Research

In order to understand how to properly conduct an interview for a podcast, I chose to watch three different interviews that are all different from each other. One was the True Geordie   podcast interview with "prankster" Dapper Laughs and the other is the Defunctland Podcast with Bear In The Big Blue House puppeteer, Noel MacNeal and the last one was Puppet Tears interview with Muppet performer Bill Barretta

Each of these interviews bring something different. And are all unique. The True Geordie podcast with Dapper Laughs is quite formal and is the only one of these podcasts that get fairly serious as it touches on the subject of Dapper Laugh's controversy. This is very different to the other two interviews here.

The Noel MacNeal interview is about Noel's career and how he started as a puppeteer how went on to star in many different shows  and most famously  Bear In The Big Blue House.. 

The Bill Barretta interview is very similar to the Noel Macneal interview  

Daniel O' Riley, also known as Dapper Laughs is a comedian who became famous on the popular social networking site called Vine where he became known as the "pricks prick" He was best known for being a bit of a playboy and a "lad". He gained millions of followers on both Vine and Facebook. His popularity allowed for a chance on his own TV show on ITV 2 called Dapper Laughs: on the pull, where he tries to make contestants more sexuality appealing to women. The show picked up  criticism of being degrading to women . He has been criticised doing a charity Christmas album raising money for homeless people. But after offensive lyrics about the homeless, the charity refused donations from O'Riley . Dapper Laughs faced huge criticism after a comment in a live comedy show where he said an female audience member was gagging for rape saw #CancelDapper trend on twitter asking ITV to drop his show. ITV announced that they would not pick the show up for a second series. 

Dan O'Riley has officially retired the character of Dapper Laughs after the controversy. 

He appeared on episode 21 on the True Geordie podcast to discuss his career and controversy and to also confront statements made about him on a previous True Georide  podcast with YouTuber's JaackMate and Stephen Tries where Jaackmate tells a story about Dapper Laughs where he is really drunk and is actually very unprofessional on a shoot. Dapper Laughs comes on to defend himself about these allegations from JaackMate as well as tell his own side to the stories in terms of the controversy he has faced from the Media. There are two different types of interviewers in this podcast. Brian (True Geordie) is mainly focused on asking straight questions about what has happened and to let Dan tell his story where as his Co-host Lawrence McKenna was focused on asking follow up questions to the responses Dan gave, he did this in order to get a reaction out of him. This makes it a much more interesting watch as he is challenging what Dapper Laughs has   however it feels like McKenna is trying to antagonise  and down right criticise him in some parts. 

Noel MacNeal is an american Puppeteer, writer, actor and director of Children's television. He has been working in that field since the 1980's working on shows such as Sesame Street, The Great Space Coaster, Eureeka's Castle, The puzzle place, Oobi and most famously Bear In The Big Blue House which began in 1997. Bear In The Big Blue House was a show created by Mitchell Kriegman and was developed by The Jim Henson Company for the Disney Channel and there new pre-school programming block Playhouse Disney . In the late 90's Disney were transitioning from a subscription service to a basic cable channel. During this time they were struggling to find an audience due to the popularity of Nickelodeon and PBS. So Disney created a new programming block Playhouse Disney where Bear would air for over 10 years.

Bear was a smash hit and was the most successful show on the new programming block. Merchandise including Albums, Toys and books being produced. Bear would receive a live show in MGM studios at Walt Disney World and Disney's California Adventure at Disneyland resort and  MacNeal would make many TV appearances throughout this time on shows such as Donny and Marie, Hollywood Squares and the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. Defunctland host Kevin Perjurer, explores MacNeal's career from his early years growing up to becoming a puppeteer and working in TV and film. This is something I am hoping to do with my interview with Tau Bennett. He also asked a number of open and closed question 

Bill Barretta is an American actor and puppeteer who has worked for the Jim Henson Company since the early 1990's starting as a costume performer on the show Dinosaurs. He became a muppet performer in 1996 when he played Clueless Morgan in Muppet Treasure Island alongside Kevin Clash's Polly Lobster and Tim Curry as Long John Silver. Barretta also worked on the show Muppets Tonight with his own original characters Johnny Fiama, Bobo The Bear, Pepe the king prawn among many others. Since the late 90's Barretta has began to take on characters from other perfomers such as Rowlf the dog, Dr Teeth and the Swedish Chef from Jim Henson among many other characters from other past Muppet performers. He is also appeared in The Muppets 2001, The Muppets (Tv series), Muppets Most Wanted, Muppets From Space, The HappyTime Murders and the documentary Muppet Guys Talking. The Puppet Tears interview by Adam Kreutinger and Cameron Garity explores all of Barretta's career and they allow Bill to open up on things such as the failure of the Happytime Murders. They used open questions to allow Bill Barretta to speak openly and honestly about his career which allowed for good responses. These responses allowed for Garity and Kreutenger to ask follow up questions to Barretta responses. 

The Barretta interview was filmed over Skype which is something I am hoping to do with Tau Bennett as he is in New York and we cannot communicate in person. 

My target audience are Muppet and puppet fans as they will be most familiar with the puppeteers that work on Sesame Street and the Muppets and would be much more interested in listening to the rise and journey of Tau Bennett, Non Muppet fans may still be interested . In order to understand my target audience better, I created a survey for members of my target audience and some non target audience people to complete. 

In total I got 18 respondents mainly Muppet fans (my target audience), however I got a few non Muppet fans to participate in the survey.   The majority of people who answered the survey were between 18 and 24 with the second most being under 18's and 35-44 year olds with 5 respondents each. I am going to target my interview to people aged around 14-40 which is roughly the age bracket of my target demographic. 

The majority of people who responded to the survey are from the US, I asked these people on a Muppet discord server as they are my target audience and I wanted to understand how they felt about the interview. And the feedback I received was very positive as 14 of the 18 people who responded said they'd be interested in an interview with Tau Bennett. 

Based on my research my target audience is 14-40 year old, Muppet fans who enjoy interviews.