Jaz Garewal says he hopes people become "more accustomed to the idea that premium podcasts are paid."

Courtesy of Jaz Garewal

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Jaz Garewal is an innovator who likes to trailblaze new ways of distributing film. The 28-year-old was mentioned in Time magazine in late 2004 for his podcast on the making of his debut feature film, the Hollywood satire "On the Cutting Room Floor."

Since Garewal finished his film in January, he's sold it online as a series via a groundbreaking video podcast subscription system. Garewal, who graduated from Catalina Foothills High School in 1997 and the University of Arizona (department of media arts) in 2002, has also been featured in Creative Screen-writing magazine. The husband of Star copy editor Yui Umehara-Garewal, he recently answered questions over the phone.

How many films have you made?

"I've made four shorts and one feature."

How were you able to get into Time?

"It was just a right-place, right-time kind of, being on the wave of the podcast thing. I started doing it; it became a buzzword soon after that. They kind of just mentioned me and didn't even call me. I was clueless until I saw it. Another podcaster told me about it, and my parents bought the issue."

"I'm a video editor by day. Actually, I've moved a lot away from editing into compression technology, compressing video files in Windows Media, iPod and different QuickTime formats. It pays the bills."

"I sell it as a paid podcast. When you pay for the first month, you get two parts of the serial right away. Each week you get an additional part. There are 13 episodes. (It's $2 a month and $6 to see the whole film, available on onthecuttingroomfloor.com.) I'm probably going to be releasing it on DVD pretty soon."

"It's been so-so. It hasn't been gangbusters, by any means. I think that's just because the technology and the idea of podcasting is so new, and one of the definitions of a podcast is that it's free, so it's a little confusing. As time goes by, hopefully people will be more accustomed to the idea that premium podcasts are paid."

Can you ever see yourself moving out to L.A.?

"I could see myself going out to L.A. for a little while — a couple years, but there would be plans of coming back to Tucson. I don't think I could keep my sanity in L.A. for more than two or three years before the traffic got to me."