We are back with an all women Spidcast episode this month (listen in below and subscribe to “Spidcast” on iTunes) with a focus on Hollywood, filmmaking, web series, acting, following your passions, and other interesting sound bites! August’s Spidcast features the incredible individuals; Kristyn Burtt and Kai Soremekun. They are our amazingly talented, passionate, and insightful guests for our 18th episode of Spidcast on August 8th, 2012.

Our Guests

Kristyn Burtt is the host of three shows: Hollywood Happy Hour, a live entertainment show, where she works alongside co-hosts Nelson Aspen and Bonnie Gillespie, The Vintage Vehicle Show, and her latest venture, network host at USN. She was thrilled to participate in the pilot episodes of The Arena with Jesse Ventura for MSNBC. It gave her the opportunity to battle it out with the former Governor in a topical news/political forum. She was also a network host for the home shopping channel, ShopNBC. She currently resides in Los Angeles where she loves to run the canyons, figure skate, and hang out with her fat cat, Beans.

Kai Soremekun is originally from Toronto, Canada, Kai began her career as an actress in New York City. Her many credits include the films, “Heat”, “Regarding Henry” and the Fox television series “Medicine Ball”. Her supporting lead role of Peaches in the romantic comedy “Love, Sex and Eating the Bones” helped garner it one of the top ten Canadian films of 2003.

Kai was honored with the Best Director Award at the Reel Black Awards for her first narrative short film entitled “Maple”. Maple has been featured in festivals throughout North America, Europe and the Caribbean.

Kai’s 2nd narrative short film “Lock Her Room” was chosen to participate in the Showtime Network’s Black Filmmaker Showcase. As a result, Lock Her Room had its television premiere on the Showtime Network and has also appeared in several film festivals.

We thank Kristyn and Kai for being such fun and inspirational guests!

If you’re interested in sponsoring next month’s Spidcast show, then please get in touch. If you have something to say with regards to what Kristyn and Kai talked about, then post a comment below, send out a tweet, or share around the social web to continue the conversation. Thanks for listening, and be sure to share this show with anyone in your network who can get value from it!

Full Transcript Below

INTRO

Michael London: Hi, I’m Michael London and welcome to Spidcast, the future of collaborative video production brought to you by Indie Source Magazine where they believe free is better and I like the way they think.

Hey, it’s ladies’ day on Spidcast and on this episode we’re talking with entertainment reporter and host Kristyn Burrt and also Kai will be here. She’s an actress and filmmaker with a very cool web series and production and she has some other stories to tell as well.

What do you say? Let’s jump right in. First up is Kristyn Burtt. Kristyn, welcome to Spidcast.

Kristyn Burtt: Thanks for having me.

Michael London: Kristyn, if you would, give us a little Reader’s Digest version. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Kristyn Burtt: Sure. Well, I’m an entertainment reporter and host here in Los Angeles and I work on the red carpet. I do a lot of press junkets. But my favorite thing to do is sort of demystifying Hollywood and what goes on behind the red carpet. Hollywood is a bunch of smoke and mirrors and we really shouldn’t buy into all of it and I think that’s the real main thing that I love to sort of get in there and tell people the real secret behind Hollywood.

Michael London: So that being said, tell us one great secret.

Kristyn Burtt: One good secret?

Michael London: Yes.

Kristyn Burtt: You know, I think my favorite thing, and this is for women out there, you really shouldn’t buy into how everyone looks and think I should look like that. Because people have a team to make them look like that. You know, a stylist, manicurist, facialist and there’s lots of Botox going on. There’s the trainer. There’s everything like that. But if you see something in terms of, like in a magazine, everything is, you know, airbrushed and Photoshopped so I think sometimes we set ourselves up for these unrealistic images. But I am like, understand when I am on the red carpet and I see people in person, it’s the greatest equalizer out there. You see who has bad skin. You see who’s wearing the Spanx. You know that they’re just like us. There’s one or two that like freaks of nature that are like gorgeous and don’t need a thing, but most people are human and that’s what everyone needs to understand.

Michael London: So, Kristyn, you gotta know that women everywhere are saying “I love her” because they do tend to hold themselves at times way too high of a standard. So what was your path towards to what you’re doing right now?

Kristyn Burtt: I guess I took a non-traditional path and I think now if I was just graduating from college, I couldn’t do this path just because the way media has changed so much. But I was on a scholarship at NYU for dance, so my goal was to be on Broadway and that sort of changed. After I graduated, I was dancing professionally in New York but I got hired to host this children’s dance video which was how to hokey-pokey and electric slide and do the YMCA and it did extremely well so I started getting hired for host jobs and it was one of those things where I was having a lot of fun but I was also making more money in one day than I would on a two-week equity contract doing this show. And I thought hmmm, there must be something to this so I did both for a little while but I also realized that I needed some on-camera training because I was pretty enthusiastic but very raw. And I got to a point where I just thought okay, something’s going to have to give” because this dance career, you’ve got to give a 110% at all times for the physicality of it.

My agent in New York was like no, you are great. I think that you can make a go of this host career but you’re going to need you to go west. He was like because in New York, they want edgy, urban, and ethnic, and you are none of those” He was like go west, my friend, and see what happens and that’s exactly what I did.

Michael London: And then tell us a little bit about being part of this new wave of content delivery – that being the internet.

Kristyn Burtt: Yes, it’s just really fun because what I would like the most is that I can put the content out there and you get immediate reaction from people whether they like it, whether they don’t, whether they hated your questions, which I do get sometimes. But that’s a great thing because of things like Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and my site, it’s great because I can interact with people, they can ask questions about their favorite celebrity. Where, on television, you know, you kind of have to wait for it to air or it’ll only runs once and if someone missed it and they didn’t DVR it, that’s the end of it.

With web, it lives out there forever. It’s amazing to me that sometimes interviews that I had done two or three years ago, which are still out there on YouTube, people would get back to me and ask questions or Oprah writes feedback and I think that has been the most incredible thing. I love being able to interact with people because you’ll see what people like and you’ll see what people don’t like. And that can also affect your coverage because you sit there are think, well, people aren’t looking for information on the celebrity but they’re really interested in this movie or the character or this person so it really can dictate what you’re covering as a journalist.

Michael London: And Kristyn, a moment ago, you said that someone just jumping into this business right now probably couldn’t follow the same path you did. What advice would you have for those newbies just jumping in?

Kristyn Burtt: I think, now, you definitely need a broadcast journalism degree and that means that only being able to work on camera but it means also being able to write, produce, and edit your own segments. And with that whole YouTube generation, that’s what they’re looking for. They’re looking for a journalist that’s really well-rounded, that could do all jobs, and that really has a point of view. I mean, you need to have a kind of a plan, like who are you as a journalist, what you like to cover? You can’t just cover – I’ll cover a little bit of entertainment, a little bit of politics, a little bit of international news. You need to focus on something, go for it and really get out there and create a name for yourself.

That includes doing internships that includes getting there on social media and starting to build that social media young. Start building it out there when you’re 18 years old so that by the time you graduate, you can say oh, I have five thousand followers on Twitter; oh, I have, you know, a thousand people that follow me on the Facebook page or Instagram, or whatever it is. Because this is the wave of the future and this is the direction that media is going.

Michael London: Let me ask you about Jesse Ventura, then. Is he crazy? Or is he just so smart that he seems crazy?

Kristyn Burtt: He is so smart that he seems like he’s crazy. That was probably one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve ever had and also probably the most traumatic experience I’ve ever had. In that, you know, Jesse Ventura, there’s only one opinion and that’s his. So my job as a news reader on his show was to – if he said, I would say white. Like I there to debate with him and irritate him a little bit. But at the same time, it was a great opportunity to just listen because he had so many fantastic stories. He was a former Navy Seal. I grew up in a generation where he was a wrestler with a pink feather boa around his neck and then he was governor. And at this point where he was the former governor but he was teaching at Harvard and everything else. You know, there’s a lot to learn there. He didn’t ask much about me in the time that I worked with him, but I absorbed a lot of knowledge and I thought it was a really fun place just to grasp some ideas about politics and about life that I wouldn’t necessarily thought of. He was a really outside-of-the-box thinker.

Michael London: I’m going to ask you some questions about you now so you have so many irons in the fire, tell us where we can see everything, Kirstin.

Kristyn Burtt: My main hub where everyone can find all of my work and that’s probably the easiest place to go is www.redcarpetcloset.tv and there, I sit there and put all of my jobs and all of the media that I do on that site. But this summer, I’ve been working a lot because of the big summer movie season with www.iVillage.com and that is NBC/Universal’s property. I do the press junkets here on the west coast. So I just recently interviewed the cast of Magic Mike including Channing Tatum and also Matthew McConaughey. So it’s just kind of fun to get out there and interview the big celebrities and see what else is going on.

And of course, I also host the “After Show” for “So You Think You Can Dance” and this is on www.AfterBuzzTV.com. It’s a new site that was started by Maria Menounos who is entertainment journalist on “Extra” and we discuss what happened on the show. We bring in former contestants and do interviews with them and it’s a really fun format because people can call in. We do it live and debate like what happened during that episode. So that’s been a really fun show.

Those are the two projects that I’ve been working on mainly this summer in addition to some other jobs like I do, some live streaming for Hyundai. I’m going over Germany with Pfizer. They have me host a game show in Europe once a year. So, there are some fun things that are coming up this summer but the two main projects are iVillage and AfterBuzzTV.

Michael London: So its summertime 2017, what do we find Kristyn doing?

Kristyn Burtt: 2017. Well, I hope to be doing a little bit more producing by then and really continue on this path of covering the red carpet but not in just the glamorous way but for people to understand that, you know, Hollywood’s great and it’s so much fun and I love living here but at the same time don’t buy into it. You know, it has its own truth and its own reality so I would really love to get, sort of, that type of show up and running and really get people to understand like this is the real Hollywood. Take away, like the curtains come from Oz and there you go.

Michael London: Excellent! Kristyn Burtt, thank you so much for joining us today on Spidcast.

Kristyn Burtt: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.

Michael London: Spidcast, brought to you by Indie Source Magazine. It’s the fastest growing independent filmmaker resource and the only free publication of its kind and their mission is to bring you not only stories of the industry’s highly celebrated but also stories and insights from players in all areas of the media creation process. At Indie Source Magazine, they believe free is better. Visit them at www.indiesourcemag.com.

And we continue our ladies’ day edition of Spidcast, joining us now is actress and filmmaker Kai. Kai, welcome to Spidcast.

Kai Soremekun: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Michael London: And give us a little, quick version of who you are, where you came from.

Kai Soremekun: Who is Kai? Okay, so, let’s see where should I start from?

Michael London: Well, you know, I learned from the “Wizard of Oz” that it’s always a good thing to do to start from the beginning.

Kai Soremekun: Yes, you’re right. So I will start at the beginning. I am originally from Toronto, Canada. I grew up in a household with a mom who is a nurse and a dad who is a doctor so it was very, kind of, analytical-type family. And I guess after planning to become a doctor like my dad throughout high school, I realized this isn’t really working for me and I kind of had to accept the fact that I was the black sheep of the family and was really more artistically inclined. And so kind of changed my focus and started taking dance lessons and just fell in love with being a dancer.

Then I learned about an audition for a performing arts academy in New York City called the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. They travel to different cities to audition people to accept new students into their school and I decided I was going to audition for the school. At the same time, I also applied to go to university in British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and basically kind of do a major in Business Administration, a minor in dance. And then I got this opportunity to audition for the school so I went and I sang a song “My Favorite Things” from the Sound of Music. And I was horrific, absolutely horrific but for whatever reason, they accepted me and then I was kind of put into this dilemma of do I go to New York and pursue this dream I have of becoming a dancer or do I go to, you know, do the more responsible thing and go to a university and get a degree and all that.

My dad was leaning much more towards going to a university, of course. I think my mom was too but for whatever reason, she said, “You know what? You should go to New York because if you don’t you’ll always wonder what if.” And that’s one of the greatest gifts, I think my mom gave me just to kind of go for your dreams because you don’t want to be down the road ten, fifteen, twenty years, and you know, regretting the choices that you made. So even though my dad was a little reluctant, he supported me going to New York to study at AMDA, which is short for American Musical and Dramatic Academy and paid for my schooling, which I appreciate because it’s never easy when you’re a doctor and you have these visions for your daughter, you know, to follow in your footsteps and all of the sudden, she’s now going to be a dancer. So kudos to him for that.

Basically, when I got to New York, I just, I fell in love. I loved the city. I loved what I was doing. I felt, I always felt I was playing a bit of catch-up because I came into the performing world late. You know, a lot of the people at the school had been singing and dancing since they were two. And here I was, you know, 18 and just kind of getting into it. So I was always, always struggled a bit but just kind of persevered.

Michael London: So then as the story continues, tell us about of your successes along the way.

Kai Soremekun: After my first year there, I started auditioning, got an agent, got a manager, did a lot of commercials and really just kind of settled into this life as a performer. Pretty early on though, I realized being a dancer was not probably going to be the way to go. Being a dancer kind of like being an athlete, it’s not something you can do when you’re into your 40’s or 50’s. So I switched my focus to acting and after about five years in New York, I came out to Los Angeles. I had a really great agent, I left out. My manager hooked me up with a really great agent and came out to LA and started auditioning for film and television as well as commercials.

Michael London: So Kai after you got to LA, how long did it take you to “know that you’d made it”.

Kai Soremekun: About two years into being in Los Angeles, I got on a television show for FOX as a series regular called “Medicine Ball”. It was basically “Grey’s Anatomy” like 10, 15 years earlier and we shot in Seattle and we were in the air for nine episodes before we got cancelled. Unfortunately, I was just so young and naive at that time that, you know, I hated being out of LA and I really wanted to get back to LA so I was kind of not really the most disappointed that the show got cancelled. But in hindsight, you know, I don’t know, I guess thought you know just put another TV show. But that’s exactly the way the entertainment business works so I kind of got hit with the, a reality like “No, you know, TV shows do not come along everyday for all actors in this business, for some, never.

But one of the main things that happened for me when I was on a TV show was the realization that even though I kind of realized my goal and my dream of becoming a series regular on a network television show, I’ve discovered that I really needed more of an outlet for my creative voice and that I wanted to have more of a say in the overall creativity and shaping of a project and so when the show got cancelled and we came back to Los Angeles, I went back to school. I went to Los Angeles City College and started studying film making and basically, making my own short films and I don’t know, that was a huge turning point for me. It was a big transition and I really think that I came into my calling in terms of directing when I did that and just started doing films, short films.

I shot a short film called “Lock Her Room”. It’s kind of a play on words. It was based on a short story that I found in these anthology short stories in the library. And I had my agent contact the author of the story and we negotiated for me to get the rights to shoot the film and that was really, I think actually that was my second short film I shot. It did really well. It ended up airing on Showtime and just really made it clear for me that although I liked the acting, the filmmaking was really where I felt my heart was and where I got the most joy and satisfaction.

And that’s kind of the journey I’ve been on. I still act. I still act in commercials to pay the bills. I don’t do as much film and television anymore because most of my time and effort is focused on making films and now I focus on my project “Chick” which is a web series I created. It’s very much a passion project and something that I have big dreams for.

Michael London: Well you opened the door, Kai. So tell us a little bit more about “Chick”.

Kai Soremekun: Okay so, “Chick” basically came out of a really jacked-up relationship I was in. I was in this horrific relationship for three years. I would say it was extremely emotionally abusive and I, I don’t know, I was just in a place where I really wasn’t aware of how little self-esteem I had. You know, this relationship was really reflecting that back to me. So, after the 3 years of being in this relationship, I finally got out after a really kind of low point in this relationship and I spent about a year after I got out of the relationship going “What the hell? That guy was like the biggest dick in life”

And after about a year of like blaming him for whatever reason, I turned the focus on myself. I just had this epiphany where I was like okay yeah, he’s an asshole, that’s all, you know, we all agree on that but what about me in this relationship like what is it about you that allowed you to stay in something that was so bad for three years? And I just started going on this really introspective journey to kind of look at myself and work on myself. And in that process, I started to learn more about us as human beings and I became really fascinated with human potential and our abilities and how we really tap into such a small part of what we’re capable of as humans.

That’s where Chicks came in. You know, at first it was a feature film called “Guerrilla Girls” and it was completely therapeutic. It was a bunch of girls who went around beating up guys and I was just totally working out my anger towards, you know, my ex-boyfriend and thankfully, taking it out on a piece of paper instead of in real life. And then as I continue to develop the feature film, I really got drawn to one character and this idea of her being in this horrific relationship but really wanting to have more of a sense of herself and the way that she was doing this was she wanted to become a superhero because in her mind being a superhero meant that, you know, you were a centered, together person who had an impact on the world and made a difference. So that’s kind of how “Chick” came to be and even though on the surface, you know, it focuses around this girl who wants to be a superhero and is going out in search for this secret academy where regular people can train to become superheroes, you know, underneath it it’s really about a search for self and a quest to figure out who we are in the whole big picture of this crazy world we live in.

Michael London: So Kai through that horrid relationship, you indeed found that silver lining but it did take you three years to escape it. What would you say to someone in that really bad relationship right now?

Kai Soremekun: You know, I was lucky enough to have a girl friend, who had been in a horrible relationship and was there for me when I was going through mine. If I, you know, I actually do come across women often, I get emails or messages from women who are going through that. And the first thing that I do is kind of shower them with love and self-acceptance and telling them that they’re okay because what tends to happen, and what a lot of people don’t realize is, when you’re in one of those relationships, you will have a partner who is beating you down and making you feel like nothing, like you’re worthless and so what isn’t helpful but what people naturally tend towards because they’re trying to help and get that person out of it is that they’re like what are you thinking, why are you in this? But that actually just exacerbates the problem so for me when I come across women that are struggling and in a situation like that my first thing is to big them up, build them up and tell them that they’re great, that they’re worthy, that it’s okay. And like my girl friend did for me, which was the best thing she could have ever done. She said you will get out of it when you’re ready.

And it was a strange way- the kind of share an acceptance of me and who I was and where I was at instead of judging my choices which were obviously not that great at the time. So that’s what I try to do and I actually try to share that with a lot of people because prior to me being in that horrible, abusive relationship, I did the same thing. I’ll be like what the hell is up with that girl? Why the hell didn’t she just get out of the relationship? And it is just not that simple. My biggest piece of advice for anybody who has someone in their life who’s in a relationship that’s just unhealthy is to shower them with love and be the force in their life that helps them see that they’re special and amazing and that will give the strength to get out of the relationship.

Michael London: Thank you so much for that insight into the personal side of you which as you mentioned earlier is why we now have the web series “Chick”. Where can we see that?

Kai Soremekun: Right now, we shot a first season which aired like a year and a half ago. We shot twenty episodes and it’s on our website which is www.whoischick.com. It’s also on YouTube and an online network called Rowdy Orbit as well as on Blip TV. When we shot the series, I had this idea to kind of create an alternate reality game along with the show which, in hindsight, was just trying to do way too much for this type of production and with our limited resources. And so we shot like 6 or 7 of the episodes fully-produced, like with a full crew of about 40 with high end cameras and all the lovely gadgets and stuff. And then the middle part of the season was going to be tied into this alternate reality game wherein you actually help the main character find this person that was going to lead her to this secret academy where she can train to become a superhero. And so those were often times they were just me out there shooting myself, shooting an episode of her on her journey. She lives in her car as she, like, she leaves her crazy boyfriend and decides to just going to go out and search of this academy and to find this person that can help her get there. Those were much more guerrilla style shooting but were a lot of fun. Actually, a lot of people tend to say that they like those better. I guess they’re kind of a little more intimate in terms of your connection with the main character. But that’s basically the gist of how we shot the first season and we’re currently working on our scripts for season two right now.

Michael London: Now Chick the character, of course, helps people and has people that helps her along the way as I’m sure you have. Talk a bit about how collaboration has helped you.

Kai Soremekun: For me, I mean, you can’t do anything to me in film for the most part without collaboration. It’s, I just don’t know how you do it. It’s such a collaborative medium that, and even if you did try to do it yourself, like I will say again because of limited resources, a lot of times you end up doing more jobs than you’d like to do but I’ve always found that a project is benefited more when you have people you’re collaborating with, and giving their input into the overall vision of how this is going to be. And that was definitely the case for me. I had a really great DP Sandra Valde-Hansen who has shot another web series with me that was, you know, amazing and my production designer Kimberly Huie just added so much to the production in terms of her vision for what everything was going to look like.

And as we move into season two, I’m even more committed to collaboration because I really feel the first season suffered simply because I was doing too many things and so I’m just a huge advocate for, yeah, working with different people and having their voices be a part of the project in the process. And I actually went to an amazing summit this weekend called the World Domination Summit which, yes, that title is exactly what it was. It was awesome, but you know, one of the speakers at the summit spoke about solo acts and his take was solo acts never win. He was actually doing a talk that had a superhero theme to it which I thought was interesting and fun for me. He said solo acts never win and he also said it’s really important to find a super team to help you take on the universe. He was like, you know, Batman has a team and I think that really implies to film making too. It’s like, you know, find your super team. And if you think about it people, even people like Clint Eastwood, they have people that, he has people that he works with every film over and over again and there’s a reason for that, that sense of teamwork and collaboration is really, I think, what makes films special and magic.

Michael London: And Kai just before we send listeners out to check out all things Kai at your websites, tell us about where we’ve seen you both commercially and theatrically.

Kai Soremekun: Let’s see, I think the things that people recognize me most in terms of film and television. “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” sometimes, I have a guest star role in one of those episodes. “Monk”, probably not so much. “Monk” was funny in that I was a part of a program at CBS, the diversity, directing diversity workshop program and I was shadowing the director for “Monk”. So that’s why I was on the set of “Monk” and then they just why don’t you like take little roles? So I actually had to audition while I was shadowing him for the couple of weeks that he was there directing this episode and ended up getting these small, little roles playing the secretary or I think the mayor of some town or whatever.

But so I don’t know people would really recognize me in that but I think the biggest thing people recognize me from is the film “Heat” that Michael Mann directed and that starred Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and I had a role of playing a hooker, which I hated but you know, probably because I was so evil the whole time I was auditioning for that project is maybe the reason why I got the role because it played into the attitude of the hooker. But a lot of people tend to recognize me most from that and I mean that was just an amazing experience for me in general. I would’ve paid to be on that film and shooting it at that reading with those amazing actors so I think that’s where I’m most recognized. And I do commercials now, right now I have Poise commercial running that is Kristie Alley is the spokesperson for so I’m doing a fun, little spot with her that’s kind of funny and couple other commercials that haven’t been started running yet. Yeah, I think that’s it as far as the acting goes.

Michael London: And now, where can we see everything Kai?

Kai Soremekun: The most active site for me is www.whoischick.com. We have the web series that lives there, I also have a blog on that site called Just Add Cape and basically what that is an exploration of how someone can be a superhero in real life. You know, I have Chick the web series but it’s actually just a piece of a bigger project, a bigger vision for what I’m trying to do. My goal is to blur the lines between the fictional world that we created in the Chick web series and the real world and you know we’re really trying to redefine what it means to be a superhero and take it out of the context of the superheroes we see on those blockbuster summer movies that everybody goes to watch. And redefine the superhero as someone that you can be in your real life and develop super powers like your intuition and I really believe that when we develop those gifts that we’ve been giving just inherently, that we can not only improve our own personal lives but as a whole, we can make the world a better place. And so the goal on whoischick.com is to have people be entertained and watch the web series and if that’s what you want to do then you can do that. But if you want to dig deeper and explore how maybe these ideas could be implemented in your own life then you can hop on over to the blog and read about ways to explore yourself when you’re self-exploration so to speak and kind of tie the truth together.

Michael London: Kai, thanks so much for allowing us to explore you career and projects with you today. And thanks for being on Spidcast.

Kai Soremekun: Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun.

And thank you for listening to Spidcast. We appreciate your time and attention. You can now join the conversion at spidvid.com or on our Spidvid blog. And you can join our collaborative film making community at spidvid.com. So tune in next month for another entertaining and informative episode of Spidcast.