Last updated on January 10th, 2018

Hate watching and critiquing movies is a national pastime. If you don’t believe me take a quick second and Google “emoji movie review” to see how everyone from experienced film critics, to random bloggers, to everyone on Twitter voicing their distaste for it. What’d you expect? It’s a freaking movie about emojis. Film Roast takes this fun critique and neatly packages it into a podcast for everyones enjoyment.

Film Roast, hosted by friends Hannah and Julia, started as a video series but due to lengthy editing and too much good footage ending up on the cuttingroom floor, they decided to make the full-time switch to podcasts.

I got a chance to listen to Film Roast and thoroughly enjoyed it. Anytime you can poke fun at movies indended to be good or rank levels of bad movies and I’m all in. I also was lucky enough to talk to Hannah about how they got started, some of their favorite movies, and what they look for in a good podcast.

Discover Pods: What’s your podcast about?

Hannah: Movie discussion with a hint of sarcasm

DP: As your name might imply, do you ever bash on movies and/or hate watch them?

Hannah: We certainly do. We think part of the fun of our show is we are not film experts – in any way. We’re simply trying to create the atmosphere that you are sitting down with your friends and talking about movies. I know with my friends, most of our conversations revolve around some light poking fun and we treat movies the same way. We try to keep open minds and of course are open to differing opinions, but we don’t hold back if we don’t enjoy something. The best example that jumps to mind was our recent episode on worst movie franchises. We really let some films have it.

DP: What’s unique about your podcast?

Hannah: We describe ourselves as “over caffeinated and under qualified”. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and just love talking about film.

DP: What have been your favorite movies discussed on the podcast so far? 

Hannah: Our podcast is a little different than other movie pods because we discuss topics related to us and then associated movies with them. For example, our topics range from overrated Disney films to Best Movie Dads to Best Dance Numbers in Film. We pick our personal top 5 and explain how they connected to us on some level. Maybe it was a film from our childhood or maybe it was one that we watched at a very important time in our lives. We also started implementing some new release episodes where we discuss recent films like SpiderMan: Homecoming or The Beguiled with both non and spoiler sections.

I think my favorite episode we’ve done was our worst people in a horror film topic. Julia and I got to roast some of the best horror films and we got to talk about why we despised certain characters (looking at you Sam from The Babadook!).

DP: Why did you choose to podcast?

Hannah: We originally started as a video podcast, but it was taking too much time to edit. We switched to audio and loved it so we’ve never looked back!

DP: Was the migration from video to audio difficult? Was there a specific moment when you decided to stop with the video format?

Hannah: The adaptation to audio was seamless. Hosting a video podcast turned out to be a lot of hours sitting and editing, and while audio can be a similar situation, you end up with a lot more content when you only do audio. We were cutting down an hour long recording in our video shows to only release an 8 minute video and that was just so much content wasted. We feel the audio format gives us a chance to improv a lot more and leave in those little bits where we stutter or can’t remember a word, or try a bad impression. We decided to stop a few months into our endeavor. Julia suggested that we switch to audio and I was hesitant at first because I was afraid people wouldn’t be able to react to our facial expressions and comedic timing, but the fact of the matter was audio actually amplified our personalities. Once we were approved on Apple Podcasts, we just transitioned to 100% audio and we’ve never looked back!

DP: Do you think we’ve reached “peak podcast”

Hannah: Not even close. We say it up front in all of our episodes that we are complete amateurs, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to improve each week. We’ve been very lucky to connect with talented podcasters who are both seasoned and brand new to the creative world. A lot of them given us great advice on how to improve our audio quality, our content, and our overall brand. Julia and I both have held jobs in social media marketing and advertising, so that helps a lot with growing an organic audience, but as far as a podcast goes we have much room for improvement! We just purchased new mics and have slowly been working in Audacity to improve the sound quality. We’ve come a long way from our first episode 5 months ago in both quality of sound and our show as a whole.

DP: What are your top 5 favorite podcasts?

Hannah: Smaller, Independent Pods:

  1. The Faculty of Horror
  2. Is This Adulting?
  3. The Dirty Bits Podcast
  4. Podcasts We Listen To
  5. Disney History Institute Podcast

Bigger Podcasts:

  1. 2 Dope Queens
  2. Fresh Air
  3. Inside Psycho
  4. Nerdist
  5. You Must Remember This
  6. Bullseye

DP: Where can listeners find you?

Hannah: Here is all of our podcast info:

As far as streaming, you can find us on Google Play, Stitcher, iTunes, or directly on our feed

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