When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
Step right up to the mic, Joey Rassool, our Director of Photography, and the voice behind 'DesiQuest's' beloved Sitara, Anjali Bhimani, as they join us for a brew at the Tea Kettle. While Omar is off embracing success, it's just you, me (Sandeep Parikh) and our two extraordinary guests weaving tales about the realms of cinematography, motorsports, and the vibrant universe of TTRPGs. Joey takes us through a decade of shaping visual stories, and Anjali enchants us with her theatrical journey from Broadway to the digital landscapes of gaming.
As we near the finale of our series, the air is electric with anticipation and gratitude for our Patreon family, whose generosity is the secret sauce in our post-production recipe. Let's not forget, the spirit of 'DesiQuest' lives on through sharing—so slide that playlist to your comrades and watch the magic unfold. With just one episode left, the tea leaves suggest an epic conclusion, but for now, cherish the camaraderie and insights from behind the curtain and from within the heart of our beloved characters.
When the kettle whistles and the tea is ready, it's time for the DesiQuest after-show—and what a show it is! Omar Najam and I, Sandeep Parikh, are all cozied up inside the teapot, steaming with excitement. After every episode of DesiQuest is launched, we'll release another episode of the Tea Kettle with me and Omar and a very special guest, or guest from either behind or in front of the camera.
Step right up to the mic, Joey Rassool, our Director of Photography, and the voice behind 'DesiQuest's' beloved Sitara, Anjali Bhimani, as they join us for a brew at the Tea Kettle. While Omar is off embracing success, it's just you, me (Sandeep Parikh) and our two extraordinary guests weaving tales about the realms of cinematography, motorsports, and the vibrant universe of TTRPGs. Joey takes us through a decade of shaping visual stories, and Anjali enchants us with her theatrical journey from Broadway to the digital landscapes of gaming.
As we near the finale of our series, the air is electric with anticipation and gratitude for our Patreon family, whose generosity is the secret sauce in our post-production recipe. Let's not forget, the spirit of 'DesiQuest' lives on through sharing—so slide that playlist to your comrades and watch the magic unfold. With just one episode left, the tea leaves suggest an epic conclusion, but for now, cherish the camaraderie and insights from behind the curtain and from within the heart of our beloved characters.
Oh, here we are, we sure are. We sure are here. Welcome to The Tea Kettle. Woo, episode six of the Tea Kettle Hello, hello to all of our lovely listeners. Remember, this is a podcast exclusive to our Patreon backers and this whole thing cannot be done without them. So thank you, dear listener, thank you so much for contributing to the show. You are helping us literally complete the show.
Sandeep Parikh:
Like you, your Patreon is going directly towards all the finishing funds that we need Post-production, so this is so helpful. I'm your host, sandeep, the executive producer and cast member, who plays Ash. Now, usually we have Omar on this, but he couldn't make this one, sadly, but luckily, that's what we have the redundancy. Okay, so there's two hosts because he's a busy guy. He's a busy, successful man.
Joey Rassool:
That's production-minded right there.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, exactly Exactly, and we're going to get to whose voice that is, or face, depending on how you're consuming this episode in just a moment, Because after every episode but first one was after every episode of the Desi Quest's launch, we're going to release this another episode of the tea kettle with me and Omar and some special did I say?
Joey Rassool:
106? I said 6. You said 106. I was like, oh, you didn't do the first one, that's interesting.
Sandeep Parikh:
I. This is how my brain is working right now. Welcome to episode seven of the Tea Kettle Rewind, rewind. Welcome to episode seven. This is our penultimate episode of the Tea Kettle. So, though we say in the episode that this was the final episode, that's because we decided to split episode seven into two parts, and so we will have yet another episode of the show and another episode of the tea kettle. This episode, and so every episode, we have somebody from in front of and behind the camera. In this episode, we've got two great folks. We got Joey Rassool, our DP. Welcome.
Joey Rassool:
Joey, hello everybody.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, thank you for having me. Yes, here's what I have. Joey is a UK born content creator and producer. He focuses on cinematography, youtube strategy and motorsports and does a lot of stuff in the TTRPG space. He's worked for over a decade here and pioneering for small production companies as well as established media outlets. So welcome welcome, joey to the pod. It's going to be exciting to get your take and your point of view on everything.
Joey Rassool:
Thank you, yeah, thank you for having me.
Sandeep Parikh:
And then, of course, once again on the Tea Kettle reprising core. Her role on the tea kettle is Anjali Bhimani. I mean, she's well, you've been in every. You're winning awards, you've been on the stage, you've been on the screen, you've been on Broadway, you've been on Miss Marvel, you're Symmetra in Overwatch, Rampart in Apex Legends, but most of all and most importantly, and all that I personally care about is that you are incredibly portraying Sitara in DesiQuest.
Anjali Bhimani:
I love her so much.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah.
Anjali Bhimani:
I love our characters in this game, so much.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yes, me too. And before we dive into episode seven, you know, do that thing where you drop a like and a comment and that other thing where you like share with somebody that you love this show because this whole thing is.
Sandeep Parikh:
Sharing is caring. It's free, just cost you a little time. Shoot an email. I'll be like hey, I really love this DesiQuest thing, check it out. Go, you know, send them our playlist from YouTube. Be like you know. Just do that thing where you guilt them into joining the Patreon Trick the algorithm into loving it.
Anjali Bhimani:
It will be very Indian Auntie of you to do that, so I feel like that's appropriate to the show. I'm sorry if you haven't already head over here because I'm jealous of your microphones and I'm looking for something to plug something else in, because I am apparently not supposed to be there.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, well, listen, take your time, because I got a few more little anouncy things so you can do that. Just, you know, yeah, do your thing, Anjali, no worries. So if you haven't already, head on over to DesiQuest. com. You're going to hop on that mailing list and then immediately you're going to get an email back that gives you a discount on our merchandise, our t-shirts and our sweatshirts and Zip-up Hoodies and what else do we have on there? I think it's mostly apparel right now, but but it's oh. And then we have all the Kickstarter rewards that we are in process. I know a lot of people are wondering where's my goddamn Kickstarter reward? We are working on them, we're releasing them. We just released the soundtrack. The soundtrack is incredible.
Joey Rassool:
It's so good, it's really good.
Sandeep Parikh:
It's really special. You know there were nearly a dozen artists working on this. Obviously, john Piscatello and Aalok Mita our composers, but they also enlisted. You know, all of these tabla players and Pum bansuri, flutist, and yeah, so we have like traditional legit. You know instrumentation from South Asian artists and yeah, so we're super, super proud of it. I mean, I don't know any other TTRPG that does Right, exactly, yeah, that's an insane like above and beyond thing.
Joey Rassool:
You know, like we were talking about a little bit a while back, that you know some TTRPGs that will use game music and things like that. You start to hear that game music in real life and then you know you kind of disassociate with it a little bit. But having custom music and listening to that soundtrack will forever be related to DesiQuest. So you guys got that soundtrack. Then we don't mess around. Ride those memories with us for years to come.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, we don't mess around. Like you know, when I put that out as the like kind of the base reward that you get if you contribute at the $11 or above level for the Kickstarter, I think people were I don't know people probably just like oh, it's just a sound like you're just going to get some Like a playlist yeah. Yeah, like a playlist or something. It's like no, no, no, we will Like we meant like this song from the Witcher, this song from yeah.
Anjali Bhimani:
Yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:
This is like a legit soundtrack and, by the way, you can actually, if you missed out on the reward, you can purchase it. You can purchase the soundtrack. It's obviously for a little more than what people kicked in for the thing, because you know that makes sense, right.
Anjali Bhimani:
If you kickstart it and you get the discount. Can I share the fun fact about Aalok and I and our oh yeah, you can, you can go ahead. No, please tell me. I saw about, I heard about.
Sandeep Parikh:
I'm going to stay quiet there was a but and then there was another, but that followed up that but which canceled out the two buts. So many buts you guys.
Anjali Bhimani:
You're on this podcast, so all the buts just do you guys know, like the depth of the love that we have for Aalok mehta. Aalok and I were in a show together called Bombay Dreams back in 2004. or 3? And it was the first big Indian splashy musical on Broadway. And he, we have known each other and loved each other and watched each other grow over the years and I've ever since then. He's, he's. He's such an extraordinary musician and I'm so grateful that he joined us for this project, because I feel like he's like my little brother, even though I'm a big fan of him aa lok and I really bonded over at PAX unplugged.
Anjali Bhimani:
I remember that that was a good time. He was my party.
Sandeep Parikh:
He was my party buddy. We really had a great, great, great, great great time with him. We were cracking he was absolutely cracking me up the entire time.
Anjali Bhimani:
And his wife is extraordinary actress and singer as well the two of them together.
Sandeep Parikh:
Yeah, so we were so looking at his town. Isn't that beautiful, come on, I mean, that's like listen, that's that's that's the stuff.
Anjali Bhimani:
I was there. I was the auntie watching them grow, even when I was right.
Joey Rassool:
It might even have had like a sleight hand in it. You know who's just saying.
Anjali Bhimani:
I might have. I, you know, I might have been sending little sneaky messages. I can't neither matchmaker.
Sandeep Parikh:
Oh that, maybe that's the evolution of the character for for subsequent seasons. Absolutely.
Anjali Bhimani:
Yeah, maybe Sitara, turns into Indian matchmaking, only successful at her job. it feels like a Laddoo Auntie thing, but I could see it being Sitara too.
Sandeep Parikh:
All right, well, this is great. We, we, before we get into this, into the actual episode, we do. There's a lot of the, a lot of sponsors that took a big chance on us to make the show possible. So in each of these we always shout one or not. So we're going to shout out today Black Magic Design. I mean already black magic. So we were already like in a magical realm and universe. So this is a perfect. So they they actually provided the cameras for the show, or some of the cameras for the show, and we, boy did we need a lot of cameras for this to get all that coverage. Like I think this is another unusual thing about TTRPG is getting as much coverage as we did. You know you're not just getting like two sides of the table and the DM, you know we're also getting individual shots of each of the characters and there was like cool down the line shots and stuff on the tables.
Joey Rassool:
Yeah.
Sandeep Parikh:
I'm glad we have Joey here to talk. Talk a little bit about. You know your experience with the black magic cameras and you know again so kind of them to take a chance on us and lend us those cameras yeah.
Joey Rassool:
Yeah, absolutely so. Like, yeah, we were. I think we had six cameras, three static, two roving and then the top down, plus all the the mini shots that that were all you know, kind of done separately as well to kind of help tell the story, and black magic cameras. Black magic is kind of one of the only people out there making broadcast style stuff for an affordable kind of streamer mentality. Yeah, yeah.
Anjali Bhimani:
Absolutely.
Joey Rassool:
And so like it really helps out things like you know local churches and stuff like that that want to be able to.
Joey Rassool:
You know stream, you know kind of service and you know schools that are doing you know their, their football program and things like that, so they are so good at helping. You know small growing outfits and you know giving you all those you know professional tools without having to, you know, spend the money and you know, go go deep into the budget. So, like, luckily, I already had, you know, three black magic cameras on my own, and so they provided the rest of them to help us out and to put the whole production together, so we were really able to, like you know, pull it all together, just one of those little things that really allows us to take the funds that we saved and put it back into the show and get even, you know, like again.
Sandeep Parikh:
We were supposed to. I think I just mentioned this. We were supposed to only shoot one day of minis. That's what we budgeted for. We ended up shooting three days of minis and it was like little moves like this and I mean I should maybe little is the wrong adjective, but it was maybe unexpected moves like this that really helped make that happen and I think you know, have really made the show what it is.
Sandeep Parikh:
We had a top-down camera that you know we weren't sure we were gonna have. We were able to get for this. We had a couple of shoulder mounts right so that you guys could cause like it was. The other thing is that we needed a lot of versatility because we had this whole Tea Kettle setup right, so the Tea Kettle and like we could go to the like as players, we could go to the Tea Kettle at any point. Now, from a production standpoint, that's pretty scary, or that's a variable that you really have to take into consideration, because if we're like constantly asking for boons and jumping into there, it's like, oh man, breaking down your setup, bringing it over to the T-Kettle every single time would have been challenging. Can you speak?
Joey Rassool:
to that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely so. We had two camera operators, Faizia and Leo, who were at a moment's notice able to come off of their tripods and shoulder up those cameras and then stick the cameras in the side of the Tea Kettle and go from tripod operating to handheld and follow you guys in. And anything that we can do to kind of streamline the process for you guys so that it feels seamless and that you're not being pulled out of the moment is always fun for us because we can like. One of my favorite things is always like feeling like we get to play along as well. That's why we have that transition, that's why the camera operators have the freedom to go like find moments and like look at faces that are really interacting with a scene, and that's why you've got the lighting changes the way you do. Like it's really just that all of us wanna be on at the table with you guys and, I'm sure, the audience as well. So we're trying to blur those lines and bridge that gap as much as possible.
Sandeep Parikh:
Hey, so sorry to interrupt, but the rest of this episode is for our Patreon subscribers only. So if you'd like to hear the rest of this juicy conversation, let me tell you it gets juicy. There's another 50 minutes 50, 5-0 of this conversation over at patreoncom. Slash dacyquest. Thank you so much for supporting the show.
