Interviews – Brian Ward – Shout Factory’s Shout Out Edition

Hi, this is Brian Warren from Shop Factory, and

you are listening to All Things Transformers.

Transform and roll out! Hi, this is Brian Ward

from Shout Factory, and you are listening to

All Things Transformers. I got a vibe tells me

I should be sitting in on this scene for a while.

Hello and welcome to All Things Transformers.

This is a crossover interview with Transformation

Animation Podcast. I am your host, TFG1Mike.

In this latest interview, it seems like I just

talked to this guy twice earlier this year. Considering

the first question actually says, so it's been

four years since we've interviewed you. Yeah,

you can't get rid of it. Yeah, needed to re -edit

that. Didn't do it. But anyway, as you can hear,

it's Mr. Brian Ward. And this time around, we're

not talking about the Arkham Sessions. We're

not talking about Batgirl. We are talking about

Transformers and Shout Factory, who Brian works

for. You've been there, what, ten years? Ten

years. Ten years this year. Awesome. Yeah, Brian

is a DVD producer at Shout Factory. Most of you

know that who are listening to this interview.

The reason for this interview is because one

day after this goes live, Transformers Animated,

the complete series DVD release from Shout Factory,

goes on sale exclusively at Amazon .com. And

when I say complete, ladies and gentlemen, I

mean complete. They have season three, finally

a legitimate real copy of season three on a real

DVD, not anything burned off of Cartoon Network.

And not just complete in terms of number of episodes,

but complete in terms of the width of the picture.

Yes, we will talk about that. Oh, boy. All right,

so. Like I said, we talked with you and your

doctorist there, Dr. Andrea Letamendi, for your

interview of the Arkham Sessions of the podcast

that you do. I started my Batgirl coverage inside

the pull bag with you guys. But today we're here

to talk about all things Shell Factory and all

things Transformers. Give us the rundown on what's

– are there any projects that – you know, haven't

been announced that you can talk about, or is

there any kind of teases you could give us? Uh,

I can tell you that, uh, there are still some

very good projects in the works, uh, things that

haven't necessarily been announced. Um, my plate

is kind of full right now with, uh, with titles

that, that people do know about. I'm working

on Peewee's Playhouse still. That's been a, uh,

a long process, uh, a long but rewarding process.

Um, We're also working on WKRP in Cincinnati,

Welcome Back Cotter, complete series sets. So

those have been in the works for a little while.

And there are a number of other titles, Hasbro

related, that are in the pike. But yeah, right

now it's all Transformers animated for me. Yeah.

Pretty much. Shout Factory, you guys just aren't

doing DVD anymore. You guys are all over the

online entertainment as well, seeing as how your

weekly shout -out started. What's going on with

that? Well, your weekly shout -out started as

a web series on YouTube that was basically designed

for better... uh better or worse sort of act

as uh not really a commercial but sort of an

informative tool it's it come it's supposed to

come out every tuesday and it's supposed to be

uh basically everything that is hitting stores

uh that day or that day for that week and you

know etc and and uh you know we we put things

like interviews uh with people We get exclusive

interviews that are behind the scenes of Shot

Factory. So it sort of gives you an idea as to

what it's like to work there. We give you some

sneak peeks at things that are coming up, whether

it's snippets of bonus features or something

else entirely. One of the recent episodes, we

went to the live reunion reading from The Middleman.

Javier Grillo Markswatch got the cast back together

because of a crowdsourced comic book that he

had done that was an additional episode of The

Middleman. And, you know, his fans are incredibly

loyal, as they should be. And that night was

fantastic. But we were there and we caught it

on tape and we. We made it part of your weekly

shout out. And, you know, it's just fun stuff

like that. It gives people an inside look at

Shout Factory. And in addition, it also shows

you what's coming out that week. We tell you

about bonus features. Sometimes we show you a

little bit of it. And it's been cool. We did

it for about a year. And that first year was

basically just one big proof of concept. And

then we decided to team up with the YouTube.

uh creator space here in los angeles and now

we shoot the episodes there and um you know they

there are more bells and whistles everything

looks nicer feels nicer and uh we like the direction

in which it's going it's sort of um a comedic

it's not just me standing in front of you telling

you what's out now we actually get involved so

it's it's nice Yeah, the comedy in it for season

two is very, very well done. Thank you. I remember

that first episode. You're like, wait, that's

it? That's all you're giving? I'll have to embed

that first episode into this interview post because

people, you'll laugh your butts off about it.

So how has the response been for your weekly

shout out? It's been good. We've had a pretty

strong, you know, the audience has basically

stayed. with us the entire time, and they've

all been very kind to us online. Basically, it's

just an opportunity for us to have a lot of fun

in a way that we wouldn't normally, and we've

never really seen any other company do. We don't

see too many companies go out and tell folks

what it is that they've got coming out, and I

kind of feel like social media and YouTube and

Vimeo and all these other new media... platforms

are kind of the wave of the future in terms of

marketing so we might as well use that to our

advantage and we liked things that we've seen

in the past couple years um one of my favorites

right now is is looking at the dc all access

um web series and uh you know ours is a different

style ours is much more i like to think of it

as shout factories version of the soup I can

so see that. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's sort

of how I like to pitch it. So, you know, it's

that, that kind of comedy, but, but that, you

know, as, as family friendly as we can be since

we are a commercial company, but, but yeah. Yes.

Yes. Well, it's, this is so funny in the June

and the most recent episode, the June 5th episode,

you're wondering where one of your associates

is Chris. And at the end, uh there's some sort

of food on a plate and you attempt to take a

bite i nope nope bye i absolutely love that yeah

no keep keep that stuff coming there was one

episode where you dressed up as as a bunch of

different things going through i love how you

did that oh yeah um the There was a cemetery,

there was a school room, there was a lawyer's

office. I love how you did that based on the

release that you were talking about. Yeah, we

like to put not only myself, but other people

who work at Shout, Chris and Evan, who are very

instrumental in getting this new version of the

Shout Out up. We decided we all wanted them to

be a part of it. So we write them into the show

every week. And I think they've added so much

to it. Or in Chris's case, you feed them to the

judge. Yeah, we might eat them. We're not quite

sure. It's a plate of meat. It might be Chris.

That's one of the things I loved about that first

episode for season two. You're like, wait, wait,

wait, what's going on? I'm the star here. Absolutely.

In that first episode, it gives us an opportunity

to also show off potential other shows that we

could do. In that first episode, we gave people

a glimpse at a new show that we're creating called

The Debate Club, and it pits two fans against

one another in a fun way to debate. one thing

versus another in fandom in that first episode

it was the green ranger versus the white ranger

and of course we all know tommy is one in the

same but but they're not so we let two fans go

at it and at the end that the the fan that wins

based on uh a a period of time of votes uh on

the youtube page that fan then wins something

so uh we've got another one of those episodes

coming out soon and um I actually suggested that,

I think. Yeah, in fact, you will be very happy

with that episode coming out. And then we've

got another show that we hope to debut very shortly

with a good friend of our company, Amy Ratcliffe,

who's at Amy underscore geek on Twitter. She's

going around from convention to convention. over

the course of the year and giving us her recaps

of life at the con. So we hope to be debuting

that pretty soon. Awesome, awesome. Okay, now

I noticed that before we get animated here, one

question I've been meaning to ask you is that

this week's episode, this past week's episode

for your weekly shout -out, kind of focused a

little bit on Scream Factory. Is Scream Factory

a subsidy of Shout Factory, or are they a completely

separate company that just decided to take the

factory name? No, no, no. We're all Shout Factory.

Okay. Basically, the way it works is Shout Factory

wanted to... We basically wanted the opportunity...

We had started working on various horror... catalogs,

you know, Roger Corman and stuff like that. And

we sort of figured there was a really great way

to create sort of a brand all in itself. And

so purely within the company, we're all the same

company, but we decided to brand our horror extension.

um, as Scream Factory, very much a play off of

Shout Factory, obviously. Um, and, uh, and yeah,

that's, that's our team. That's Jeff Nelson and

Cliff McMillan. Uh, Jeff has been with the company

for a long time. Cliff has been with the company

for, for quite a while. Uh, and Cliff gets an

opportunity to produce a lot of those. DVDs and

Blu -rays. Jeff is the marketing guru behind

them. And you're not going to find a bigger horror

fan in Shout Factory than Jeff Nelson. So that

brand, that Screen Factory is in very good hands.

But yeah, any opportunity we can get to talk

about Screen Factory is a welcome one because

that's a huge fan base right there. Awesome.

Awesome. All right, so let's get animated. How

is it now? I know you're probably going to interrupt

me when I ask this question, but just let me

go with this here. How is it that Shot Factory

of Gods were able to defeat Cartoon Network from

harboring the rights to Transformers Animated,

specifically getting Season 3 on DVD? And the

follow -up question to that is, I want you to

talk a bit about how DVD production companies

get contracts for the rights to produce DVDs.

Because Season 3... the fans of Transformers

Intermediate, myself included, we've been wanting

season three since the final episode aired on

Cartoon Network almost, oh geez, two or three,

four years ago. So how did that happen? Well,

I think the second half of that question is probably

the easiest way to answer the whole thing. And

that's really that, I believe, if I'm not mistaken,

and I very well could be, but the original releases

were done by Paramount. I think. And then eventually

that license expired, which opens the door to

another company to come in and pick up that license

from Hasbro. And we've got such a great relationship

with Hasbro. We've been producing DVDs for them

since Transformers G1. uh their 25th anniversary

so we've been with them for the last five years

um it's it's literally been half of shout factories

existence has been with hasbro um in terms of

uh you know last year we celebrated our 10th

anniversary and um and this year we are uh celebrating

transformers 30th anniversary uh when the last

time that we we did g1 it was it was its 25th

so We've had a really great relationship with

Hasbro. We love working with them. We think they

love working with us because we are a company

that, while we may not be as big as another studio

like, say, Paramount, we are filled to the brim

with people who are fans of those cartoons, grew

up with those shows, and certainly know how to

treat the DVDs from the perspective of the fan.

When the opportunity came up to get Transformers

animated, because those rights were not available

for a long while, we then decided to take that

opportunity. And I knew that season three had

not been released. For a very long time, only

recently, our forums on our website sort of shut

down. But for years, we heard a lot of fans.

begging for the third season of Transformers

Animated. The problem with that is that not every

fan got to buy the first two seasons when they

had the opportunity. And those seasons are long

since out of print. Some of them are more expensive

on places like Amazon or eBay or whatever. So

rather than simply cater to the people who wanted

season three, we decided to release a complete

series set via Amazon. And then, of course, season

three is also available for those that just want

to pick up those last 13 episodes. Absolutely.

And that's one of the things I've been saying.

I said it in my written review. I said it in

the video review I did of the set because you

guys were Tom Chen and the people over at Shout

Factor were nice enough to send me a review copy

of the complete series. I said in my review that

if you have the original DVDs. great, and you

only need season three, great. Go ahead and get

that. But if you want all 42 episodes, because

that was the thing with the Paramount DVDs, they

did transform and roll out the first three episodes

of the series as a single disc set, and then

they did season one, season two, and never did

season three. With the complete series, you get

all 42 in one. Having said that, there are, I

believe, two commentaries missing. From your

all set, I think it's Mission Accomplished and

what's the other one? The other one I think is

the original commentary for Garbage In, Garbage

Out. Oh, wait. Garbage In, Garbage Out is a new

commentary? It's a brand new commentary. Oh,

I didn't know that. I thought it was the same

one. No, it's Mission Accomplished and I think

the Elite Guard. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah,

there was two commentaries that were on the original.

So how is it that you all were able to do, if

Garbage in Garbage Out isn't the same commentary

that's on the other one. So we basically have

four new commentaries because we didn't have,

obviously we didn't have season three. Right.

And we have new commentaries on Transform. Transwarped

parts one through three. Transwarped one through

three, yeah. Yeah, we've got Transwarped one

through three and then we've got a brand new

commentary on Garbage in Garbage Out. Awesome.

And basically we let the showrunners, Marty Eisenberg.

Matt Youngberg. Yeah, Matt Youngberg. Well, we

let those guys decide what episodes they wanted

to talk about. And those were the four that they

very much wanted to, in Garbage In, Garbage Out,

they wanted to revisit. we got that opportunity

you know and the unfortunate thing is that we

weren't able to port over bonus features from

the original releases um and sadly that's just

one of those behind the scenes uh that's one

of those behind the scenes problems uh with the

the company uh or not the company the industry

is is that sometimes uh you just can't get the

rights to things that other people have done,

or they might have exclusive rights to certain

things. In the case of the shorts, those rights

were exclusive. Oh, really? Yeah, so we could

not port those over. God knows we tried. Yeah,

they were exclusive to Paramount? I have no idea.

I mean, in some deal that was made at some point

in time, probably during the creation of the

series. Okay. You know, something was worked

out, and sadly, it kept us from getting those

things in the future, which is today's present.

Yeah, because I remember when I first got the

set and I started posting about it online, people

were asking me about the shorts. People were

then saying, okay, so if the... shorts that were

on the original dvds aren't there then then they

guessed that the unreleased shorts would never

get released and i said probably not which kind

of stinks but yeah i mean it's definitely um

it's definitely a bummer um and it's definitely

something we worked up into the last minute to

try to to secure those rights and and unfortunately

it just didn't work out the the the real The

real issue, and I say this not only as a DVD

producer, but also as a fan of not just Transformers,

but just the medium in general, is that really

the thing to latch on to is the fact that season

three, which was something that most people didn't

think would ever be released, is now about to

hit retail. Oh, absolutely. No, no, no, no. Don't

get me wrong. Oh, no, no, no. I'm not. No, no,

I know you're not. I know you're not. But I just

want you to realize and I want the listeners

to realize, do not get me wrong, people. I am

not complaining that I have this set and that

season three is on DVD whatsoever. I'm just asking

the questions because I know people have asked

me the questions. My response, my response is

really more for those people is, is for the people

who, because I've been hit with a number of the

questions as well. And I've been hit with a,

and it's not a bad thing. No one's angry. Cause

I think most people understand that. that the

importance of season three far outweighs the

importance of a couple of shorts that lasted

a couple of minutes each and a couple of commentaries.

But I think folks will be very happy with the

commentaries that we do have on the set. Oh,

absolutely. I listened to all three because I

didn't realize Garbage In, Garbage Out was a

new commentary. I thought it was just the same

one. So I have not listened to that. So I'll

have to go back. But I did listen to the three

Transwarp commentaries. And it's like, oh, my

God. And you hear Derek J. Wyatt talking about,

you know, he tried to keep Blur alive. Oh, yeah.

You know, they talked about, you know, working

on all the characters. He mentions in the scene

where Blackout basically nearly stomps Rodimus'

head into the ground. He mentions, oh, look,

there's our one movie character we were able

to use. They are some amazing commentaries. Let's

talk about the fact that this is a wide release.

And by wide, I mean it's... It is the full, it

is the real way you should be watching this show.

People. How did that work into the production?

How did, how did you guys, did they send you

the original masters or Hasbro has been really

good about, um, they've actually started converting

most of their masters, uh, to digital, uh, digital

masters so that, you know, you, we don't have

to worry about tape. I mean, when we started

working with them, uh for transformers g1 we

were we were working with digibeta and and one

inch or two inch uh tape and and you know all

of that and and as great as that is uh it's very

storage heavy um but it's also not always reliable

you get things like tape hits and stuff like

that in the encodes and um hasbro's been fantastic

about sort of converting their their library

over to digital. So to be perfectly honest, when

we knew that we were going to get the rights

to the series, we knew that we had to release

it in widescreen. We knew that that was not an

option. Luckily for us, Hasbro also knew that.

And the only masters they gave us were the original

widescreen versions. Awesome. Very cool, very

cool. All right. So, as you mentioned, with Shout

Factory and Hasbro in full combiner mode, are

there any Transformers series left that you guys

haven't gotten on DVD that you want to work on?

I'm trying to think if there are any other series.

I know we've done, or I guess we've not done,

we don't have the rights for, was it Robots in

Disguise? Then there are some of the Japanese

OVAs we don't have. But we have done the unicorn.

Oh, wow. You'll never believe. I literally just

looked at my browser and saw a picture of a unicorn

and happened to be saying Unicron at the exact

same time. And it could be the greatest thing

I've ever done. Yeah, no, we're about to wrap

up the Unicron trilogy with Transformers Cybertron.

And, of course, we did the Takara series back

in the day. We've done Beast Wars. We, yeah,

I don't know. I can't think of any other series

that I do very much... There are certain things

I do really want to work on that have the Transformers

name on it. I've never made it a secret that

I would die a happy man if I could produce Transformers

the movie. If I could do something like that,

that would be fantastic. Okay, now let me ask

you, because I actually have the... Of course,

I don't have my lights on in my office here,

but I have the... Where is it? Where are you?

I have the 2007 Sony BMG two -disc thing. How

would you... Would you make it a two -disc or

would you make it... How... If you got the chance,

if Shot Factory got the chance in a hypothetical

world to put Transformers the 86 movie, what

would you do with it? What would you want to

get for it? That's a really good question. I

don't know. I honestly don't know because that

version that you have there is actually a really

good version. They had a commentary. Now, I'm

just off the top of my head. I remember they

had a commentary with Flint Dilley and Sue Blue

and Nelson Shin. What did they talk about? Did

they talk to Vince DeCola in that one? Was there

a documentary? Is there a feature ad or something

on that? Not with Vince. There's all new feature

ads. The Death of Optimus Prime, casting characters

in Transformers Q &A with Nelson Shin, Tom Griffin,

Joe Bacall, Flint Dilley, Sue Blue. There's nothing

with Vince or Stan on here. Maybe that's something

I always thought. Or maybe I thought I remembered.

Someone saying that they had shot something.

I don't remember exactly what that was, but no,

I don't know. This could be a long conversation

just of me mapping out the kinds of things I

would do for something like that. For starters,

I would totally go after the best possible master

available in HD, and I would just watch the crap

out of that movie over and over and over again.

Absolutely. I have... I actually... The copy

that I have of the 2007, I actually had to buy

it off of... off of amazon at the time about

three or four months ago because i didn't have

the original time when it originally came out

i bought it and then you know through other means

i had to get rid of it at one point which is

kind of sad but now that i have it again i watch

it constantly oh and i i can tell you i mean

i remember our this is it's an interesting little

twist of fate that um shout factories first year

uh with a booth at comic -con was literally the

year that they announced the Transformers, the

movie, that two -disc release there. Because

I remember we were positioned right next to,

right sort of catty corner next to Hasbro. And

that was the year that they had announced the

Michael Bay, the first Michael Bay movie. And

they had Optimus Prime's trailer. The trailer

hitched there, and it was long before we had

actually seen designs of Optimus Prime or anything

like that, but they wanted to make it a big splash.

They had Optimus Prime's trailer hitch, and then

they were passing around postcards that had the

cover art. for the two -disc set that was coming

out from Sony. Oh, wow. And I remember getting

that and freaking out over it. Because the first

year that we were at Comic -Con, we didn't have

a relationship with Hasbro yet. So for me now

to look back on that and then to say... I know

a lot of the people who were there. I know a

lot of the people who worked on those projects,

and I get to work with them now on various other

projects like Transformers Animated. It's really

special to me because if you know me, you know

Comic -Con. Those are my people. Yes. And it

is a treat to go back and work on various Transformers

titles. Absolutely, absolutely. All right. Let's

talk about the giant honking monkey in the room.

Just announced, right before this interview went

live, just announced a day before, I believe,

or the week before, because this will go up on

Monday, June 9th, you guys are doing Beast Machines,

the complete series. As we've been recording

this interview, I've had a couple of people comment

on my Facebook shared post of tformers .com having

the news about this. And some people have said,

oh, worst Transformers series ever. I don't agree

with that. I think Beast Machines was its own

thing. Sure, it got a little preachy with the

whole nature versus technology and kind of, you

know, this whole... religious novella for television

kind of thing, but I personally don't care. I

love the series. I think this is a natural evolution

of Beast Wars. I think you're absolutely right.

I don't know that it necessarily had the same

sort of depth of lore that Beast Wars brought

to the table, but it's very clearly an extension

of it. and uh and and i i have no problem throwing

beast machines into that mythology absolutely

um now i know you're in probably the beginning

stages of this release because the beast machines

complete series set from shut factory does not

release until september 2nd 2014 um but is there

anything any kind of sneak peek you can give

us give our listeners On that date, you will

receive all of the episodes of Beast Machines.

I am legitimately in the opening stages of it.

I just received the masters. They look fantastic.

And I'm about to start the menu design process

right now. I just handed the disc breakdown to

my DVD author. So encoding is about to begin

on that. But stay tuned because I'm sure we will

have all kinds of news about that title and more.

Awesome. Is it too late for me to ask something

of this set? I literally just started the set,

so you can ask me. Okay, well, I don't know.

You said it's already become encoding, so I don't

know. Okay, so my request here is can you guys

do something similar? To what you did with the

gem set, where you have a video jukebox of the

Beast Machines music. I have been dying to have

a soundtrack for Beast Machines. It's a great

idea. Now, if I remember correctly... Jem has

been a little while, but Jem was basically, we

took the music videos and then created sort of

a playable jukebox. You could choose which music

or which music video you wanted to watch. I don't

know, something like that could be interesting

for a show like Beast Wars and Beast Machines.

You know, for starters, I think... the music

that they were doing for those shows was pretty

fantastic. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Mainframe certainly

knew how to score a show during that time. That

could be cool. Absolutely. Because I know myself,

co -creator of GCR and Steve Megatron, he and

I both want... We should probably talk to the

people at La La Land Records about this, but

we both want Beast Wars and Beast Machines soundtracks,

the actual music from the shows, because the

music was just so good. Absolutely. All right.

That's going to do it for us, I think. Do you

have anything else you want to bring up or anything

else you want to tell the people about for Shout

Factory? We very much appreciate everyone's support,

and you can always find us online. Our forums

are gone, but we're still very much open -eared.

We listen to everything you have to say, good

and bad, mostly good, which is always pleasant.

But yeah, just come drop by our Facebook page

and come follow us on Twitter. We're at Shout

Factory. I'm at BWard028, and we always look

forward to hearing from everybody. All right.

I'd like to thank Brian for taking the time to

chat with us in this latest All Things Transformers

Transformation Animation Podcast interview. We

will catch you next time. Transform and roll

out, or Decepticons, rise up if you want to be

a villain. We will catch you later. The damage

is too severe. I'm going to have to amputate.

What? Don't worry. Cybertron Service will issue

a replacement leg within six to eight solar cycles.

Ow! Couldn't I get a second opinion? Rodimus

to Elite Guard Command. We are under attack.

Repeat. Requesting backup, we are under attack.

Stay cool, Rodimus, and try to hold out a little

longer. Elite guard forces are strained to maximum

as it is. Sir, I don't know how long we can keep

the cons from the space bridge. The cons are

going after every space bridge on the periphery.

We can't let any of them transport the Cybertron.

I can assure you, Commander, that the Cybertron

space bridge nexus is fully guarded. We'll be

ready for anything that comes through. Count

on it. Ironhide! Brawn! Transform and fall back!

We need to protect the space bridge! We need

the space bridge operational. Oh, sorry. Cyclonius,

oil slick. Help free Spitter and secure the perimeter.

You'll have to get past me first, Decepticreeps.

You say that like it's a difficult thing, Autobot.

COSNIC BRUSH!