The All New Garage Show
Starring
Gerald Field-Mann & Kevin Callahan
Episode 1 – 9: Where’s my trophy?
Gerald wraps up episode one, just as Kevin discovers his prized trophy has been “misplaced”.
Another pointless project by David M. Green & Lachlan Cowlishaw
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Clips from episode 2 coming soon to the Internet. Highlights include: Sylvester Stallone and Kevin’s hair on fire!
What a week!
Greetings. Forgive my absence. Just got back from Ballarat yesterday for my week of work placement with the WIN TV News team, organised through RMIT for my post-graduate diploma in journalism. In summary… awesome.
Allow me to start from the beginning…
Last Sunday, after buying two new ties suitable for television, I left Melbourne for Ballarat on a $7 V-line train ticket…
On the train ride I spent most of the journey chatting with a very nice lady named Dona, a resident of Ballarat, about various topics related to our respected lives. When we arrived in Ballarat she very generously let me ride in her taxi to my motel. She gave me her card and told me to call her later in the week to “catch up”. Nice town so far!
The motel that was to be my home for the next 6 days was the Ballarat Mid-City Motor Inn:
The support beams covered in gold tiles, brown-themed interior, bubble-shaped furniture and choice of font gives the place a 1960s Vegas feel, which I for one very much enjoyed…
On Sunday night I seemed to be the only person staying there, so I had the buffet breakfast the next morning all to myself, which highlighted another problem with travelling alone: being forced to take my own pictures of myself, which after a while does become tedious:
I tried walking to the WIN TV station on the first day but turns out it’s 3km… It looked a lot closer on Google Maps…
I considered hiring a car but it would cost $200, plus a $200 deposit, and the only place I found that would rent a car to someone under 25 operated on a “cash only” basis.
I woke up Monday morning intending to do it, but on my way there I came to the conclusion I couldn’t be bothered, so just caught taxis to the TV station and bummed a lift back to town from a different reporter every day.
And thus I arrived at WIN.
WIN TV is Australia’s largest commercial television network, and has one of the largest broadcast areas of any TV network in the world. However, due to the low population density of regional Australia, their maximum theoretical viewership is about 5 million.
Forgive the bad reflection on this diagram (Tasmania should be completely blue)…
So, first day with the WIN News team: tiring. It had been a long time since I’d worked a full day. By about 2:30 I was just about falling asleep! Plus there was a lot of information to take in. And I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to be doing…
I tagged along with reporter Nathan Tanti and camera-man Matt McKinley while they did a few interviews and got some vision for the evening’s bulletin.
As the week went on I tagged along with all of the Ballarat reporters at least once. They work very hard out in the country. The reporters generally do two stories everyday. The capital city reporters for Nine, Seven, Ten, etc. have the luxury of only having to do one, generally.
So I got out and about sitting in the back of the white WIN News four-wheel-drives. I got to see a lot of Ballarat and the surrounding areas, which was pretty cool…
Plus I didn’t have to pay to get into Sovereign Hill!
Ballarat is the central WIN News station for all of Victoria. Every weekday, Ballarat coordinates six local news bulletins for Victoria’s six regional markets: Bendigo, Albury, Shepparton, Mildura, Traralgon and of course, Ballarat, which has the studio facilities:
That means that anchorman Bruce Roberts reads six pre-recorded news bulletins a day. That’s 30 news bulletins a week!
Bruce is a class act. Fantastic voice and delivery. Cares deeply about the news. And the nicest guy in the world. I watched him read the news “live” in the studio:
And then again on my motel TV:
Except for Friday, when acting news director Jeff Sly filled in…
Jeff’s got a great voice too. In fact, I was very impressed with the professionalism of everyone at WIN News. The journalists and camera guys, the guys in the control rooms, were all just fantastic. Great people and a pleasure to work with.
And they make a quality product. It’s the only local television news service in regional Victoria. Not even the ABC does that…
By about Wednesday I was feeling a bit more confident and got my head around the ENPS news software they use at WIN (industry standard, apparently). I started writing news briefs for the bulletin – short 15 second summaries to be read out during the “regional round-up” section of the news.
It was pretty cool writing stuff and then seeing Bruce read it on the air!
Then on Thursday the highlight of the week occurred. I accompanied Nathan Tanti to the Ballarat court. There were two cases on in different courts at the same time, so he covered the more important one in the County Court and I sat in on the one in the Magistrate’s Court.
My guy got bail, and very quickly left the dock and walked out. We weren’t really prepared for this and didn’t have a camera guy with us. Nathan was still in the other court, so I called Jonothan “Jono” Kendall at the news desk and he sent a camera down. Dan arrived just in time to get some vision of the guy leaving the court with his family. Bang! We had a television news story!
Got back to the office and I wrote a 30 second RVO (Reader Voice Over) story to go with the footage. Bruce read it out on the news that night!It was an exhilarating feeling. Probably the greatest moment in my journalism career up to this moment…
Later in the week I also caught up with Dona from the train. She runs a bar called “Portico” on Dana Street. She very generously invited me along to a friendly get-together with some of her friends and family. There’s nothing like travelling alone to force you to talk to total strangers.
I also ate dinner in an Indian restaurant with a gentleman named Karl, who would also have otherwise dined alone. Very good company.
On Friday night I also briefly hung out with some drunk girls staying in another room at the motel. That was all right for a laff… and a couple of photos…
And that just about wrapped it up.
Bit slow to start with but by the end of the week I was sourcing stories and writing them and they were actually going to air. I voiced a few packaged stories as well just for my showreel. They were a bit understaffed this week with a few people on holiday, so they didn’t have time to edit any of my unnecessary extra work. Hopefully I’ll get a DVD in the mail this week.
I caught a train back across the plain in the rain, as I took vain self-portrait photos:
But yes, television news is something I very much enjoyed, and if last week’s experience has taught me nothing else, it’s that I can do it, and I like it.
Thank you very much to the good people at WIN TV Ballarat for showing me the intricacies of their industry, and to Mandy Crane at RMIT for setting it all up for me, and of course to my Mother for paying for the motel room.
Now I’m back in Melbourne. The search for full time work in broadcast continues…
Kind regards,
David M. Green
WIN News… just for the week.
Greetings!
Just yesterday I handed in my final assignment, thus completing my post-graduate diploma of journalism at RMIT University!
This month has been incredibly busy. As if getting my major uni assignments in on time wasn’t enough, I also started two new jobs (Quiz Meisters Trivia host, plus a job writing for VEA, but more about that later); we got a new real estate agent (throwing my share-housing situation into uncertainty); plus I’ve been making arrangements for my work placement with WIN TV in Ballarat next week.
But I wanted to make a special blog entry about my recent experience reading the radio news on Melbourne’s RRR. We had to do this as part of the radio journalism subject at uni and I’ve gotta say, I absolutely LOVED it! It was a lot of fun.
We were put into groups of four. Coincidentally, I was paired with Bec Puddy and Ben Hagemann, both former Adelaideans (like myself). We were also joined by the lovely Maddy Maung.
We arrived at RMIT University’s Swanston Street radio studios in Building 6 at 8am. We then wrote the news, recorded phone interviews for grab stories and recorded a voice-report or two, before reading the news live to air at midday, via some sort of link to the RRR Studios in Brunswick. Each team got to do it twice.
Here are the highlights from our team’s days:
It was great! There was an unofficial contest going between teams to see who could get the biggest person to give a quote. I myself managed to get Fiona Pattern, president of the Australian Sex Party. On the second day, Ben got the Chilean ambassador to Australia. One of the other groups got Tony Windsor. I think the winner goes to whichever team got the East Timor opposition leader. Well done… jerks…
Day one was probably more enjoyable for me, as I got to read the news and because it was a slow news day, there was more room for some funny stories, eg. “the sex lives of women 40+” and “toilet phones”. On the second day however, I was quite ill and really had to drag myself into the studio. Surprisingly, my throat held out long enough for me to record a voice-report. Luckily I made it in because Maddy was sick as well, and without me it would have just been Bec and Ben.
This was actually the first time I’d ever read REAL news on the radio. And thank God I enjoyed it, because I was kinda banking on this when I decided to come to Melbourne to study journalism. I could certainly see myself doing this everyday.
Of course the reality of a REAL radio news room would probably involve half as many people, and instead of spending four hours preparing for one five-minute bulletin, you’d probably be doing them every half hour, possibly for two different radio stations…
But hey, bring it on!
As for the next challenge, I’m off to Ballarat for a week of work experience with the WIN TV News team!
Kind regards,
David M. Green
That is one sweet-arse panel they’ve got in the RMIT studio.
Greetings!
My blog postings are getting more infrequent as I race towards the end of my post-grad diploma of journalism at RMIT University… Needless to say I’m doing a lot of writing.
But I’ve also had a couple of recent employment opportunities. I’m now hosting a weekly quiz night for Quiz Meisters Trivia every Wednesday at the fabulous Peacock Hotel in Northcote!
I’ve been doing it for 3 weeks now. Starting to get the hang of the technical side. Thankfully my months of panel-operation at SAFM have not completely vacated my brain.
As for the “hosting” part, it’s incredible fun. Unlike stand-up, where people expect me to be funny, the crowd really just want the questions. Head office sends me the questions and I put them to the teams. There are also DVD questions and mini-games throughout the night with free jugs of beer for the winners.
In just three quiz nights I’ve now got more stage time as an MC than I do as a stand-up comedian. I think I prefer this sort of thing, to be honest. With this I’ve got something to do. There’s a reason for me being there, other than just make people laugh (who don’t always want to hear it). I can’t remember half the comments I make in between questions, but apparently I’m good at it? So people tell me…
I think my “live” public speaking has really improved in the last year. I couldn’t imagine myself doing this sort of thing a couple of years ago, with no script. When I first started radio, everything was scripted. It gradually became less so, of course, but getting up in front of a crowd at a pub, asking some questions and ad libbing would have scared the crap out of the younger, more uptight me.
The first time I ever MC-ed anything was back in 2006 when I was 19 and I hosted the Marion Youth Council Advisory Committee’s “Sounds of Summer ’06” live music… thingy at the Marion Swimming Centre. And that was awful. Bunch of idiot teenage guitar bands. Plus the people who wanted to see them, instead wanted to throw sausages at me!
But now, I have to say, I absolutely love it. It puts me in such a good mood (especially when it goes well, like it did this week!). And it’s great fun for everyone.
Last weekend I went back to Adelaide for my cousin Julia’s wedding. They asked me to be the MC at the reception. I don’t think I would have agreed to do it before joining Quiz Meisters. I was a little shaky at first but got better as the night went on. Made a couple of good gags. It turned out to be a pretty fun night. Congratulations again, by the way, to Julia and Peter.
It was also great to catch up with some of the Adelaide gang. Here are a couple of photos from my trip that need no introduction:
Yes… So if you live in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and have nothing better to do on a Wednesday night, why not come on over to the Peacock Hotel and ruin my photos like these fine people:
It’s free to play and there are literally fabulous prizes to be won!
Hope to see you there.
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Oh yes, and I bought more turtle necks!
The All New Garage Show
Starring
Gerald Field-Mann & Kevin Callahan
Episode 1 – 8: Norman Vine’s Plus Sized Love Dolls
Kevin chats to billionaire businessman Norman Vine about his new line of Love Dolls.
Another pointless project by David M. Green & Lachlan Cowlishaw
Kind regards,
David M. Green
Dolls may contain asbestos.