 I'm sitting here with Robert Lloyd Lewis, the producer of Dexter. How are you doing today, Robert? I'm great. I've really enjoyed showing you around the sets of Dexter. Oh man, that was a fantastic treat. We're huge fans of the show, definitely. Oh good. Well, it's a closed set, so you've been privileged to take a look. It's also killed us not to be able to do any photography on this, but understand the nature of the game. So that was really fun. Now, you're actually a Mac fanatic, right? I've had a Mac since my SE 30 in 1988. Wow, so you go way back. What are you using today? As a matter of fact, I developed a, even before that, a television series for ABC called Midas Valley, which was the story of two very young billionaires who came into Silicon Valley and changed the world. Oh my gosh, really. Who are you thinking of? I don't know. Jobs, was, maybe. So the reason you and I got together was because you've actually written an iPhone iPad app. Right. It's a word game called vowel movement, with a V, vowel movement. And it's kind of in the vein of scramble, a little bit of scrabble in there too. It's a grid, a think of the boggle or scramble grid, except instead of getting random letters, you have to make the actual word. So we give you five letters. You have to bring them up into the board and create words horizontally and vertically. And words within words count, and the longer the word is, the more points you get. And then you get, once you fill that up, you get new letters. And you keep trying to make as many words as you possibly can. And the fun of it is that once you put the consonants, they get stuck there. But vowels can move at any time, so you can change words around and make better scores using... That's vowel movement, right? You actually need to move the vowels. It's not just a great pun. What I found playing the game was that it was just, like you say, like some games I've played before, but very different in that your gameplay is not set in stone except for the consonants. So you really got to pay attention where you drop those, but then you get some words and you're going, oh, I got a couple of three letter words, but if I rearrange those vowels in my next play, I can actually make a bigger word. Watching your scores disappear and reappear was a real interesting change to the game. Yeah, it's very fluid in that way. Yeah, so how does a producer of a top TV show end up making an iPad app? I was having lunch with my friend Norm, who's a Scrabbleaholic. And we were just kicking around ideas for games. And he told me about this idea he had, which was sort of what we ended up with. And so I thought, you know, that's a pretty good idea for a game. But the vowels didn't move in his version. And then he said, not to have another game. I'm not sure what the game is, but I've got the title. It's vowel movement. And I said, that's it. We'll take this game. We'll let you move the vowels. And then we actually made a board. We used cards with letters on them and made an actual board and started trying it in various permutations to see what would be the most fun. We started out with two letters, ended up with five. And after about three or four months of playing it in various ways, we honed the game to what it is now. So where do you get the dictionary? Because a lot of those words I'm looking at going, I don't know that word, but I'll take those points. That was hard. We actually had to painstakingly go through every word in the dictionary. That's five letters or less. Or in the case of cues, six letters, because there's one cue-you tile. Bless your little heart for making a cue-you tile. That was nice. Yeah, so you can actually get a six-letter word and a five-letter grid because of the cue-you tile, and you get 15 points. So it's shooting the moon if you can get a cue-you five-letter or six-letter word. I got a quiz the other day. I was really proud of that. Yeah, quiz is good. But you want to get like quilts or something, so you get five letters out of it. All right. Well, I'll keep playing. I'll try to get better. Now, there's a social component as well. I turned my daughter Lindsay onto it, and the next day, all of a sudden, I get a thing saying I've got a challenge from her. So how does the challenge work? Okay, so you play a round-of-all movement, and you think you did pretty well. You know, and pretty well is... 130 is a good score. 180 is a genius score. If you look at the leaderboard, you see a couple of people at like 190-210. I'm at 91, I think. 93 is my top score. You'll get there. And after you play the game, you think, you know what, I think I should challenge mom. So your daughter hit... There's a Facebook challenge, or you can challenge any existing player or through email. And then the game will... You'll play the exact same game sheet, and you'll try to beat her score. So if you go to the Facebook challenge, then does that access your Facebook friends? How does that work? Yes, it accesses your Facebook friends. Okay, so I think the social component is what's going to make this in catch on fire, because it seems like you can't have a game that you sit and play by yourself anymore. It's got to be that you're challenging other people. Yeah, I think you're right. In our next version, we're going to do an even better job at that. I think we're going to start out with the challenge. So rather than... Right now, after you finish your game, you can challenge your friends. I think it might be more fun if you start out with a challenge. You say, well, I'd like to play this game with mom. And so you find her. You challenge, and then you play from there. And I think we'll do sets of three games. So best of three. But that's for 2.0. So how much does foul movement cost? 99 cents. Can't break the bank with that. That's great. And we developed it. I'm not a coder. I don't know how to code, although I've tried. It's really hard. It's like learning Chinese. But very Hollywood story, my hairdresser had an app. And she told me about the person who... the coder who she used. And nobody likes their coders. They're all terrible. Oh, really? Yeah. They're slow. They're too expensive. And so she was telling me about how she had a new coder who's absolutely fantastic. The coder's name is Shell Ramsey. It's Shell Ramsey Productions in Tennessee. And literally through my hairdresser, I found this coder. And they did a great job at a really reasonable cost. And we're very responsive to our changes. And it was very lucky. That's neat. I think a lot of people... I'm glad you plugged his service, too, because a lot of people think up ideas, and then you're like, yeah, but I don't know a guy. You got to know a guy, right? To get the hard parts done. Yeah, it's a she, by the way. It's a she. I'm sorry. Oh, dang it, dang it. Shell. So, Shelley? Shell? Something like that, yeah. Okay, shoot. We can fix that post, right? We can cut that part out. No editing. So how does somebody end up doing this but you're a producer in your day job? And you've... How can you grab his other invention? You're a man of many talents here. Yes. Now, tell people about... Okay, so I got tired. You know, things packed in plastic, it's impossible to open them. I got tired of cutting my hand, basically, with a knife trying to open this, so... I wonder how many people have died with that? Actually, it is the fifth largest cause of emergency room visits. Oh, are you serious? Wow. Like car accidents? You've just beaten it, huh? Yeah. Wow. So I invented this product. It's called OpenX. And it's got a little retractable blade. It's also great for opening everything. You know, packages and whatever. But you just make a little starter hole. I don't know if you can see this well. Make a little starter hole. And then insert the hook in and it'll just open it up like that. Now, we had actually pre-worked on that one but we saw him do it live the first time. So we sold millions of these. We sold them on television. They're right now there in the container store. We sell them in catalogs and directly through our website, which is myopenx, o-p-e-n-x dot com. So you just think of... you see problems and want to solve them. Yeah. That's my lot in life is I... if a good idea comes to me, I have to... I just have to do it. I love that. So, you know, I want to turn corners here a little bit because I've never talked to a producer before. So we were talking earlier. I asked you what's a producer and you said it depends. Well, what I said is it's a meaningless term, which is true because anyone who watches a movie or television knows that everybody has a producer credit. Oh, really? Oh, okay. So... but there are real producers and there are producers who get credit for being producers. Okay. There are sort of two categories of real producers. One is what we now call a showrunner and the reason we call them a showrunner is because the word producer doesn't mean anything anymore. Okay. But the showrunner is the ultimate... the buck stops here guy. Okay. He's responsible for everything. He's responsible for the scripts, for, you know, everything. So, he... everything goes through that office. Is that what you are? No, no, no. I'm a line producer, which means that basically the showrunner will give me a script. Okay. And it's my job to realize that script. So, I supervise the production, the actual production of the show. So, I will hire the crew and always in concert with the showrunner or any other executive producers who are integral to the show. But I will hire a crew. We have to hire, you know, makeup, hair, wardrobe, camera... The people who put the condiments in the cabinet. That's the... those are the set decorators. Set decorators, right. Yes, everybody. So, we have about... It takes about 150 people to make Dexter. Wow. So, we... That needs to be organized, and that's what I do. Now, are you organizing the actors when they show up, when they have to be here, that sort of thing too? Yes, we also... What we'll do is we'll get a script and we shoot it in eight days. Wow. And so, we have to find the locations. We have to build the sets. We have to do all that in eight days. You know, we have to construct hundreds of thousand dollars worth of sets in eight days. Including wrapping entire rooms in plastic. Exactly. Jeez. Actually, the plastic rooms are pretty forgiving because you can't see through the plastic. So, there's a little bit less detail than you would think in the plastic rooms. So, we have to get all that in line and organized to shoot that. Wow. That's a lot to juggle. Now, this is your calm period right now because you're not filming. Right. You wouldn't have time like this during filming. No. No. I would look like a chicken with my head cut off and filming. But at any one time, the writers are writing all the episodes. We're preparing one episode. We're shooting one episode all at the same time. And then, we're usually in post-production on three or four episodes at the same time. Oh, yeah. Who's handling all of the post-production stuff? Is that you, too? To some degree. And I have a post-production supervisor who works under me who's organizing all the posts. Because especially these days, there's just so much post with all the digital. Right. Because you can film more, you probably do film a lot more, so you have a lot more cutting and editing to do. That's true. And also, now that we are shooting, almost all shows now shoot on tape, not on film anymore. That's why Kodak just went out of business. Right. But because tape is so cheap, you end up shooting a lot more of it than you would on film. So the editors have mountains of footage to go through and no more time in which to do it, but they have to do that. Now, you guys all do all your editing on Macs? We do. We edit on Mac Pros. We use the Avid, as I was telling you before. Not Final Cut. I've tried to get our editors on Final Cut. They've never wanted to do that. That might have turned out to be the right decision. I had to eat a little crow when Apple did, when they discontinued Final Cut last year and came out with the new Final Cut. But most editors in Hollywood on major shows like this are Avid Aholics. Okay. Do you guys, what do you do for storage on things like that? I mean, are you using Drobos or what do you have? We don't use Drobos, but we have very significant raid arrays. Okay. Because we've got hundreds of hours. Right. Offside backups? I mean, how are you doing all that? Yes. It's all done, we basically rent, there's a company that we subcontract to who takes care of all that, but we have all sorts of- Trucks to carry stuff off. You're not doing any cloud nonsense here. Right. But it is much more convenient now that everything's digital. It used to be if you wanted a sound effect, somebody literally had to go across town to the sound effects house, pick up a piece of tape and bring it over to the editing room. It's all done online now. Oh, the efficiency improvements. That's fantastic. I didn't know they had to do that. Well, and even if you were storing a lot of film, and then you didn't have a backup too, right? If there was a fire or something like that, you're dead in the water. You didn't have well- No puns in the show intended. No, it's a good point. You had a negative, and the negative never left the lab. Oh. So if you needed extra prints, you would have them make extra prints. But it was riskier. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And also sometimes we would shoot a day of filming, and the next day, we'd find out that the lab ruined, you know, in the developer, the lab ruined a scene. Oh, and then you have to film it over again. We shoot the scene. Right now with digital on the set, we know exactly what we have. We're looking at the final piece of footage. That's fantastic. Well, I don't want to take up much more of your time. You've spent most of the afternoon giving us a tour and all this. I want to make sure we plug everything you got going. We've got OpenX from myopenx.com. Right. And we've got a vowel movement from, what's it called? iTunes. Oh, just look it up in iTunes, vowel movement. Make sure you spell that right. Right. And of course everybody should be watching Dexter. We got season seven coming up soon. Yes. I think it's September 30th. Whatever's the Sunday closest to September 30th, season seven of Dexter. One of our favorite shows. Just absolutely love it. And thank you so much for spending the time with us. My pleasure. It was great to meet you.