Tim O’Shea: How did you first come up with the NameShake product?

Brian McCarthy: Well, my wife and I discovered we were pregnant last July. After carting around baby naming books for awhile and suffering the ignominy of numerous paper cuts, I decided there had to be a better way. That’s when I called Lance to ask for his advice and during the conversation we decided to work on this together.

The initial project was much broader but we chose[1] to test the waters by limiting ourselves just to the naming application for the short term. I have to say, we both feel it’s been really worthwhile and hope to do more applications in the future.

O’Shea: What are your respective roles in this project?

McCarthy: It’s funny, because we never decided on specific roles in the beginning but just divvied things up as they happened. Our first challenge was to create a “paper-application” which is to say, we had to decide everything that the program would do and then design all of the graphics for the user interface. We met over coffee and sketched it out for weeks until we were satisfied.

Lance is a great artist so it was logical for him to take those rough ideas and create the page layouts which eventually were implemented into our power point presentation. In the meantime, I found us a programming team, licensed a database from a renowned author and negotiated for each.

O’Shea: What have been the biggest hurdles to date in the product development?

McCarthy: Our own ignorance! Lance and I are pretty smart guys but we knew nothing about programming. We both come from the creative side of TV and film and so the learning curve on NameShake was huge. We decided early on that trying to learn to program in Cocoa Touch would be detrimental so we sought out an experienced programming team, which we found in Pakistan of all places. So coordinating all of the elements – programmers in Pakistan, our database author in Seattle, and text editors in the Philippines became a big chore. It really opened our eyes to what a couple of guys with ambition can do by leveraging global commerce and outsourcing the areas we were ignorant in, or didn’t have time for, to others.

O’Shea: Has it been solely developed for iPhones or is it compatible with other platforms?

McCarthy: Right now it’s only been released for the iPhone. We’re considering porting it to Symbian and Android in the future.

O’Shea: Have you seen a stronger response to date from parents or from writers looking for a tool to help with one aspect of their writing?

McCarthy: It’s hard to say because we don’t see much data on our buyers, but I’d say that right now it’s mostly parents who are buying. We were featured on a couple of websites, MomLogic.com and Babychums.com, who gave us positive reviews so that’s helped to drive sales.

We also hope it takes off with screenwriters and novelists, as personally I’ve found it to be very convenient and a real time saver when working on my own projects.

O’Shea: How important has the Internet been in your marketing–it appears you have a great many followers on Twitter?

McCarthy: Well, the internet is critical to our success and we’re still at the beginning of our marketing plan. As for Twitter, I’ve grown a little skeptical of it as a useful service. We have over 2000 followers but it seems to me that most of them are trying to market to one another. In other words, I think Twitter is a forum where 99% of the people are talking and 1% is actually listening.

And because our first true love is film, we couldn’t resist shooting some humorous webmercials to help market NameShake. So far we have three in the can and Lance is still in the process of putting them together, but we plan on releasing those on all of the usual suspect video sites to help drum up even more attention.

O’Shea: How aggressively are you trying to grow the product?

McCarthy: Do you mean grow our market share or grow our product line? Well, in either case the answer is “aggressively.” We established sales targets before we even designed the program and we want to hit those although we have more competition now than before. Also, we’re looking down the road to see what we can do next as we already have several ideas for a 2.0 release

O’Shea: What’s on the horizon, professionally/creatively for both of you in the remainder of 2009?

McCarthy: Funny you should ask that. We both want to create some more iPhone products but we’re also both hungry to get back to our passion, film. We’ve never collaborated on a film before but now we’ve got a couple of ideas we’re toying with. Our partnership has worked so well and we have such mutual respect that it seems like a natural evolution.

We also plan on focusing quite a bit on iPhone application development consulting as we know for every programmer who’s capable of doing it himself, there are ten others with no programming experience like us who might have a great idea but don’t have a clue where to start. We’d like to be able to guide those people through all of the necessary steps and save them time and money by not making the same mistakes we did. In essence, we’ve learned a great deal on this journey and would like to help others experience the satisfaction of seeing their “million dollar” iPhone idea come to fruition.

If people are interested in our program or in contacting us as consultants they should visit our site, www.nameshake.info

O’Shea: In terms of the consulting services you are offering, what are some of the rookie mistakes that you’ve seen some developers make that hinder an otherwise great product?

McCarthy: I would say that there are two cardinal sins. The first is designing a product that doesn’t answer a need or desire. There are 25,000 applications on the app store and many of them are junk that no one wants. The second sin is having a poor user interface. Nothing will turn off users faster than a program that is confusing or ugly to use. We have an instructional video on our website but if you look at NameShake you’ll see we designed a product that is intuitive to use. Making it easy to use and nice to look at was a major priority of ours.

To make a great product you need to spend plenty of time in pre-production. Think about the product, explore the market, break down the numbers and then design, design, design. If you do enough planning, production and sales will be much easier. It’s much harder to fix it after the fact.

… each episode … takes viewers backstage into the heretofore unseen world of the writer’s room for intimate interviews that offer a rare look at these diverse writers and what inspires them. From that first idea to the finished script, the writers share their views and stories, examining their successes, failures, and everything in between.”

I enjoy the chance to interview interviewers, so my thanks to Berman for his time.  In preparation of the interview, he was kind enough to allow me to view screeners of the Lindelof and Whedon interviews. My thanks also to Sylvia Desrochers for making this interview possible.

Tim O’Shea: How did you first come up with the idea of doing this series when the writer’s strike was in full swing? Do you think you would have been able to get these writers’ time if they had not been on strike?

Jeffrey Berman: The series came about as a byproduct of the Writers Guild Strike. I had co-founded a web site called UnitedHollywood.com. Our mission was to keep our members, and the public, informed as to what was really going on behind the scenes. My contribution to the site was producing live interviews from the strike line as well as viral videos to assist in getting our point of view heard. As the strike progressed we started talking about cutting out the middleman, aka the studios, which would allow us to retain ownership of our own projects. As an aside, I’ll tell you that screenwriting is the only faction of the creative world where the creators do not retain ownership or rights to their material once they sell it.

Anyway, The Write Environment felt like a natural progression from what I was already doing at the time. Plus, how often do you really get to hear interviews with the people who create the entertainment we spend the majority of our lives watching? I saw this as an opportunity for the fans to hear from the folks behind the scenes, while offering some insight into the work process to the screenwriting neophytes out there.

O’Shea: When you saw Dr. Horrible mapped out on Whedon’s planning wall, did you have any inkling how popular his “Internet thing” (as he described it to you in passing) would be?

Berman: Nope. Who could? Of course, it was expected that anything Joss did would have an impact and certainly find a home with his fans, but I’d wager even Joss was surprised with the attention, and sales, he received from it.

O’Shea: Whedon confided how he paces while writing (not in a narrative sense, but literally walking in his writing area)–I was curious if the floor was worn where he paces–or did you look?

Berman: That’s funny, but no. There are no trenches worn into his floor. Of course, had it been a carpeted floor it probably would have shown more wear, but I related to this as I do the same thing. No trenches in my home, either.

O’Shea: Maybe I’ve not read or watched enough interviews with Whedon, but had he previously discussed the fact that his father and grandfather were writers much before?

Berman: Not to my knowledge. I discovered this while doing due diligence for the interview. Prior to that I had no idea he came from such a prolific family.

O’Shea: Given that most of the interview subjects are associates of yours, did you have to do much research in preparation for the interviews. Did you prep the interview subjects about what ground you wanted to cover before filming began?

Berman: Yes and no. I did research each of the writers background and reviewed their work histories but beyond that I approached the interview from two sides; As a fan and as a student. Then I split my question down the middle. Or at least I tried to. And no prep was given to the writers beforehand. Though Joss and I did have a chance to talk a little shop while the crew was setting up for the shoot. Wouldn’t you like to know what was said then? Heh-heh!

O’Shea: In all the writer’s offices you toured in the projects, what was the most impressive heirloom that you saw?

Berman: Hands down, Mr. Echo’s stick in Damon Lindelof’s office.

O’Shea: While you are an experienced writer yourself, I’m curious if you gained some writing lessons from the interviews?

Berman: Absolutely. As a comedy writer I probably benefited the most from my interview with Phil Rosenthal. As an aside, I have to tell you that it was hands down the most enjoyable of all the interviews. His comedic timing is beyond perfect. He had the whole crew in stitches for a good portion of the interview. His insights into comedic writing probably had the greatest impact on me.

O’Shea: In talking with all these successful writers, were there any common traits (for success or effective storytelling) that you observed with a majority of the subjects?

Berman: Yes, writers write. That and never sacrifice your characters for story.

O’Shea: Were any of the subjects immensely more forthcoming with information than you originally expected when you picked them to interview?

Berman: It’s really a crap shoot when you do these kind of interviews. It’s taxing to ask someone to sit and talk about themselves for over an hour at a time. ( Which is why I chose to do it in a surrounding where they’re comfortable. ) I was extremely pleased and rewarded with how generous and forthcoming all of the writers were. Not to mention insightful. Each of them has a s wealth of experience in different formats and they were all absolutely fascinating to speak with.

O’Shea: I’ll ask the question you asked some of the writers: “what makes a good writer”?

Berman: Fortitude. Writing is hard. It’s so easy to just not write. But in those time where I’m not writing, in-between the enormous guilt I feel and the sheer joy of not being chained to my computer, I’m still thinking about writing. The struggle to turn off the TV and get back to work, that’s the hardest part for me.

O’Shea: In talking to these creators about their show, did any of them instill in you a new level of appreciation of the show or its characters?

Berman: I have to go back to Phil Rosenthal because I think he broke the mold with Everybody Loves Raymond. How that show was allowed to survive for nine years astounds me. And lucky for us it did. It was on the bubble many times, but kudos to CBS for sticking by it.

O’Shea: How do you explain your encyclopedia-level knowledge of TV (ie your example of Donald Bellisario’s breaking his vow never to delve into JFK in Quantum Leap)?

Berman: I’m a fan. What can I say?

O’Shea: Where can folks get the DVDs?

Berman: Yeah, if I can put in a plug, please check out my site at http://www.thewriteenvironment.com/indexFlash.html and buy a DVD or two. Then tell a friend. Then tell your friend to buy a DVD or two… or three… Okay, I’ll stop now.