: So he based off of my design, designed the storefront.
• 9:23
  Nick Blanchette: Uh, and there's the menu I designed, I designed the animations on the on the side of the restaurant.
• 9:28
  Nick Blanchette: There's nothing the same.
• 9:30
  Nick Blanchette: It's always different.
• 9:31
  Jeff Ornstein: So has that always been part of your DNA?
• 9:33
  Jeff Ornstein: This uh this artistic design?
• 9:35
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, like uh adaptability.
• 9:37
  Nick Blanchette: I'll I'll adapt to whatever comes my way and I'll figure out a way.
• 9:40
  Nick Blanchette: Like I I've worked for Apple for three years and I I did um I trained on how to use Final Cut Pro and how to use the software.
• 9:49
  Nick Blanchette: And after I left there, I went through a uh a period of folding origami.
• 9:54
  Nick Blanchette: So my whole house was covered in origami.
• 9:56
  Nick Blanchette: It was like a phase that I went through.
• 9:58
  Nick Blanchette: I was like, oh, I want to try like the f and it was like intricate designs that I was doing.
• 10:02
  Nick Blanchette: Sure.
• 10:03
  Nick Blanchette: And I I I can't remember how to do them.
• 10:06
  Nick Blanchette: I have to follow instructions.
• 10:07
  Nick Blanchette: So I only made the designs once.
• 10:10
  Nick Blanchette: So everything I made I only made once because I was I would get bored of making it again.
• 10:14
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 10:14
  Nick Blanchette: Uh but yeah, so I'm very I've always been creative, no matter what medium it is, whether it's writing or or designing or even music.
• 10:25
  Jeff Ornstein: It also goes to survivability, creative minds, you know, when one door shuts, another one opens, and how do I recreate and reinvent myself?
• 10:32
  Jeff Ornstein: Exactly.
• 10:33
  Jeff Ornstein: When you're doing these following these guys with all these crazy stunts and everything, is some of it scripted?
• 10:40
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, as the videographer, I mean, like how do you know where to be, when to be there, and so on?
• 10:45
  Nick Blanchette: It yeah, none of it's planned, really.
• 10:47
  Nick Blanchette: It's if it is planned, it's planned short notice.
• 10:50
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 10:50
  Nick Blanchette: So we we usually just Justin is a very all over the place, like he has so many ideas and he's a fast talker.
• 10:58
  Nick Blanchette: Like he'll like you'll want want to do ideas quickly.
• 11:01
  Nick Blanchette: And uh so yeah, there is really no planning on it, and that's something I thrive in.
• 11:06
  Nick Blanchette: Like I just follow, I just I'm in the in the shadows kind of with with the camera.
• 11:10
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 11:11
  Nick Blanchette: So it's definitely, yeah, it's not like I would love to do more narrative stuff, like in the in the future, do like, you know, uh the TV show or whatever with with characters and in a script, but this has been fun filming reality TV, and that's something I've done in the past.
• 11:25
  Nick Blanchette: And it kind of stems from my my news videographer experience, like kind of filming news segments and and knowing what to capture and you know when to capture it.
• 11:35
  Jeff Ornstein: Yeah, that's kind of where I was going.
• 11:37
  Jeff Ornstein: Because I mean, if if there's no script and you don't know what's coming next, yeah, part of it being a successful take is you being in the right place at the right time.
• 11:45
  Nick Blanchette: And knowing like from past experiences, like, okay, so I know that he's gonna like say like the way someone talks, like I can recognize a pattern, like, okay, he's gonna say something in a moment, so I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna focus on that.
• 11:56
  Nick Blanchette: Or I can anticipate a certain move so I can cut to a wide shot or move the location and and and get a different shot.
• 12:04
  Nick Blanchette: But in the end, it's all all in the editing for me, right?
• 12:07
  Nick Blanchette: Especially for for this show, that's how we figure out the story.
• 12:11
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 12:11
  Nick Blanchette: And Ryan, who's been editing the TV shows up till I got hired, so they're they have nine seasons of episodes.
• 12:18
  Nick Blanchette: Uh yeah, like in 20-something Emmys before I got there.
• 12:22
  Nick Blanchette: And um, so Ryan's been doing all that work, like filming, editing, and he pretty much trained me.
• 12:27
  Nick Blanchette: So he's been mentoring me through this whole like, you know, editing process.
• 12:32
  Nick Blanchette: I've edited almost three seasons so far.
• 12:35
  Nick Blanchette: And every step of the way he's been there, guiding me, like kind of teaching me the storytelling aspect.
• 12:41
  Nick Blanchette: It's not about the editing, it's not about how good you are at editing or how like fancy you are.
• 12:45
  Nick Blanchette: It's all about like the content of it.
• 12:48
  Nick Blanchette: And that that was the one thing I learned about working on the show is it really doesn't matter like how good the edits are.
• 12:53
  Nick Blanchette: It just is just as long as the the story's there.
• 12:56
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 12:56
  Nick Blanchette: Like you feel something.
• 12:58
  Jeff Ornstein: I was listening to a feature film, and the director told me there are three films the script you read, the film you film, and the film that's produced after editing.
• 13:09
  Jeff Ornstein: And they could be three completely different stories presented completely differently, but that editing is so key to what's the story that unfolds.
• 13:18
  Jeff Ornstein: So you must have really taken this guy, you know, he must you must have his confidence.
• 13:22
  Jeff Ornstein: If he'd gotten all these uh Emmys, yeah, nominations or awards prior to you joining, I would think he'd have been pretty protective as to who's gonna step into his shoes.
• 13:31
  Nick Blanchette: I that's why I was very nervous about first going into the job.
• 13:35
  Nick Blanchette: It was like I don't know when I got off to the job, it was through text.
• 13:40
  Nick Blanchette: I didn't respond right away.
• 13:41
  Nick Blanchette: I I talked to my wife, and I'm like, I don't know if I can do this.
• 13:44
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 13:44
  Nick Blanchette: I was nervous, and my my wife, you know, he's like, you can do this.
• 13:48
  Nick Blanchette: Like you you've been doing this for your whole life.
• 13:51
  Nick Blanchette: Like you're married.
• 13:52
  Nick Blanchette: You have you have this.
• 13:54
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 13:54
  Nick Blanchette: So I took the job, and honestly, Ryan is the most he's the nicest guy.
• 14:00
  Nick Blanchette: Like his feedback is so delicate and detailed.
• 14:04
  Nick Blanchette: Like it's super detailed, and like I couldn't ask for a better feedback system than that.
• 14:10
  Nick Blanchette: Because he's great to grow.
• 14:12
  Nick Blanchette: He gives me like yeah, exactly.
• 14:14
  Nick Blanchette: And then I've I've become a better at it.
• 14:16
  Nick Blanchette: Like, I've seen like I've thought I plateaued for a while.
• 14:19
  Nick Blanchette: I was like, okay, I'm not, I don't think I'm gonna get any better at this specific craft, you know, because I've I've wanted to do other things like VFX artist and and graphic work and directing and writing.
• 14:31
  Nick Blanchette: So I was like, maybe editing is something I should start veering away from and and doing something else.
• 14:37
  Nick Blanchette: But working at on the show as an editor, like I've definitely like strengthened my muscles in that.
• 14:44
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, it sounds also like this Ryan's a bag full of ideas.
• 14:47
  Jeff Ornstein: So if you stay connected with them, you know, there'll be another idea coming down the pike anytime soon.
• 14:52
  Nick Blanchette: And they're they're yeah, they're great musicians too.
• 14:53
  Nick Blanchette: Ryan actually produced Justin, they they're cousins, Justin and Ryan, and they challenge each other back and forth.
• 15:00
  Nick Blanchette: And right now, Justin is uh originally he was supposed to be stranded on a desert deserted island for a month while he writes his book.
• 15:07
  Nick Blanchette: That didn't work out because of sand fleas.
• 15:09
  Nick Blanchette: It was infestation.
• 15:10
  Nick Blanchette: So now he's traveling around the United States writing his book.
• 15:13
  Nick Blanchette: Before that, Justin challenged Ryan to visit all seven wonders of the world in in a record amount of time, or hitchhike from LA, Hollywood sign all the way to New Hampshire just busking, just drumming and and and hitchhiking.
• 15:30
  Nick Blanchette: So one of the challenges, the reason why I bring this up, is he challenged Ryan to record an album, like five songs, in a in a studio and and release it on an iTunes.
• 15:39
  Nick Blanchette: And he did that, and honestly, a lot, and he made music videos too, like that Ryan shot and direct and edited.
• 15:46
  Nick Blanchette: And it's super impressive the talent that I work with, like the the range.
• 15:51
  Nick Blanchette: They perform over 10,000 shows in Vegas in the span of like 10 years, and and they still do shows every every season.
• 15:59
  Nick Blanchette: Like the right now is the winter tour.
• 16:01
  Nick Blanchette: The winter tour starting at the Palace Theater on the first, I believe.
• 16:05
  Nick Blanchette: And they're going for like two weeks there, and then they go to another theater for another week, and they go to another theater.
• 16:10
  Nick Blanchette: They have their own theater that they did uh a whole summer performance at.
• 16:15
  Nick Blanchette: And I go with them sometimes uh when they do tours in the state in other states like uh Texas or we went to Chicago uh a couple months ago and performed for it wasn't Lego, but they were using Lego.
• 16:26
  Nick Blanchette: It was like an engineering conference for kids.
• 16:29
  Nick Blanchette: Uh-huh.
• 16:29
  Nick Blanchette: Uh and the guy, I think the guy from uh the the person who invented Segway.
• 16:33
  Nick Blanchette: Oh, he's he he actually is from Manchester and he is on the board of this uh engineering conference thing.
• 16:40
  Nick Blanchette: So it was it was really cool.
• 16:41
  Nick Blanchette: Like we experienced a lot of cool things on the job.
• 16:44
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, it just it's just it just goes to show you, you know, it never say never, never say die.
• 16:50
  Jeff Ornstein: Because here is, you know, the rook the carpet got pulled out from under you, and then all of a sudden you landed in this fantastic situation where you're able to grow and you can respect the people you work for, and they're giving you all this incredible feedback.
• 17:03
  Jeff Ornstein: I mean, I just love to hear things like that.
• 17:06
  Jeff Ornstein: Because a great mentor is hard to find.
• 17:08
  Jeff Ornstein: You know, some people, time is short, people want to they just want things done and they're not necessarily willing to teach.
• 17:14
  Jeff Ornstein: So Yeah.
• 17:15
  Jeff Ornstein: But now, do I understand this correctly?
• 17:17
  Jeff Ornstein: Are you writing a TV pilot?
• 17:19
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, I was toiling with the idea of writing a series like for the past couple of years.
• 17:25
  Nick Blanchette: Like I want to write like a series, like a Netflix, Apple TV type thing where people are coming back every week.
• 17:30
  Jeff Ornstein: Uh-huh.
• 17:30
  Nick Blanchette: As opposed to writing a film where it's you're sitting there for an hour and a half, two hours.
• 17:35
  Nick Blanchette: I could sit through like a TV show.
• 17:37
  Nick Blanchette: Like it's easier for me.
• 17:38
  Nick Blanchette: So that was my my goal is to write a a series.
• 17:41
  Nick Blanchette: And I've written screenplays in the past, I've written like 120-page scripts before, and it's daunting.
• 17:47
  Nick Blanchette: So I sat down for the last month and I started writing a series about um, and I had this idea about this app that you can see ghosts.
• 17:57
  Nick Blanchette: It allows you to see ghosts through, it's like a ghost hunting app.
• 17:59
  Nick Blanchette: Sure.
• 18:00
  Nick Blanchette: So I wrote this series centered around a ghost hunting team who discovers that they're not only seeing these ghosts, their ghosts are becoming real.
• 18:12
  Nick Blanchette: Like they're pull essentially, they're pulling the ghost from their time.
• 18:16
  Nick Blanchette: And they find out that what they're doing is they're actually looking into past, they've opened up like a time travel window.
• 18:21
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah.
• 18:21
  Nick Blanchette: And there's this corporation, like this big corporation that's trying to use their tech to fix a paradox and have a single, a singularity timeline as opposed to like the many fractured timelines.
• 18:34
  Nick Blanchette: And it uses it's based on real science.
• 18:36
  Nick Blanchette: I was actually cross-referencing it using Google's Gemini to figure out a way to make this make sense because that was like the one thing about like I wanted it to be grounded in science.
• 18:45
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 18:46
  Nick Blanchette: So it's all science-based with Einstein's theory of relativity and Tesla's his papers, the Tesla papers that the FBI seized when he died.
• 18:56
  Nick Blanchette: The lore is based around an actual thing, uh, well, an actual conspiracy theory called the Pegasus Project.
• 19:03
  Nick Blanchette: Right.
• 19:03
  Nick Blanchette: Which was a project back that was run, um, I'm not sure like the DARPA or whatever ran this thing where they had a chronovisor that allowed you to see in the past.
• 19:13
  Nick Blanchette: So you can see historical events.
• 19:16
  Nick Blanchette: And they used kids because they had a better temporal field.
• 19:19
  Nick Blanchette: They were sensitive to that.
• 19:20
  Nick Blanchette: If you look up the Pegasus project, you'll see a bunch of videos on this.
• 19:23
  Jeff Ornstein: And when I was writing up because I thought it was a fantastic idea when I read it in your bio.
• 19:29
  Nick Blanchette: When well, I was writing the pilot episode, and I didn't know about the Pegasus Project.
• 19:34
  Nick Blanchette: And I I was watching a YouTube channel called The Why Files, and they they go over the Pegasus project, and I'm like, oh my God, this is I'm writing this.
• 19:41
  Jeff Ornstein: You stand for everything or what we're trying to put out there for people that you know there's always a way to reinvent yourself and hit your stride after having multiple different experiences and then conjoining them and putting them into something new.
• 19:54
  Jeff Ornstein: And it sounds like you're on this fantastic trajectory to like really make a difference.
• 20:00
  Jeff Ornstein: And I'm gonna look for that Netflix or Hulu or wherever you end up with the uh sci-fi app because I think it's a great storyline.
• 20:08
  Nick Blanchette: Yeah, definitely.
• 20:09
  Nick Blanchette: I I have uh the whole series is written.
• 20:12
  Nick Blanchette: So I have right now I'm simmering on it.
• 20:15
  Nick Blanchette: I'm like waiting, just kind of letting letting my feelings kind of dwell over it, and and because it's a whole world that I built that I didn't realize how intricate it was.
• 20:24
  Nick Blanchette: So now I have to make sure it makes sense.
• 20:25
  Nick Blanchette: So I have to cross refresh like the continuity and the plot holes.
• 20:29
  Nick Blanchette: So that's that's the next step right now.
• 20:31
  Jeff Ornstein: All right.
• 20:31
  Jeff Ornstein: Well, good luck with that.
• 20:33
  Jeff Ornstein: Thank you so much.
• 20:34
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for spending some time with me.
• 20:35
  Jeff Ornstein: I appreciate it.
• 20:36
  Jeff Ornstein: Thanks for tuning in to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein.
• 20:40
  Jeff Ornstein: Follow, subscribe, and stay connected to your favorite socials at www.nextdackpodcast.com.
• 20:47
  Jeff Ornstein: Keep chasing your next act.
• 20:49
  Jeff Ornstein: The best is yet to come.