Callsheet • Behind the Sites with Casey Liss

Welcome back to Behind the Sites, a long-overdue return to one of our favorite series here at The Next Reel. This series celebrates the technology behind the entertainment industry... specifically, the sites and apps we use to learn about the movies and shows of which we call ourselves fans.
Casey Liss is a podcaster, developer, and writer from Richmond, Virginia. However, these days, it might be hard to know in which order to put those things. He's one-third of the Accidental Tech Podcast, a must-listen for principled nerds, and half of Analog(ue) on Relay FM. But he's here today to talk about his latest app, Callsheet, an entertainment industry search experience that might just earn a prized spot on the home screen of your phone.
Along the way, Casey talks about the challenges that come with attempting to peel back the features of an existing monolith in order to create an app that is fast, yet still seemingly feature-complete. We talk about what goes into working on an app that is dependent on a third-party API in an era that has rendered API a dirty, profit-seeking word. Oh, and we talk about Plex. For members, we talk a lot about Plex.
Links & Notes Callsheet Callsheet on the App Store The Movie Database TheMovieDB API Casey did a guest spot on Mac Power Users with David Sparks and Stephen Hackett and, if you're as intrigued by a complex Plex set-up as I am, check out this episode and let's get ripping! (ripping our legal media acquired legally because we don't want to insinuate in any way that we condone that other sort of rubbish. -ed) (00:00) - Welcome to Behind the Sites • Introducing Casey Liss and Callsheet (01:18) - Taking on Big-IMDB (04:30) - Peeling back IMDB (07:46) - The Spoiler Problem, Solved (10:26) - The Action-Reward Equation and Data Sources (15:18) - The API Connundrum (17:32) - Discoverable... by accident (22:53) - We live in a Letterboxd World (26:44) - Embracing the Privilege of the Indie Developer (30:51) - Soooo.... Android, but really the iPad app